Peking-Jerusalem Diplomacy

Korey, William

WUIAM HDREY PEKING JERUSAIfM MHOMACY TOWARD A BREAK THROUGH Communist China's Deputy Premier, Keng Piao, not too long ago, told an American delegation visiting Peking that the Chinese and Jewish...

...The ice had at last been broken...
...Now that appreciation was made explicit...
...Taking note of Dr...
...Yet the hope for diplomatic relations was not fulfilled in 1950 and has remained unfulfilled for the succeeding twenty-nine years...
...The Soviet-American communique of October 1, 1977 had no doubt stunned China and aroused fears of a major Kremlin role at Geneva aimed at resolving, partly on its own terms, the Middle East question...
...Korneyev offered little evidence for his accusations...
...The real reason for Israel's hesitancy was fear of U.S...
...At the same time, Peking was signaling a changed attitude toward Israel...
...who is Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Sub-Committee on the Middle East, met at length with senior Chinese Foreign Ministry officials...
...With the colonial powers, Britain and France, linked to Israel in conflict, it was not too difficult for the newly self-proclaimed champion of the Third World to target Jerusalem as the ally and collaborator of colonialism...
...Ineluctably, the Chinese would be obliged to turn Westward, a shift which coincided with a new thrust in American foreign policy to achieve a more balanced equilibrium among conflicting forces and reduce the possibility of confrontations, including those between the super-powers...
...establishment of diplomatic relations might be considered an unfriendly act with serious consequences...
...it was decided instead to strengthen that role, to preempt expected Soviet challenges to a shifting Chinese posture toward Israel...
...PLO sources later described the answer received by the envoy as unsatisfactory...
...Pravda moved the China-Zionist theme to the center of public attention on January 25 with a leading article written by one of the Soviet Union's principal anti-Semitic ideologists, Vladimir Bolshakov...
...There, too, a personal relationship was cemented between the leaders of China, India and Egypt...
...In an English-language broadcast, it contended that "China is preparing to establish diplomatic relations with Israel," thereby fulfilling "Maoist double-dealing in the Arab East...
...contacts at a high level were deliberately excluded...
...Still, the Chinese diplomat would have had to be blind not to recognize a rebuff, even if his polite response to Levavi was that the Israeli excuse was "understandable...
...It highlighted the psychological feature of ethnic and family pride which has distinguished two peoples whose history and culture reach deep into the ancient past and, uniquely, have persisted as a continuum into the present and toward the future...
...Moreover, Cuba, a stalking horse for Soviet influence, was exerting a growing pull in Third World circles...
...The delay would prove very costly...
...Even humanitarian gestures were turned aside, since they might imply formal recognition of Israel...
...The central and incendiary point was then made: international Zionism "hastens to use Peking as an ally in its anti-Soviet campaign and in the struggle against the progressive Arab countries and the Palestinians...
...Early in 1951, Communist China was branded an aggressor by an overwhelming majority of the UN General Assembly...
...For it was in the following month that Chou En-lai went to Bandung, Indonesia, to attend an All-Asian conference of developing countries...
...Their current juxtaposition could prove lethal for Soviet Jews—the more so, of course, in the event of an actual Sino-Soviet conflict...
...Andrei Amalrik has emphasized that Jews and Chinese were the bogeymen of Russian chauvinism...
...Nor was China prepared to abdicate its role in the Arab world...
...Mission to China, Leonard Woodcock...
...The China factor was first introduced in October 1971 by the Soviet Union's "Julius Streicher"— Vladimir Begun—in the Minsk journal, Belarus...
...In the late sixties and early seventies, overall Chinese policy underwent a fundamental transformation...
...China saw the escalating power of the Soviet Union as a threat to herself, and welcomed initiatives that would resist the spread of Soviet influence...
...Relations between China and the United States, though much improved, had some distance to go before normalization...
...But even more important than Israel's posture toward the USSR was a hoped-for change in the Arab posture toward Moscow...
...Yet another sign of a changed atmosphere was the willingness of the current chief Chinese representative in Washington, Chai Tse-Min, to discuss China's Middle East policy with American reporters...
