In 2019, a Chinese state-run newspaper featured a cartoon of a reptilian George Soros that, as Jordyn Haime and Tuvia Gering put it, “could have easily come from the Nazi-favored tabloid Der Stürmer.” This hostility toward the Hungarian-born Jewish financier, Haime and Gering argue, comes not from the often-controversial activities of his Open Society Foundations, but from the pessimism he has expressed since 2016 about China’s economic future. To this pessimism, Soros has also added sharp criticism of Beijing’s totalitarian tendencies. The Communist country has struck back rhetorically, and appears to have few qualms about using anti-Semitism as a weapon:

Soros’s Jewish heritage has not gone unnoticed by Chinese commentators and policymakers, who, much like their Western and Russian counterparts, gleefully capitalize on anti-Semitic tropes to get their political messages across.

Most are smart enough not to say the quiet part out loud. But this is not something that can be said of Zhèng Ruòlín, a popular francophone journalist-turned-public intellectual who has been a correspondent for the Chinese state-run Wenhui Bao in Paris since the early 1990s and is very familiar with European anti-Semitism.

According to an article Zheng published on Guancha, a popular nationalist portal funded by the billionaire Eric Li, Xi Jinping’s China has accepted the challenge of leading mankind toward a Community of Shared Destiny. This has made it the number-one adversary of “transnational financial capital,” which, to him, is driven by Jews like Soros on their mission to establish a “world government” over which they will rule.

Racist nationalism finds an audience among China’s top officials as well. The core thesis of the Chinese economist Sòng Hóngbīng’s 2007 best-seller Currency Wars is that international, particularly American, financial markets were controlled by a global clique of Jewish bankers. Naturally, Soros’s villainy appears 39 times in the first installment of the series.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.