RSS
Here’s How Asia Is Responding to the Israel-Hamas War
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Chinese Premier Li Qiang attend a signing ceremony in Beijing. Photo: Reuters/Thomas Peter
On October 7, the terrorist organization Hamas conducted a brutal and unprecedented attack against Israeli civilians. The terrorists committed heinous crimes against the civilian population, with an emphasis on children, women, and the elderly.
In response, the State of Israel launched the Swords of Iron War against the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip.
The countries of the Indo-Pacific have a number of fears arising from the crisis in the Middle East. First, they are apprehensive that the next war (either concurrently with or following the Russia-Ukraine war) is likely to take place in their region, particularly between China and Taiwan. They are also concerned that the Swords of Iron War will have consequences for their energy security. They rely on oil and gas imports from the Persian Gulf that might be undermined due to instability in the region.
China
China’s conduct during the Swords of Iron War has not been neutral. In the past, China has tried to navigate in a somewhat balanced manner between Israel and the Palestinians. But China is Iran’s largest trading partner, and earlier this year it played a significant role in mediating between the two major rivals, Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Swords of Iron War raises the potential for entanglement between these two adversaries.
Since the outbreak of the war, statements in the Chinese media and by senior government officials have indicated a shift. This was reflected on the ground in a stabbing incident involving an employee of the Israeli embassy in Beijing, and an unprecedented antisemitic wave on Chinese social media. Alongside Russia, China vetoed the American proposal at the UN Security Council.
China’s ambassador to the UN referred to Israel as an “occupying force,” demanded an immediate lifting of the siege on Gaza, said the root of the conflict is the “illegal occupation” of Palestinian territories, and made no mention of Hamas at all.
China sees itself as an important neutral mediator for peace in the Middle East, but it is no longer perceived as such by the relevant parties. This is a severe blow to Beijing’s diplomatic approach. It aims to strengthen its position in the region and be a meaningful part of shaping the new order, leading to a distancing from the United States that does not create drastic changes in the region. Providing support to extreme Islam could entail possible costs.
In addition, Israel must now recognize that China is not a friend. Countries in the Indo-Pacific expect that Israel’s relationship with China, as well as that of other Western countries, will change, strengthening their support in the face of their own serious tensions with China. There is also concern that China might exploit the conflict in Gaza to implement change in the current order concerning Taiwan.
India
One of the most striking condemnations of the events of October 7 came from Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi. He tweeted, “I am deeply shocked by the news of terror attacks in Israel. Our thoughts and prayers are with the innocent victims and their families. We stand in solidarity with Israel in this difficult hour.”
The UN General Assembly passed an essentially symbolic resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire without mentioning either Hamas or the events of October 7. The resolution passed with 45 abstentions, including India. This marks a continuation of a trend that began in 2014 with Modi’s rise to power. In contrast to his predecessors, Modi significantly elevated the level of relations between India and Israel.
Support for Israel can also be seen as a continuation of India’s positioning as a significant player in the Persian Gulf and the entire Middle East. This was particularly evident in the vision announced by Modi and President Biden in September at the G-20 summit in Delhi, according to which they aim to connect India to Europe through the Persian Gulf and Israel. The importance India places on the region can be seen in its participation in the I2U2 framework (India, Israel, US, UAE), which strengthens its presence vis-à-vis Israel and the UAE. It should be noted that there is one issue where India remains consistent in its stance: the need for a two-state solution to resolve the conflict.
Another common denominator is the challenge India and Israel share in dealing with severe terrorism committed by extreme Sunni Islamist organizations. This bond facilitates the garnering of support for Israel from India, which has been dealing with the threat of these organizations for many years. It has been necessary to continue monitoring the responses of the Muslim population in India, especially in light of the violence that occurred at the end of October in the state of Kerala, governed by the Congress Party. The upcoming year is an election year in India, and Modi is aiming to preserve stability and avoid exacerbating tensions between Hindus and Muslims against the backdrop of the Swords of Iron War.
Japan
In recent years, there has been a trend toward rapprochement between Japan and Israel, particularly in the security domain. In 2022, Israeli Minister of Defense Benny Gantz visited Japan, when the countries marked 70 years of diplomatic relations. Japan, like other countries in the Indo-Pacific region, is adjusting its security policy to incorporate lessons learned from the Russia-Ukraine war.
For many years, Japan refrained from direct involvement in the Middle East. The current war is prompting it to reconsider this approach. The Japanese are particularly interested in cooperation with Israel on missile defense (given the threat from North Korea), as well as cyber defense.
