The collapse of Israel’s relationship with China is no longer a quiet undercurrent, it is an open fracture. Hebrew media now admit what Washington tried to obscure: Beijing has turned decisively against the Zionist project, not out of expediency, but because Palestine has become the moral and geopolitical litmus test of our era.
Israeli exports to China have plummeted 28% in the first half of 2025. What Tel Aviv frames as “economic friction” is, in truth, Beijing’s refusal to normalize trade with a regime that wages genocide against Palestinians. Where the United States shields Israel with weapons and vetoes, China has aligned itself with the broader Global South, openly charging that the siege of Gaza violates the most basic norms of sovereignty and human dignity.
The break goes deeper than trade. Cybersecurity, academic exchange, and joint technology ventures are unraveling. Israeli universities, once eager to host Chinese scholars, now find doors closing. Zionist cyber firms, long dependent on dual-use contracts, are now viewed in Beijing as extensions of an occupation apparatus. This isn’t “economic leverage”, it is the steady withdrawal of legitimacy from a colonial project.
The roots of this realignment lie in China’s alliance with Iran. Since the 2021 comprehensive partnership agreement, Beijing has been Tehran’s economic lifeline, purchasing 91% of its oil exports in 2023 alone, worth over $9 billion. By 2025, China joined Iran and Russia in joint naval drills, openly contesting U.S.-Israeli dominance at sea. When Israel’s air defense grid faltered under Iranian strikes, Chinese technical support helped Tehran turn “damaged systems” into functional warnings for the next round.
These moves terrify Tel Aviv because they reveal the architecture of multipolar power. Israel’s doctrine has always depended on monopoly, monopoly over U.S. weapons, over Western finance, over narrative framing in global media. China’s alignment with Iran and its sympathy for the Palestinian cause shatter that monopoly. Beijing does not just sell oil or invest in ports; it provides the political gravity that allows the Islamic world and the wider South to stand upright against the U.S.-Zionist axis.
The fury in Tel Aviv shows the stakes. When MK Boaz Toporovsky visited Taiwan, the Chinese embassy in Tel Aviv issued a blunt warning: keep challenging One China and “you will fall to pieces.” Zionist media outlets, accustomed to dictating terms, now receive Chinese protest letters over even the titles given to Taiwan’s representatives. This is not “posturing.” It is China wielding sovereignty language with the same firmness it extends to Palestine: there is no room for colonial doublespeak.
For decades, Israel presented itself as a gateway to the Mediterranean for Chinese investment. Haifa Port, Ashdod, and light rail projects were hailed as proof that Tel Aviv could sit astride both East and West. Now these very assets are debated inside Israel as “strategic threats.” Beijing doesn’t need to “exploit” this, it simply lets reality speak: an occupying power cannot expect to be both pariah and partner.
The Zionist response is predictable. Hebrew media urge cutting Chinese investments, deepening U.S. alignment, and policing foreign access to infrastructure. But every step back toward Washington is another admission that the myth of Israel as an “independent tech hub” is dead. It is reduced again to what it always was: an outpost of American power, dependent and brittle.
What emerges is a new geometry of legitimacy. Israel makes itself smaller with every massacre in Gaza, every flare over Nablus, every bomb dropped on Rafah. China grows larger each time it declares solidarity with Palestine, each time it underwrites multipolar defense with Iran and Russia, each time it binds its energy lifelines to the Gulf. This is not opportunism, it is the steady alignment of global power with justice.
Beijing understands that Palestine is not only a cause but a mirror: whoever stands with it gains the trust of billions; whoever stands against it exposes themselves as agents of empire. Israel now finds itself isolated, its exports declining, its influence shrinking, while China cements its role as both partner to sovereign nations and voice for the dispossessed.
The war has done what years of diplomacy could not: it forced the world to choose. And in that choice, China has placed itself firmly on the side of liberation, while Israel has collapsed into the open embrace of decline.
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