...Finally, China's overwhelming concern had shifted...
...Chou En-lai announced, in September, China's intention to establish full diplomatic relations...
...The important Florida Senator, who is widely known as a vigorous supporter of Israel, went on to say that "the opportunity may soon exist to discuss the common interests that both China and Israel have in resisting Soviet expansion...
...State Department officials caution that while China's policy has become both more pragmatic and more pro-Western, it may be months before diplomatic ties between her and Israel are formalized...
...The collusion was given more detailed Radio Moscow commentary on April 27 by the Kremlin's leading hate-peddler, Lev Korneyev...
...Bolshakov closed the article by stating that "thus, the Maoists and the Zionists team up on the soil of anti-Sovietism through the complicity of U.S...
...The Chinese representative at the UN met with Israeli Ambassador Chaim Herzog...
...In November 1978, Senator Richard Stone (Dem...
...in 1605, Father Ricci, a Jesuit writer, recorded the elaborate oral tradition...
...It can be assumed that Stone was privy to higher-level discussions...
...And in the diasporas of both, it has been such traits that have elicited admiration—and also envy and hostility—from the dominant native populations...
...At the end of April, Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan visited various countries in Southeast Asia and took the occasion to make a "private visit" to Hong Kong...
...A similar decision had been taken in Israel, although no public announcement was made...
...hard work, self-discipline and endless striving for self-improvement...
...But "later" never came...
...That same day, Radio Moscow in an Arab language broadcast observed that "Peking supports Israel's demands for annexing the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights...
...The virulent anti-Zionist propaganda campaign of the Kremlin has been sharpened in recent months by the new additive of the "China factor," giving the campaign a potentially deadlier edge...
...The Israeli press reported contact made through an intermediary of Roumania's Deputy Foreign Minister...
...By the end of March, Tass was charging military collusion between Israel and China...
...Chou's contact with Gamal Abdel Nasser would prove critical...
...Said Korneyev: "The Zionist general will secretly meet a Chinese plenipotentiary for talks on arms deals...
...he expressed the hope that formal friendly relations would be established between the two countries...
...in time, distinctive Chinese features overwhelmed Jewish traditions and culture...
...Israel, acutely sensitive to any expulsion question at the UN lest it affect her own perilous status in the world body, had not supported resolutions cast in that form...
...Pavlov moved from ideology to political considerations in "explaining" tightening the links between China and Zionism...
...Jewish merchants brought Chinese silk and spices to Europe and returned to China with dyed clothes and glassware...
...On the following day, the Red Army newspaper, Krasnaia zvezda, articulated the same theme...
...The fact that, for the first time, a high Chinese official no longer demanded, as had always been the case before, that Israel must withdraw from "all" occupied territory, meant a clear softening of the Chinese position...
...Such links, among other things, would preempt any pro-Israeli charge levelled against Peking...
...Precisely because of its pro-Arab, and especially pro-Egyptian, thrust, Communist China, however it might welcome the posture of Israel toward the USSR, could not but rebuff overt approaches by Israel for a fundamental policy change...
...From Peking's perspective, the Sadat initiative of November 1977 was undertaken precisely to by-pass both the Soviet Union and the United States...
...Only the gas chambers are absent, although expulsion has often led to massive drownings at sea...
...The relative obscurity of the provincial journal, in which the Begun article appeared, kept the China factor from then entering into the mainstream of the anti-Zionist drive...
...The changed Chinese perspective has already produced a significant development which bears upon Israeli security considerations...
...His instructions from Jerusalem were clear: "Nothing will be done in this direction [establishing diplomatic relations with China] until the situation in the Far East clears up...
...In contrast, the USSR was heavily involved with the Arab world both in military and economic terms...
...Yet, in the past, the myths had been kept separate...
...Even the Caucasian physiognomy was eventually altered...
...After the Six Day War, it became the principal supplier of weaponry for the PLO...
...But with the various Arab states themselves now rushing to establish diplomatic relations with Peking, the Chinese reply to Jerusalem would ineluctably assume a noncommittal character...