At the center of Japan’s interest in the Middle East is energy security. Approximately 90% of its energy needs are supplied by regional countries, so there is a strong Japanese interest in preserving stability in the region. Hamas’ surprise attack puts a big question mark on this stability. Another Japanese interest during the war is the effectiveness of Iron Dome. Israel’s air defense superiority, of which Israel is proud, is a big contributor to Israel’s prestige in the Indo-Pacific region.
Diplomatically, Japan initially responded to the war in a neutral manner and criticized Israel’s airstrikes in Gaza. Until October 11, Japan did not address Hamas actions at all and did not explicitly acknowledge Israel’s right to self-defense. Only in the past two weeks has there been a noticeable shift in this approach: Japan expressed a willingness to convey messages to Iran to prevent escalation and decided to impose sanctions on companies and individuals transferring funds to Hamas. However, it also called on Israel to suspend its attack on Gaza to allow for the entry of humanitarian aid. Unprecedented expressions of support for Israel are taking place in the streets of Tokyo.
Japan is watching and learning regarding the Western response to events.
South Korea
A few days after October 7, South Korean President Yoon Suk-Yeol condemned the indiscriminate killing of Israeli civilians and soldiers, and the abduction of hostages to Gaza. While South Korea did not express a clear stance in favor of Israel, this constituted an official public condemnation of Hamas.
Yeol also initiated an emergency cabinet meeting aimed at examining the effects of the war on South Korea’s economy and security. At the meeting, concerns were raised about the impact of the conflict between Israel and Hamas on the regional and global scene.
Another important concern for South Korea is North Korea’s involvement. The Israel Defense Forces revealed that North Korea is supplying military technologies to Hamas, and Kim Jong-Un has declared support for the Palestinians and expressed a willingness to send aid to them. All of this clearly places South Korea at odds with the axis in which North Korea actively participates. As the axis countries take more and more anti-Western action, South Korea’s and Japan’s ability to leverage their own interests and needs is strengthened.
The Swords of Iron War has wide-ranging implications for the Indo-Pacific countries, which are grappling with threats such as radical Islam and the tensions resulting from inter-power competition. While the perceived threats in the Indo-Pacific region include China and North Korea, the overall strategic picture is much more broad and complex.
For these countries, the preservation of energy security is critical, and the situation in the Middle East is posing a threat to that security. In addition, the countries of the Indo-Pacific are concerned by the position of the Iran-Russia-China-North Korea axis regarding the war. While Iran is considered a friend, its alignment with China and North Korea creates tensions with India, Japan and South Korea.
Dr. Lauren Dagan Amoss is a member of the Deborah Forum, a lecturer and a researcher in the Department of Political Science and the Security Studies Program at Bar-Ilan University. She specializes in Indian foreign policy. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
The post Here’s How Asia Is Responding to the Israel-Hamas War first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Joy Reid Is Out at MSNBC; How Did She Treat Jewish People and Israel?
Former MSNBC host Joy Reid.
A student of mine once asked if it was more important to be accurate or entertaining in TV journalism. I explained that ethically, it is crucial to be factual, but ratings are important — so on balance, an extremely charismatic person that could make people have an emotional reaction could be more valuable than a boring host who only conveys facts.
TV host Joy Reid is charismatic, and she delivers her comments with a strong cadence and power. It was announced that she will be leaving MSNBC this week. Before the 2024 election, she said that her goal was “to keep Hitler out of the White House,” and on her MSNBC show, she said that the Trump rally at Madison Square Garden mirrored a Nazi rally at MSG in 1939.
But that’s not right. She was correct that some of the language was disturbing — and there were things at the event that were vile and absurd, including calling then Vice President Kamala Harris the anti-Christ. But that does not make it a Nazi rally.
Reid played a clip of Sid Rosenberg, who is Jewish and a radio host, saying at the rally that it was “out of character for me” to speak at a Nazi rally, and her analysis was that Rosenberg “said the quiet part out loud.” Not at all. He was being sarcastic and poking fun at people who called it a Nazi rally.
And Reid has a history of being problematic on Israel.
Karen Bekker of CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, wrote that Reid’s show on the Monday after the October 7 attack “would have been right at place if it had aired on Iranian state TV”:
Her guests Peter Beinart, Ayman Mohyeldin, Ali Velshi and Lt. General Stephen Twitty ignored Hamas’s dedication to genocidal violence as expressed in its charter and in its leaders’ rhetoric, omitted any mention of offers of Palestinian sovereignty and independence, and sought to imply that the carnage was inevitable due to Israel’s actions – therefore excusing and justifying Hamas’s barbaric attack.
