By Orange Wang,Yuanyue Dang

Copyright scmp

A heated exchange between a prominent Chinese international relations scholar and an Israeli military representative about the war in Gaza has gone viral on social media.
The fierce exchange happened on the sidelines of the annual Xiangshan forum in Beijing on Wednesday.
Yan Xuetong, dean of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University, was shown confronting Elad Shoshan, the military attaché with the Israeli embassy in Beijing, who claimed that the reason for the conflict was that “the terror organisation Hamas is still holding our hostages”.
“Your military people should [have shot] the terrorists. Not the children! Not the women! When [you] shot the women and the children, you lost the legitimacy to carry out any actions [for] that reason,” Yan said in the video.
The professor used a bank robbery as an analogy, asking Shoshan if the police should shoot bank employees and customers to get to the criminals.
Shoshan, who is with the Israeli delegation to the security forum, denied Yan’s claims that more than 70,000 civilians were killed by Israel in the war in Gaza. “We really do all that we can not to hurt the citizens,” he said, according to the clip.
“The fact is not decided by you. The fact is decided by the international community,” Yan told the Israeli delegate.

On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused China of leading a media blockade against the mainly Jewish state, drawing a strong backlash from Beijing, which said it was “shocked” by the “completely unfounded” rhetoric.
Addressing a bipartisan delegation of 250 US state lawmakers in Jerusalem on Monday, Netanyahu said that “a few states” were engaging in an online “siege” of Israel.
“One is China, and the other is Qatar,” the Israeli leader said. “They are organising an attack on Israel, legitimacy, in the social media of the Western world and the United States.”
He added that Israel would have to counter the campaign with its own efforts.
“China is shocked by the remarks made by the Israeli leader,” the Chinese embassy in Israel said in a statement on social media on Wednesday.
“Those claims are completely unfounded and damage China-Israel relations. China is highly concerned about them and firmly opposed to them,” the embassy said.
The embassy said Israel’s actions were like “turning in desperation to any doctor while gravely ill” by blaming a handful of social media platforms for criticism towards the country and then “pointing fingers at China”.
“The Israeli side … has targeted the wrong party and prescribed the wrong remedy,” the embassy added.
The diplomatic row marked the latest example of strained ties between China and Israel since the Gaza war began in October 2023 after the Hamas attack on Israel.
Beijing has condemned Israel’s military actions and expressed its support for the Palestinian cause and a two-state solution – something Netanyahu has rejected.
China has maintained close economic ties with Israel, and Israel is among the few developed economies that have taken part in Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, a transcontinental infrastructure strategy.
By 2023, China had become Israel’s second-largest global trading partner and its largest source of goods imports, according to data from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce.
In US dollar terms, China’s purchases from Israel grew 100.1 per cent from a year ago during the first eight months of 2025, while Chinese exports to the Middle Eastern nation rose 19.3 per cent, according to data from Chinese customs.
China and Israel have signalled their willingness to revive cooperation since Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a meeting with his Israeli counterpart, Gideon Saar, in February on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, the highest-level direct talks between the two sides since the start of the Gaza war.
At a reception in Tel Aviv last Wednesday, Beijing’s top envoy to Israel, Xiao Junzheng, said China was ready to work with Israel to promote “the steady development” of the bilateral relationship.
Still, just one day later, during a meeting of the United Nations, China “strongly condemned” Israel’s September 9 air strike on Doha, the capital of Qatar, which Netanyahu said was a “justified” action targeting Hamas officials there.
“Such an act of bad faith, irresponsibility and deliberate sabotage of the negotiations is indeed despicable,” said Fu Cong, China’s top representative to the UN, last Thursday.
The Qatari embassy in Beijing then took to its official channel on the Chinese social media platform Weibo to thank China for its “voice of justice” on Friday, three days before Netanyahu levelled his accusations against both countries.
During an interview with Israeli television channel i24News on Monday, Netanyahu said the efforts to isolate Israel globally had not succeeded since “the US is with us, as are many other countries”.
In a veiled swipe at Washington, Fu said that the Israeli strike on Doha was “closely related to the long-standing differing positions of some non-regional countries”.
On Tuesday, a UN commission of inquiry concluded that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. On the same day, the Israeli military launched a ground offensive and carried out large-scale air strikes on Gaza City.
“We urge Israel to listen to the strong concerns voiced by the international community, stop its military operations in Gaza at once, realise a full and lasting ceasefire as soon as possible and avoid an even larger humanitarian crisis,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on Wednesday.
The Chinese embassy in Israel repeated the rhetoric in its castigation of Netanyahu.
An early ceasefire would facilitate the safe return of Israeli hostages, the embassy said, adding that there were also “voices of reflection” within Israel to call for a sustainable plan for peace.
“Israel’s legitimate security concerns should be respected. And the Palestinian people’s right to survival, statehood and development also should be materialised.”
It called on Israel to adopt “political wisdom and creative diplomacy” rather than “simply military operations and endless bombardment” to resolve its current plight.
“China sincerely hopes for the early realisation of peaceful coexistence among countries in the region … and is willing to work with the international community constructively to ease regional tensions,” it added.