...No longer would the Third World constitute a priority consideration...
...Once the conspiracy theme was legitimized, Korneyev felt free to speculate with absolute conviction about the supposed nature of the trip by Foreign Minister Dayan to Southeast Asia...
...Former Senator Dick Clark, now Ambassador-at-Large on refugee questions for the State Department, has labelled the current Vietnamese conduct "systematic persecution of people because they are Chinese...
...Still, by 1954, the continuing discussions of the Jerusalem and Peking ambassadors had borne fruit...
...In large measure, the circumstances which intervened were related to the relationship of the United States to Communist China...
...missed opportunities cannot easily be recaptured...
...in August 1976, Peking rejected and returned a cable from Rabin offering medical assistance to relieve the suffering brought on by an earthquake...
...Instead, it was agreed to begin with an exchange of trade and goodwill missions...
...He later reported that "the Chinese attitude is moving towards President Sadat's approach as compared to the Palestine Liberation Organization's approach, even though they paid lip service to the PLO...
...Yet the historic relationship of the Chinese and Jews remained embedded in a consciousness that survived...
...After all, it could be argued, the young Jewish state did not have unlimited means, its infant foreign service was just emerging from the swaddling stage...
...But when Egypt altered its position toward Israel, China could finally move to a more overtly positive relationship vis-a-vis Jerusalem...
...One is racism...
...Even such Soviet "liberals" as Yevgeny Yevtushenko, let alone such anti-Communist neo-Slavophiles as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, have given expression to harsh anti-Chinese stereotypes and sentiments...
...In January of 1955, Jerusalem's economic and goodwill mission, headed by Israel's minister to Burma, David Hacohen, arrived in Peking...
...The mere act of recognition by Jerusalem had already irritated Washington...
...Their respective modern rebirth, after intensive struggle and conflict, came at about the same time—1948 for the Jewish state, 1949 for the Chinese Communist regime...
...If contacts were to be pursued with Communist China, let that be done in the various capitals where both had embassies...
...It echoes the fears associated with Tatar rule over Muscovy during the 13th-15th centuries...
...attachment to bonds of kinship...
...Hostility to the Chinese is endemic to the Russian nationalist myth...
...He related how Jews found it difficult "to keep their law in China owing to the fact that the circumcision, the purification, the non-eating of pork...
...The extensive character of the contacts included the establishment in the important city of Kaifeng of a significant Jewish settlement...
...By "toadying to imperialism," Peking was said to be hoping "to obtain many billions in loans...
...Present at the meeting was the head of the U.S...
...legislators and with Howard Squadron, Soviet propagandists sketched the outlines of a perceived Chinese-Zionist conspiracy...
...The author, P. Pavlov, found that China and Zionism are intimately linked by two forces allegedly inherent in their respective ideologies...
...The removal of the barriers allows for the expression of memories that go back many centuries, and of qualities that are timeless...
...They were probably silk merchants, travelling with caravans from Samarkand and other Central Asian centers or by sea from the Persian Gulf...
...By numbers alone, the Arab states offered, a far greater weight than Israel to the leverage China now planned to apply in the Third World...
...The protocol stressed intensified commercial links...
...reaction...
...The statement went on to recall that this slogan has been used by Israel "as a pretext to occupy Arab territories...
...The "American factor" weighed very heavily with him...
...A series of accidental circumstances thwarted normalization of relations just as one or another side was prepared to welcome it...
...The disclosure was not denied in official circles...
...Al Fatah, even before the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (1964), even though it was still an inconsequential movement, became the recipient of Chinese aid...
...James Scheuer—did not find "any easing at all towards Israel...
...But Soviet response aside, one cannot help feeling that the coincidences of political interest which have made it possible for China and Israel to move towards each other have in effect served to remove artificial barriers between two nations which have considerably more in common than the vast differences in their situation would suggest...
...Intermarriage hastened the process...
...Details of the rather exotic community, even the interior sketch of the synagogue and numerous examples of the Hebrew script, are to be found in the Jesuit archives in Paris...