I did not see that episode. On another show, Reid said that she hated the killing of all children, whether it was at a kibbutz or in Gaza. I think all people of good conscience want all children to grow up and live in peace. But Reid was making a moral equivalence between Israeli children who were intentionally massacred by Hamas, and unfortunate cases where children may have been accidental and unintended victims of Israel’s war of defense against Hamas.
Reid had some good moments, saying that if one disagrees with actions by the government of Israel, it would not be logical to take it out on American Jews. She was right to speak out about the tragedy in Gaza, but wrong to put the blame mostly on Israel with very little on Hamas.
But it begs the question: had Harris won instead of Trump, would Reid still have her show? Fox News, which is correctly considered the most pro-Israel cable news network, has Trey Yingst deliver award-worthy reporting — but for some reason he calls Hamas “militants” or “fighters,” which is incorrect, because Hamas is deemed a terrorist organization by the US. Many ignore his mistake, but I don’t and it is noteworthy that most others on the network do call them terrorists.
Accuracy is tough to come by when it comes to Israel, and I hope the lies that are spread by the media and others vilifying Israel won’t be believed. Still, no journalist should fear being punished by being accurate in their criticism, even if controversial.
Do journalists tell people what to care about, or are journalists covering what they know people already care about? Right after October 7, 2023, the general public seemed to care about Israeli hostages, but now, not so much. At the beginning of the Russia invasion of Ukraine, there were flags everywhere, and yet I haven’t heard a word about how many Ukrainian children were kidnapped and if they would all be returned in any possible deal.
We can’t have it all. But I’d like someone who is both accurate and entertaining, or at least will apologize and make a correction when they’re wrong.
Overall, we need to keep an eye on the media — and realize that things are not always as they seem.
The author is a writer based in New York.
The post Joy Reid Is Out at MSNBC; How Did She Treat Jewish People and Israel? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
How the Gaza Ceasefire Agreement Highlighted Hamas’ Depravity
People stand next to flags on the day the bodies of deceased Israeli hostages, Oded Lifschitz, Shiri Bibas, and her two children Kfir and Ariel Bibas, who were kidnapped during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, are handed over under the terms of a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Feb. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
The differences between Hamas and Israel can be seen not only in how they fight, but also in how they cease fighting.
More specifically, the terms of the ceasefire agreement, the first stage of which is now ending, are very revealing. All of the possible explanations cast a very negative light on Hamas — and thereby on its supporters.
Hamas was soundly battered during the war that began with its October 7th massacre in Israel. The other inhabitants of Gaza paid a very heavy price for that attack, which the majority of them supported.
While Israel had profoundly degraded Hamas’ capacity by the time of the January 2025 ceasefire, it had not eliminated Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza. Furthermore, it had only succeeded in freeing, or retrieving the bodies of, a small proportion of the hostages that Hamas and other Islamist factions in Gaza had taken from Israel.
This undecisive outcome, combined with external pressure to reach a ceasefire agreement, explains why neither party was in a position to dictate terms unilaterally. Nevertheless, the terms were remarkably lopsided in favor of the Palestinians.
Given that Hamas and Gazans bore many more fatalities and the overwhelming majority of the infrastructural damage and internal dislocation, Gaza appears to have had a much greater interest in the ceasefire itself, than did Israel.
Israel’s main incentive was the return of hostages taken on October 7. However, the asymmetry of the agreement is manifest in the number of convicted Palestinian criminals and terrorists released compared to the number of innocent Israeli hostages.
In the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, 33 Israelis (or their bodies) were to be released. In exchange, Israel agreed to release between 1,800 and 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom were lawfully convicted of crimes including mass murder and terrorism.
What explains such asymmetric terms in favor of the losing side? There are a few possible and overlapping explanations. They all reflect badly on Hamas.
The first possible explanation is that Israeli (and other) hostages in Gaza face much greater threats than do Palestinians in Israeli prisons. The latter are not in a life-threatening situation. They are not liable to execution at any moment. They are not kept on starvation diets, nor housed in unsanitary conditions in humid tunnels without light, or adequate ventilation. They have access to medical care (as Yahya Sinwar, architect of the October 7 attack, himself had when he was an Israeli prisoner).
