Stanley Fischer, governor of the Bank of Israel, flew to China Feb. 24 to urge Beijing to back sanctions against Iran [2] over its suspected nuclear weapons project. Fischer, a former high official at the World Bank and IMF, was accompanied by Israel's minister for strategic affairs, Moshe Yaalon, and representatives of Israel's National Security Council. "They will discuss issues of common interest with the Chinese. This includes the Iranian issue, which is important for the Chinese as well as Israel," Yaalon's spokesman said.
The visit comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for an immediate embargo on Iran's energy sector. Of the five permanent UN Security Council members, China is most resistant to employing sanctions to coerce Tehran to abandon its alleged nuclear ambitions. (Reuters [3], Feb. 24)
Apparently in response to Israel's diplomatic offensive, the Palestinian Authority's ruling Fatah movement is dispatching its own high-level delegation to Beijing, scheduled to arrive at the end of the month. A senior Palestinian official on Feb. urged China to continue its support for the Palestinian cause. "We hope that the Chinese support for the Palestinian cause, people and Fatah movement will continue until a Palestinian state is established," Fatah spokesman Ahmed Assaf told the Chinese new agency Xinhua. (Xinhua [4], Feb. 25)
Zionists seem to have developed a special interest in China. Shavei Israel [5]—an organization that looks for lost Jews and encourages them to make aliyah—boasted last Oct. 22:
For the first time, a group of seven descendants of the Jewish community of Kaifeng, China has moved to Israel.
The new arrivals, who were brought here by the Shavei Israel organization, arrived at Ben-Gurion airport late Tuesday night.
The city of their birth, Kaifeng, sits on the banks of the Yellow River and was home to a flourishing Jewish community for more than a millennium.
"I am very excited to be here in the Holy Land," said Yaakov Wang, one of the new immigrants. "This is something that my ancestors dreamed about for generations, and now thank G-d I have finally made it."
Wang said that he eventually hopes to become a rabbi, so that one day he can help other Kaifeng Jewish descendants to learn more about their heritage.
"We received special permits from the Interior Ministry to bring them here for a year, during which time they will prepare for conversion. They will then receive Israeli citizenship and be considered new olim," Shavei Israel chairman Michael Freund told Israel National News. "The group will be staying at Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu, near Beit Shean, where they will study in the Hebrew ulpan."
From the airport, the group went straight to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, where they recited the "Shehecheyanu" blessing, and then burst into a chorus of traditional Hebrew songs.
"It took us more than two years to get the requisite permits from Israel's Interior Ministry to bring them over, but it was worth the wait," said Freund. "This is an historic event," he said, adding that, "Kaifeng's Jewish descendants are a living link between China and the Jewish people, and it is very moving to see the remnants of this community returning to their roots".
The account notes that at their peak in the medieval era, the Kaifeng Jews numbered some 5,000, but widespread intermarriage and assimilation—as well as the death of the city's last rabbi—brought about the community's virtual demise by the middle of the 19th century. But the account says nothing about what accommodations Shavei Israel made with the Chinese state to establish contact with the lost Jews of Kaifeng.
We have noted before that indigenous Middle Eastern Jews have served as political cannon fodder [6] for Israel, their persecution at the hands of Arab regimes serving as convenient propaganda. Crypto-Jews from such seemingly unlikely places as Burma and Ethiopia are also being used by the Israeli right as demographic cannon fodder [7] to populate the West Bank. We're all for the cultural survival and recovery of the Kaifeng Jews, but we hope that they will not be similarly exploited for political or demographic agendas.
We also note that both Israeli and Palestinian dealings on the question of China's minority peoples have been replete with irony. Shavei Israel may now be rushing to embrace the Kaifeng Jews, but when the Dalai Lama visited the Abrahamic Holy Land [8] four years ago, he was snubbed by the Israeli and Palestinian leadership alike—by the Israelis because recognizing Tibetan grievances against China would legitimize Palestinian grievances against Israel; and by the Palestinians so as not to alienate Beijing, a traditional but wavering backer of the Palestinian cause.
See our last posts on China [9], Israel/Palestine [10], indigenous Middle Eastern Jews [11] and the crypto-Jews [12]
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