...There are other features of the two peoples which anthropologists have noted: respect for learning...
...Moscow itself could serve as a natural and useful link...
...He told the Chinese official that "the problem was only financial...
...As early as 1976, Chinese privately indicated to intermediaries an appreciation of Israel's security interests...
...And it is because the character of that relationship has now been fundamentally altered that the aborted plan, first projected in 1950, has been set into motion once again...
...But this time, the Chinese official, in rather formal terms—he specified that he was acting on "instructions of his government"— put to the First Secretary a rather unusual query: Was Israel planning to send a diplomatic mission to Peking...
...only Burma, India, Ceylon, Pakistan, Britain and Norway had acted before Israel...
...A sudden change in behavior was out of the question...
...At the same time, China made clear that it sought the consummation of formal diplomatic relations...
...Giving expression to a characteristic element of Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda, he contended that Chinese leadership is trying "to establish as close ties as possible with the United States...
...In this instance, there was the additional awareness, notably on the part of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, that China would in time become a major force in world affairs and, therefore, that diplomatic prudence warranted close and friendly relations with her...
...As tangible benefits for Israel began to flow from the changed relationship with China, that relationship also led to negative consequences for the world's third-largest Jewish community, Soviet Jewry...
...On the contrary...
...Its embassy in Washington, under the direction of Ambassador Abba Eban, exerted a powerful push toward caution, thereby reinforcing Sharett's hesitations...
...talking to people here and there...
...Moreover, the timing was more than awkward...
...The Soviet Jewish community, already sensitive to an unceasing anti-Zionist propaganda assault which nourished popular anti-Semitic myths, cannot but respond to the new linkage with a deeper anxiety...
...The initial response of Levavi back in 1950 was cordial—but evasive...
...Friendly contacts between Israeli diplomats and Communist Chinese diplomats had been a persistent, if not particularly notable, feature of the international landscape since the beginning of that year...
...The basic principle that guided Israeli recognition policy was whether the concerned government exercised authority and power over its territory and population...
...A still more malicious anti-Semitic canard was carried on Radio Moscow on February 22 and 23...
...Equally significant, according to some reporters, was Chai's approach: he did not restrict himself to making exclusively negative observations when talking about Israel...
...Shortly thereafter, in March 1978, the first major public breakthrough in the official Chinese-Israeli impasse took place...
...The Sino-Soviet clash, ideologically and in military-political terms, had been simmering since the late fifties, but it now surfaced before a startled world in the most exacerbated form...
...Israel, whose birth had been legitimized by the United Nations, was hardly in a position to challenge the international community...
...The essentially forced expulsions, for which the authorities cruelly demand monetary payment, thereby despoiling the helpless victims, almost echo Hitlerian policy...
...Thus China sent a high level delegation to Cairo which reportedly signed a sizeable trade agreement...
...And now, it seems, there is a prospect that the strands of memory and contact will be renewed...
...A Democratic Congressman from New York who was in China at the same time—Rep...
...Peking was accused of "nurturing plans for world hegemony" while Tel Aviv was said to be "trying to dictate its will to the neighboring countries...
...References to a China-Zionist linkage subsequently appeared in the Soviet media, but the references were occasional and never prominent...
...Pavlov repeated the quotation attributed to Keng Piao, asserting a high degree of patriotism for both Chinese and Jews, and branded it as "absurd" and "open racism...
...Under the "aegis of the United States," Tass contended that Tel Aviv would assist in the production of weaponry in China proper and would also "dispatch to China Israeli war experts...
...Now, noting the flood of refugees fleeing Saigon, Moscow commented that "the Maoists caused the exodus of the Chinese community from Vietnam" just as the Zionists, in the fifties, "by means of intimidation and bribery" had allegedly moved the Jews out of Arab countries to Israel "group by group...
...This is for you only...
...For the experienced Israeli diplomat, Aryeh Levavi, the query could scarcely be regarded as unexpected...
...And Peking, in a cable signed by Prime Minister Chou En-lai, graciously acknowledged Israel's action...
...Jesuit missionaries arriving in China in the 17th century, fascinated by the Jewish community, brought back the valuable material...
...By mid-1950, China had become involved in the Korean War, thus directly confronting American power...
...Israel, however, remained reluctant to press for speeding the tempo of normalization...
...Only when it became apparent that China had joined an effort to support a pro-Arab resolution did Israel (which had been excluded from Bandung as a result of Arab pressure and boycott threats) rush to end its earlier delay...
...This was the reason, said the broadcaster, for Deng Xiaoping's trip to Washington...
...Peking's Deputy Foreign Minister Chiao Kuan-Hua, in December 1971, told the UN General Assembly that "we have never recognized Israel, nor have had any contact with it since the founding of the Peoples' Republic of China...
...In a joint statement on February 20, Palestinian, Moslem and Arab leftist groups accused Peking of imperialist designs in Southeast Asia and linked those designs with China's backing of Sadat's Camp David policy...
...While he denied any plans to meet with Chinese leaders, he acknowledged that Israel was "putting out feelers...
...He told his listeners that Israel was planning to sell China its "obsolete" F-4 Phantom fighter-bombers and its outdated surface-to-surface missiles...
...When the PLO came into existence, Peking rushed to be the first country to extend its formal recognition, although China never endorsed the notion of the destruction of Israel implied in the PLO National Covenant...
...By 1900, only some fifty Jews in Kaifeng retained the surnames acquired by their forefathers...
...More significant, a special welcome was extended by China to Egyptian Vice President Husny Mubarak when he paid Peking an official visit...
...Indeed, Chou went further...
...Chinese technological teams, to at least some extent, began to replace the ousted Russians...
...Again Sharett temporized and, on March 28, Hacohen was advised that a 'Chinese delegation "must first come to Israel" before normalization could be further pursued...
...The Chinese, he said, "merely repeated the hard-line PLO rhetoric...
...Yet Prime Minister Moshe Sharett was "not prepared to rush and, certainly, not to gallop" toward formal relations with China...
...When formal Chinese endorsement of the Camp David agreements was announced, the Arafat organization reacted with anger...
...Sadat's outflanking maneuver was all the more welcome and Peking gave him full support...
...For over a decade, the Kremlin's media had spoken of "dual loyalty" and of how Zionism had manipulated Jewish communities to serve its own purposes...
...If there was an aptness to Keng Piao's comment, it was nonetheless surprising...
...During the same month (November 25) Deputy Premier Keng Piao met with an American delegation which included Howard Squadron, President of the American Jewish Congress...
...They were • simply presented as part of a U.S.-manipulated conspiracy involving Sadat and Zionism...
...Somewhat less than two hundred years after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans, the first Jewish families are believed to have reached China...
...From 1965 on, the issue of recognizing the credentials of the Peking delegation had been coupled with the issue of the expulsion of Taiwan...
...China, Deng said, subscribed to the view that the treaty was only a first step towards a final settlement...
...The dialogue between China and Israel that was initiated in 1950 and stopped in 1955 could now be imagined once more...
...While no firm results emerged, it is expected that China will respond favorably once the peace with Egypt "takes hold...
...For Jews, the results are familiar: pogroms, and ultimately the "final solution...
...Whatever the vicissitudes, the main direction of Chinese policy with respect to Israel is certainly clear...
...No one can be sure just when the normalization of relations between China and Israel will come to fruition...
...WUIAM HDREY PEKING JERUSAIfM MHOMACY TOWARD A BREAK THROUGH Communist China's Deputy Premier, Keng Piao, not too long ago, told an American delegation visiting Peking that the Chinese and Jewish people "have in common more love for their country than any other people...
...But only imagined...
...Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, in April 1975, reported that one such approach through a third party had been rejected...
...The Arab countries would be depicted in Chinese propaganda as the victims of imperialist aggression while Arab guerrillas would be portrayed as paragons of revolutionary virtue...
...The pariah status of China appeared to dissipate as various Western countries established normal diplomatic relations with her...
...His predecessor had meticulously avoided such discussion...
