China’s Search for the Secrets of Jewish Success

In China, widespread fascination with Jews is based mainly on the assumption that Jewish religion and culture impart economic success. Most information available about Jews, however, consists of falsehoods, absurd generalizations, and crude stereotypes. James Ross, co-editor of a new book on Chinese perceptions of Jews, writes:

Best-selling Chinese books have been filled with outrageous claims about Jews for decades. . . . In recent years, however, much of China’s popular discussion of Jews and Judaism has appeared on blogs. In a July 2012 blog-post titled “Jewish Education,” Wang War writes that the “Jewish nation is the world’s smartest, richest, and most mysterious nation.” He cites Marx, Darwin [!], Freud, Einstein, and Mendelssohn as “Jewish gurus,” notes the high number of Jewish Nobel Prize winners, and praises Jewish success at business. “Seventy percent of world trade is controlled by the Jews,” he writes, and Jews account for 25 percent of the 400 richest Americans. “It is said that most of the world’s wealth is in the pockets of the Jews,” writes Wang.

One of the main sources of Jews’ success, according to Wang, is education. Learning and education are “spiritual beliefs,” he writes, and part of the “national spirit.”. . .

Stereotypes and misinformation about Jews remain widespread in China. But they seem to have inspired admiration for Jews, rather than anti-Semitism. Despite the lack of a significant Jewish presence in China, Jews remain a model for success.

Read more at Tablet

More about: Anti-Semitism, China, Jewish genius, Jewish World, Philo-Semitism

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF