By Steven Jiang, Opinions Editor

Shrouded in the shadows of the mountain crags across China’s western frontier, the government is secretly waging a war against its own people. Drab concrete buildings peek out from behind barbed wire fences as sepia-colored dust swirls through the desert air. These “re-education centers” are filled with Uyghur men and women, members of an ethnic minority in the volatile Xinjiang Province. Throughout the past decade, millions of Uyghurs and Turks have been seized from their families and detained without due process. They have endured atrocities including forced sterilizations, forced labor, torture, and destruction of cultural sites. The Chinese government claims that Sinicization of the Uyghurs is a national security measure to eradicate known separatists and terrorists in the region. 

Yet the erasure of Uyghur heritage and indeed, their population, suggests ulterior motives that closely resemble ethnic cleansing. Xinjiang today remains a heavily militarized police state with mass surveillance and ubiquitous checkpoints. Foreign journalists are only granted access to government-approved locations, allowing for the Chinese government to spout propaganda about “social harmony.” 

Western media outlets began reporting extensively on this issue starting in 2019 and have increased coverage since 2021. The resulting international outcry was dramatic and certainly justified. Corporations like Uniqlo rushed to distance themselves from Xinjiang cotton, the production of which has been linked to labor camps. 51 United Nations member states signed a resolution condemning China’s treatment of the Uyghur people as a “genocide.” Among the signatories was Israel. 

The state of Israel has been embroiled in its own “war on terror” over the past two years against Hamas militants in Palestine. To be unequivocally clear, Hamas is a terrorist organization that raped, kidnapped and killed over 1,200 innocent civilians in Israel on October 7, 2023. They captured 251 hostages, 50 of which still remain as of August 2025. In response, Israel has indiscriminately laid siege to the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank, killing over 62,000 people, a disproportionate number of which have been women and children. Whether or not Israel’s actions constitute a “genocide” is a more nuanced, semantic debate. The reality is that in any war, innocent civilians will be caught in the crossfire. Yet the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has routinely killed journalists, aid workers and civilians receiving aid at unprecedented levels. On numerous occasions, they ordered civilians to evacuate into designated safe zones and then proceeded to attack them. They have carpet bombed refugee camps, schools and hospitals, retroactively justifying these war crimes by claiming Hamas activity.

 Yes, Hamas continues to hold hostages and maintains an underground tunnel network in Gaza. But Israeli leaders have seized on this fact to blur the line between combatants and civilians. For instance, when the IDF raided and destroyed Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical center, they justified the atrocity with scant evidence that Hamas was using it as a command center. They have adopted an unflinching “us vs. them” worldview, refusing to take responsibility for the widespread evidence of IDF war crimes. They solely blame Hamas for stealing humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip, despite no evidence of widespread looting, while the Israeli military prevents trucks full of aid from entering. And yet Netanyahu has the audacity to proclaim the IDF as the “most moral army in the world” and insinuates without evidence that almost half of those killed are Hamas terrorists. Beyond military action, the government has also actively promoted the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank, blatantly violating international law. These developments reflect a pattern of targeted action rather than gross negligence and of willful ethnic cleansing beyond defeating Hamas and freeing the hostages. Despite this, the Israeli government paints virtually all criticism of its actions as intrinsically antisemitic or pro-terrorism.

In reality, few in mainstream society are calling for the eradication of the Israeli state, which was established in the wake of the Holocaust. But, some might argue, why should we judge the Israeli government by its far-right extremities? Should we not also judge the international community by those advocating for death to all Jewish people?

The key difference lies in who has power. Outside of the Middle East, few major world leaders support Hamas’ stated aim of destroying Israel. However, we have seen the worst of Israeli ultra-nationalism manifest in the government’s wartime decisions. Take Itamar Ben-Gvir, the National Security Minister who was formerly convicted of incitement to racism as a member of a Jewish supremacy terrorist group. That would be akin to a KKK member holding office in President Trump’s cabinet. Ben-Gvir has argued that “there is no reason for a gram of food or aid to enter Gaza,” among many other atrocious statements against Palestinians. Not to be outdone, Ben-Gvir’s colleague, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, has openly called for Israeli expansion until “there is nothing to recognize and no one to recognize” in Palestine. Their rhetoric closely resembles that of Chinese officials in Xinjiang, particularly in their equivocation of terrorists with the entire civilian population. According to leaked government documents, former Party Secretary Chen Quanguo ordered police to “round up everyone that should be rounded up.” Another official said, “Freedom is only possible when this ‘virus’ in [the Uyghur population’s] thinking is eradicated and they are in good health. We must be as harsh as them and show absolutely no mercy.”

 But do Ben-Gvir and Smotrich represent the views of Israeli and Jewish people as a whole? This quandary is difficult to ascertain, but it is irrelevant because whether or not they enjoy popular support, the reality remains the same. War crimes are being committed in Palestine largely because their faction is in power. 

Here lies the contradiction: the Israeli government accuses Hamas of oppressing their people and using civilians as “shields,” which while partially true, still imposes collective punishment upon the Palestinians. Neither Chinese citizens nor Palestinians have power to change their respective authoritarian regimes. I certainly do not blame the Chinese people as a whole for the actions of their government. Freedom of speech has always been strictly curtailed in the People’s Republic of China, and Xi Jinping’s leadership has ushered in a new era of high-tech mass surveillance and crackdowns on dissent. Propaganda asserts that all allegations of human rights violations are defamatory, mainstream media hoaxes. Thus, even if ordinary citizens knew of the human rights violations in Xinjiang, they would be powerless to stop the atrocities. Like in Xinjiang, Israel has used counterterrorism as an often dubious pretext for its far-reaching actions. Unlike China’s clandestine and closed-off operations, the world has seen harrowing photographs of cities reduced to rubble and children starving to death.

This is not to say that criticizing one’s own government is easy, especially for Israeli and Jewish people across the world. Objectively, they are among the most persecuted groups throughout human history, from their demonization by the Catholic Church, to their perpetual scapegoating for social calamities, to the Nazi Holocaust. This legacy of suffering carries generational trauma and is ingrained into the Jewish identity itself. And yes, there are certainly protesters in the streets who hold repulsive views against Jews. Antisemitism is pervasive in both the far-left and far-right of the American political spectrum. 

But over the past few months, the destruction of Gaza has also united Americans across party lines. A CNN poll from July 2025 found that merely 23% of Americans fully support Israel’s war in Gaza, and politicians on both sides of the aisle have called for divestment from the Israeli war machine. Even President Trump, a stalwart defender of Netanyahu, recently admitted the indisputable fact that there is an urgent humanitarian crisis in Gaza.  

 Jewish people do not have to choose between supporting the existence of the Jewish state of Israel and recognizing the basic sanctity of human life. Simply put, there is no just rationalization for systematically bombing and starving a civilian population. Those who resolutely believe that their government can do no wrong are willfully choosing a false reality. Case in point: even among the hostages’ families in Israel, many believe that the government’s continued incursion into Palestine is not just about freeing the hostages anymore. Furthermore, doubling down on the indefensible only adds fuel to the despicable fire of antisemitism. When Jewish-Americans choose to actively support the Israeli government’s actions, they willingly surrender themselves to the predictable backlash. 

It is incumbent upon the Jewish people, and more broadly, all who value democracy and human rights, to condemn the Israeli government’s inhumane campaign against Palestine. If they claim to be a democracy, then they must bear the responsibility of holding their leaders accountable. If they cling onto the ideals and moral values associated with said democracy, then they must prove that their government’s actions are any better than those of oppressive dictatorships in China and Palestine. Ultimately, if the free people of the world will not speak out, who will?