...On April 29, China was finally advised that Israel "desires to establish full diplomatic relations...
...When the matter of Communist China's admission to the UN came before the General Assembly in October 1971, Israel displayed no hesitation in supporting the proposal without reservation...
...And at the Bandung Conference, the formal structure of the non-aligned nations was established...
...Following the Yom Kippur War, China policy was oriented to encouraging the Arabs to reject Soviet influence...
...military-industrial complex" was said to be "supervised by Zionist capital...
...Now the Chinese diaspora is beginning to find itself repeating this aspect of the Jewish experience—genocide in Indonesia in 1965 and today's mass expulsion in Vietnam...
...More significant still was a remark of the Deputy Premier that Israel must withdraw from "most" of occupied Arab territory...
...Sixty to seventy percent of the U.S...
...stretching from Peking in the north to Canton in the south where Jews found a hospitable environment in which to settle...
...That was on January 9, 1950...
...In the meantime, informal contacts can be expected to grow, extending, perhaps, into possible visits by athletic teams, technicians or journalists...
...Thus China has become "a direct accomplice of imperialism and Zionism...
...Arafat's second in command, Abu Iyad, addressed a mass rally in Beirut in mid-February 1979 and contended that the Chinese action was "incomprehensible for a power which is supposed to be on the side of progressive forces...
...Pointing to Peking's sympathetic orientation to Sadat's Camp David policy, as well as to several meetings of Chinese leaders with U.S...
...Israel, for her part, was prepared to offer positive gestures...
...But it did not officially verbalize its intense fury until China's invasion of Vietnam...
...As recently as April 19, Deng told a high-level delegation from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that China would not openly endorse the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty because it did not want to offend the Arab world...
...And Kaifeng was but one of more than twenty towns and cities William Korey is Director of International Policy Research, B'nai B'rith International...
...Since January of this year, however, the China factor has been incessantly repeated and has become a central element in the campaign...
...imperialism...
...But cultivating and tightening the links with Egypt remained, of necessity, the Chinese priority...
...And they would encourage Sadat to press his initiative...
...By the 9th century, relationships were already on a solid footing, with Jews playing a key role in linking the Christian Kingdom of the Franks, ruled by Charlemagne's descendants, with the Chinese kingdom of the distant East...
...Assimilation was already well advanced by the time of Father Ricci...
...It received a cool, though polite, reception...
...It was China's first appearance at an important international meeting and marked her entrance as a major actor in Third World politics...
...This contrasted to some extent with Israel's previous voting on the issue...
...The Soviet response to the prospect of a positive Sino-Israel relationship may well encourage and hasten the very relationship it condemns...
...The First Secretary of the Israel Embassy in Moscow, in mid-June 1950, did not appear to be too surprised when the Charge d'Affaires of the Embassy of the Peoples' Republic of China paid him an official visit...
...The PLO, which had been the recipient of Peking's moral support as early as 1965, and of some material support since then, had indicated concern over China's policy toward the Camp David discussions...
...it was now the growth of Soviet power, euphemistically referred to, in Peking propaganda, as "hegemonism...
...Only from Kaifeng, however, has a fairly continuous record been preserved, largely through the scholarly efforts of the Jesuits...
...In time, assimilation was total...
...Radio Moscow on February 21 observed that "both the Maoists and the Zionists exploited their kith and kin in the neighboring countries for their selfish objectives...
...Emphasis added...
...How real is that prospect...
...The vehemence of the PLO response signalled the end of a 14-year relationship with China...
...He was seeking to acquire "the most advanced weapons in order to prepare the Chinese army for a "world war...
...But Burma offered as good a locus, since both Israel and China had excellent relations with the Rangoon government...
...Aside from small consignments of arms and equipment, and the use of experts for training guerrillas, China was economically too weak and its distance from the Middle East too great to enable it to play more than a marginal role...
...The observation of the Deputy Premier does strike a chord of historic memory...
...The second force is the "striving for domination...
...impeded their relation with others, especially for those who wanted to become officials...
...In international relations—as in other areas of life—timing is everything...