There have been reports of some Palestinian prisoners being subjected to abuse, but even if those isolated examples did happen, there are important differences. Not least among these is that such abuse is illegal under Israeli law, with disciplinary action being taken at least sometimes. By contrast, abuse is the norm for hostages in Gaza.
However, to the extent that Palestinian prisoners are abused, the asymmetric terms of the agreement suggest a second explanation, namely that Hamas cares less about the welfare of Palestinian prisoners in Israel than Israel cares about hostages in Gaza.
The same is true about the valuing of lives. According to this explanation, Israel values the lives (and even the bodies) of its citizens and residents (of all religions) more than Hamas values the lives of Gazans.
The third possible explanation is that while Israel is a democracy ultimately accountable to an electorate, Hamas, as an authoritarian regime, is not answerable to Gazans. Even if there is some truth to the criticisms that Prime Minister Netanyahu has been unduly influenced by his own interests in weighing up the interests of the hostages relative to the goal of defeating Hamas, he is still inordinately more accountable to Israeli public opinion than Hamas is to Gazan public opinion.
There is nothing surprising in any of these possible explanations. It did not take the October 7 massacre, and the atrocities of that day and the many months since, for us to know that Hamas is indiscriminate in its violence. Instead, these events provided further and more horrifying evidence of what was already known.
We also already knew, from Hamas’s methods of waging war in multiple conflicts with Israel, that it cares very little about Gazan deaths. Indeed, it may attach positive strategic value to those deaths. Similarly, it is — or should be — no surprise that Israel is a democracy, and Hamas a repressive theocratic regime that treats its own citizens viciously.
What is dismaying is how many people, including in Western countries, have failed to draw these conclusions. Despite all the evidence, both in war and in ceasefire, they continue to side with the repressive theocracy of Hamas over the democracy that is desperately defending itself against an enemy that combines a medieval mentality and morality with modern munitions.
David Benatar is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town, and currently Visiting Professor at the Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto.
The post How the Gaza Ceasefire Agreement Highlighted Hamas’ Depravity first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Revolting: See the Children and Mother Massacred By Newly Released Terrorist
Revital Ohayon and her two sons, and Noam, of Kibbutz Metzer, who were murdered in 2002.
With tragic poignancy, in the week that Israel is mourning the murder of Shiri Bibas and her two sons, Ariel and Kfir, of Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel released the terrorist responsible for the murder of Revital Ohayon and her two sons, of Kibbutz Metzer (above).
Terrorist Muhammad Naifeh was convicted of involvement in the murder of 13 Israelis, including Revital and her sons, on their kibbutz in 2002.
Like the images of Shiri Bibas trying to protect her children, Revital was murdered while hovering over her sons, Matan and Noam, trying to protect them.
Last week, the murderer of Revital and her sons — literally moments after being released from prison in exchange for Israeli hostages and still on the terrorists’ bus — already pledged to return to terror in “proud partnership” with Hamas terrorists.
He “saluted” them for successfully releasing the Fatah terrorists. “Thank you for all this sacrifice … We, as Fatah members, are proud of this partnership [with Hamas], which will be better in the coming days than in the past.”
Here are his full, odious remarks:
Released terrorist murderer Muhammad Naifeh: “Me [Muhammad Naifeh], ‘the Frenchman’ [13 life-sentences], Abu Satha [9 life sentences], Mansour Shreim [14 life sentences], Ahmed Abu Khader [11 life sentences; all released terrorists], and everyone, and Abd Al-Karim Aweis [6 life sentences], and the entire leadership of [Fatah’s] Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades [terror wing] and their founders, we salute you [Hamas], and we will be by your side. We are partners of the future, Allah willing.
Thanks to the [Hamas’] Izz A-Din Al-Qassam Brigades. Thank you for all this sacrifice.
The Hamas Movement is a respectable movement, and it exists, and the occupation [i.e., Israel] cannot eliminate Hamas. Hamas is an idea that cannot be eliminated, and it is a main and true partner of the Palestinian national project. We as Fatah members are proud of this partnership, which will be better in the coming days than in the past days, Allah willing.” [emphasis added]
[Quds News Network (Hamas), X (Twitter) account, Feb. 15, 2025]
The identical nature of the Hamas and Fatah cruelty, together with this Fatah terrorist’s hate rant, should be a reckoning for those who still mistakenly differentiate between the Hamas terrorists, whose leaders sit in Qatar, and Fatah terrorists, whose leader sits in Ramallah.
Itamar Marcus is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), where a version of this article originally appeared.
The post Revolting: See the Children and Mother Massacred By Newly Released Terrorist first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login