A few days ago, Ross Feingold, a former Asia-Pacific chair for the U.S. Republican Party, stirred up discussions by accusing Chinese netizens of lacking sympathy for Jewish people regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict. A netizen responded by writing an extensive, well-cited essay, giving the Jewish-American Republican a thorough lesson in history. In response, Feingold ended up deleting his comment.
The Power of Chinese Netizens
Mr. Feingold, I was deeply shocked and angered by your response to netizens. Your statement, “If the world had helped the Jewish people during WWII, six million Jews would not have been killed,” is problematic, and it does not justify the killing of Palestinians. Moreover, there is an error in your statement. At the very least, during WWII, Shanghai, despite its own suffering, accepted over 50,000 Jewish refugees unconditionally. Yet, as thanks, some of them collaborated with the Japanese, attempting to establish a Jewish state in northeast China. This is known as the “Fugu Plan.” Fortunately, the plan ultimately failed, and the classic “farmer and snake” story didn’t take root in China.
Even more surprising, just two weeks ago, an Israeli embassy staff member claimed on camera that a street in Shanghai was part of the former French Concession. But the connection between China and Jewish people goes back much further.
As far back as the Song Dynasty, around a thousand years ago, Jewish people came to China, thriving on its land. The Song Dynasty, one of the wealthiest in China’s history, offered many advantages. Yet, during the fall of the Southern Song, as citizens fled, a Jewish merchant named Pu led a private army, killing numerous citizens and delivering their bodies as an offering to the Yuan army.
Decades later, when the Han reclaimed power under the Ming dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang did not punish the Jewish community.
There was also the Opium War, where the Jewish Sassoon family profited by flooding China with opium, causing immense suffering. Since you live in Asia, you are likely familiar with this. Yet, China has never oppressed the Jewish people. Since ancient times, China has embraced moral education. In the Shang Shu—China’s oldest text dating back to the 10th century BCE—it’s written that, at that time, your people had just been exiled from your so-called “Promised Land.”
If you understand your history, you will know that Egypt took you in, but you repeatedly betrayed them, leading to the Pharaoh killing and expelling your people. The Roman Empire accepted you and even set up a Jewish province. However, when Emperor Trajan was away on campaign and the kingdom’s defenses were weak, you rose in rebellion. After overcoming a small garrison, you massacred civilians, skinning and eating the dead, even feeding the bodies to wild animals.
In Cyprus, Salamis, and Libya, Jewish people killed 220,000 civilians. Against civilians, Jewish people were so brutal, yet only two legions of Trajan’s soldiers were enough to defeat you. The furious Roman legions marched from Mesopotamia along the eastern Mediterranean coast, nearly exterminating the Jewish population.
Later, the Jewish people rebelled again, turning against Christians and killing large numbers of Christian civilians. Unfortunately for them, they encountered Emperor Hadrian, one of Rome’s wisest rulers. Hadrian deployed 120,000 troops to suppress the Jewish rebellion, ultimately canceling the Jewish province and scattering the Jewish population. This marked the beginning of their diaspora.
There was also Titus’s siege of Jerusalem, where he destroyed the Second Temple, leaving only the Western Wall, where your people still mourn. Over millennia, Jewish people have faced countless massacres and expulsions. Numerous nations have shown sympathy, only to be betrayed time and again. Despite this, you continue to view yourselves as a superior people, the “chosen” of God, without ever reflecting on the past or considering the harm your culture has inflicted on others.
However, this will not work in China. The Chinese people have their own moral values. They do not consider themselves superior, nor do they fear other self-proclaimed “chosen” peoples. The Chinese have tolerance, a sense of shame, and understand gratitude.
John Rabe, a Nazi Party member who saved countless lives during the Nanjing Massacre, is still respected in China today. A few years ago, when his grandson’s hospital in Germany was in need, China immediately donated supplies. Raoul Wallenberg, a Red Cross official who saved 35,000 lives during WWII—6,000 of whom were Jewish—was later sent to Jerusalem by the UN to verify borders between the newly founded Israel and Palestine. For speaking a few fair words, he was shot by Jewish people six times and died on the spot.
During WWII, Yugoslavia saved a Jewish girl. Fifty years later, she personally ordered indiscriminate bombings on Yugoslavia, dismembering it. When asked in an interview if she regretted it, she answered, “No.” That woman was Madeleine Albright, the first female U.S. Secretary of State.
In 1947, Jews arrived in Palestine on ships with banners reading, “The Germans destroyed our homes; please do not destroy our hope.” The kindhearted Palestinians welcomed them. But you then claimed it was your “Promised Land,” and for the past 70 years, you have relentlessly oppressed and killed those who took you in, creating the world’s largest open-air prison. How much more sympathy must the world show you to satisfy you?
In China’s ancient text Wang Zheng is a phrase: “A small nation that does not humble itself, weak yet unafraid of the strong, disrespectful to its larger neighbor, greedy and poor in alliances—this is a nation destined to fall.”
