China uses anti-Semitic trope ‘Jews control US’ to ‘degrade’ America, claims envoy

The US has accused China of fuelling anti-Semitism in an attempt to “degrade trust in the United States.” Washington’s deputy special envoy on anti-Semitism, Aaron Keyak, made the allegation during a keynote address to the American Bar Association yesterday.

“I have particular concern that since the 7 October Hamas attacks, there’s been an increase in the People’s Republic of China’s state media and online discourse of anti-Semitic tropes that Jews control the United States through deep US-Israel ties, as well as control over banks, the media, and that they have influence over government leaders,” said Keyak in his address as he also pressed for the need to adopt a highly controversial definition of anti-Semitism.

Drafted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), the so-called working definition is favoured by Israel and its advocates worldwide. Critics, however, are strongly opposed to the IHRA definition, arguing that it conflates legitimate criticism of Israel with unacceptable anti-Jewish racism. Seven out of 11 examples of anti-Jewish racism mentioned in the IHRA definition mention Israel.

Crucially, in one example the definition states that “holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel” is a form of anti-Semitism. Critics point out that advocates of the apartheid state are themselves guilty of that by smearing critics of Israel as anti-Semitic. With Israel also claiming to be the state of all Jews worldwide, the dangerous conflation between anti-Semitism and criticism of the state is being fuelled by actors in support of the Zionist project to takeover Palestine.

According to Keyak, in a programme on “uncovering the Israel elements of US elections in history”, China’s state media alleged that “Jews who represent 3 per cent of the US population control 70 per cent of its wealth.” Keyak condemned the statement as an “anti-Semitic falsehood intended to degrade trust in the United States, our democratic institutions, and ultimately democracy around the globe.”

On a previous occasion, Keyak accused Beijing of fuelling anti-Semitism because of the surge in support for Palestine on social media since 7 October. “What we saw after 7 October was a drastic change in the social media within China. The anti-Semitism became more unplugged, more free-flowing,” Keyak told the Washington Post earlier this month. “And because we know that the Chinese internet is not free, that’s a conscious decision by the Chinese government to allow that kind of rhetoric to be increased greatly.”

READ: TikTok under pressure to suppress pro-Palestine voices in alarming crackdown on free speech

Digital analysts dispute this claim. They insist that support for Palestine reflects the groundswell of solidarity with a people living under Israel’s brutal military occupation, and is not generated by a social media algorithm. A Politico article, Does social media favour Palestine over Israel?, revealed that, “On average, there are just much more pro-Palestinian messages on the likes of Instagram, TikTok and YouTube compared with pro-Israeli posts.”

In one study, videos with the #StandWithPalestine hashtag garnered around 4.8 billion views, based on TikTok’s own data. In contrast, the #StandWithIsrael counterpart received just under 600 million views. It went on to state that similar disparities could be seen with everything from #PrayforPalestine and #PrayforIsrael to #ProPalestine and #ProIsrael.

This isn’t just a TikTok phenomenon. On other platforms like Facebook, there’s an equal asymmetry in which there’s more pro-Palestinian content being created compared with pro-Israeli material, based on Digital Bridge’s analysis via CrowdTangle, a social analytics tool owned by Meta.