BEIJING: Chinese internet users have been supporting Hamas for the last two months and posting caricatures of the group’s fighters on Bilibili, a video-sharing website based in Shanghai and other Chinese social media sites, Voice of America (VOA) reported.
Some of the social media users also shared pictures of themselves dressed like Hamas fighters.
A man disguised as a Hamas fighter, posted a video on social media, brandishing a knife and a rifle at the camera while wearing a green headband, a camouflage suit, and a Palestinian flag patch. But instead of being a part of Hamas or any other armed organisation, he is a YouTuber on the Chinese video platform Bilibili, according to VOA.
The videos, which appear on social media daily, show how many people in China believe that Hamas, which the US and other nations have classified as a terrorist group, is waging a justifiable national liberation war.
Strong antisemitic attitudes and overwhelming sympathy for the Palestinian side inundated the Chinese Internet in the weeks after the start of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7.
However, Manya Koetse, a Dutch Sinology researcher and the creator and editor-in-chief of the news website “What’s on Weibo,” said that following a meeting between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden in mid-November, antisemitic remarks on the Chinese Internet had drastically dropped, VOA reported.
China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin, however, had recently stated that China’s laws “unequivocally prohibit disseminating information on extremism, ethnic hatred, discrimination and violence via the internet” during a regular news briefing on October 30.
Nevertheless, VOA discovered a number of movies on Bilibili that presented Hamas favourably. In the videos, Hamas is shown as a valiant and skillful fighter. One video included the caption, “Hamas marched barefoot into an Israeli military post, killed ten people, and escaped unharmed.”
Moreover, the comment section of these videos show even more praise for the Hamas.
A few social media users drew a parallel between the Chinese Communist Party’s WWII counteroffensive against the Japanese and Hamas’s attacks on the Israeli army, VOA reported.
“It can be said that in them, we can see the figures of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army fighters among the white mountains and black waters in the old days,” a comment read. (ANI)
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