...In keeping with such a projected perception of Sino-Israeli relations in the immediate future, a very knowledgeable source has disclosed that in March an Israeli economic mission flew secretly to Peking and remained for a "short time" discussing projects and products which might interest Peking...
...Disenchantment with India, a key Bandung partner, had set in fairly early and worsened with time...
...Still, too much should not be made of China's assistance to the Arab world...
...Certainly, ideology would not be an obstacle to that purpose, as the act of recognition itself indicated (Israel had already established diplomatic relations with each of the Communist powers in Eastern Europe...
...Yet, unofficially, low-level soundings of Israel's attitude were apparently being taken...
...A key major statement appeared —almost unnoticed—in the Ukrainian Communist youth organ, Komsomolskoye znamia, on January 23...
...Contending that China was preparing to "normalize" relations with Israel, Bolshakov observed that American diplomacy is "actively supporting these steps" by encouraging international Zionism, "one of the shock troops of U.S...
...Not a single diplomat was posted anywhere in Asia or Africa...
...imperialism...
...Does his comment signal a breakthrough in contacts between the two peoples...
...That support continued into the period of the subsequent Egyptian-Israeli negotiations, even to the extent of a formal public endorsement of the later Camp David accords...
...The resumption of discussions between Israel and China was no longer possible in Moscow, since the USSR, in February 1953 (while Stalin was yet in the midst of another anti-Semitic paroxysm) had broken relations with Israel...
...Five days later, on February 28, Pravda carried an authoritative Party statement under the pseudonym I. Aleksandrov which stated that China has advanced the slogan of "secure borders" in its campaign against Vietnam...
...After President Sadat had expelled Soviet personnel from Egypt, the Chinese delegate at the UN (on October 3, 1972) spoke warmly of efforts to "shake off super-power domination...
...Late in 1978, Yassir Arafat sent a special envoy to Peking to ascertain its views...
...The unusual greetings provided Mubarek are normally reserved only for foreign heads of state...
...Not since the fifties had a formal exchange on the ambassadorial level occurred...
...The stress upon alleged military collusion, needless to say, was dangerously provocative...
...The warm and sympathetic comment was extraordinary...
...The terrorist leader's remarks were even more provocative: "We openly declare that we stand on the side of Vietnam against the Chinese invasion...
...After all, Israel had been among the very first non-Communist powers to extend recognition to the Communist regime in Peking...
...Press accounts in Britain related that Eli Ben Gal, a leading member of the left-leaning Mapam party, had met Chinese diplomats at their Paris embassy on July 24, 1971...
...On January 8, 1979, Tass fired the opening charge...
...In late February, Soviet propagandists added to the Zionist-Chinese linkage by applying a particular vulgar stereotype that was said to distinguish both peoples...
...Only later, it was thought, would full diplomatic relations develop...
...But if the Israeli vote for admission in 1971 was meant to signal a new line, the Chinese officially refused to take notice...
...Reliance upon themselves was seen by Peking as the only way the Arabs could achieve their aspiration without falling prey to superpower "hegemonies...
...The Sino-Arab alignment was tightened by the Sinai War of 1956...
...Henry Kissinger's "contacts with Mao," Begun warned that this policy was carried out "under the banner" of the "six-cornered Star of David...
...Keng, when queried by Squadron about possible Chinese-Israel contacts, took note of the similarities between the Chinese and the Jewish peoples...
...Relationships, rich and finely tapestried, between Jews and Chinese go back more than 1,800 years...
...Nonetheless, a five-point protocol was agreed upon on February 18...
...Since this issue has been placed on the agenda of Congress, it was inevitable that Peking would strive "to assure for itself the support of the influential pro-Israeli lobby...
...A second opportunity for normalization arose with the armistice in the Korean conflict in July 1953...
...He is after all a leader of a government which has had either an estranged relationship or no relationship at all with the Jewish state for almost thirty years...
...The London Daily Telegraph, three days later, observed that China's leaders perceived Israel as the only Middle East state which vigorously opposed Soviet expansionism...

Vol. 4 • July 1979 • No. 7


 
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