The Chinese embassy in Japan deleted a tweet depicting the United States as the Grim Reaper with a Star of David scythe.
Washington Examiner reporter Jerry Dunleavy caught a screenshot of the tweet, which contained a cartoon showing the Grim Reaper going door-to-door to various Arab countries. The Grim Reaper is donned in American flag paraphernalia while holding an Israeli flag scythe drenched in blood.
The Chinese Communist Party's embassy in Japan tweeted and then deleted this cartoon of the United States depicted as the Grim Reaper going door-to-door in various countries wielding a blood-soaked Israeli flag scythe. pic.twitter.com/YGrmv4SImb
— Jerry Christmas 🎅🏼🎄 (@JerryDunleavy) April 30, 2021
The South China Morning Post reported that the tweet had the following caption in Japanese: “If the United States brought ‘democracy’, it would be like this.” The Post noted that the tweet was deleted after various Japanese Twitter users accused China of hypocrisy, although none of them noticed the “classic anti-Semitic tropes with the inclusion of the Star of David on the Grim Reaper’s scythe,” according to the Post.
“There are no accidental tweets by senior Chinese diplomats,” Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action Agenda Rabbi Abraham Cooper said in a statement to the Journal. “Classic ugly attack on [the] US and Israel. The true grim reaper is [the] Chinese communist regime and its crimes against its own citizens. Insulting and frightening that Beijing deploys anti-Semitic imagery.”
Cooper expanded on his thoughts in an interview with the Journal, stating that the image was akin to the imagery that the Soviet Union promulgated during the Cold War to demonize Israel with “classic antisemitic images,” which included “making allegations that the Israelis were like the new Nazis. Sound familiar?” “The implication of what the Grim Reaper stands for, that is a horrific statement and to be deployed by someone carrying the name of an embassy of China in a democracy… that guy should be fired and sent back to Beijing.”
He added that the Wiesenthal Center hopes that the tweeted image doesn’t mean “that China is going to start dabbling with antisemitism for whatever political or geopolitical reasons there might be.”
Liora Rez, director of Stop Antisemitism, similarly said in a statement to the Journal, “We are not surprised to see a Chinese Government Twitter account espouse antisemitism while it simultaneously is operating modern day concentration camps with their Muslim minority citizens.”
Table senior writer Yair Rosenberg tweeted, “Israel is a tiny country the size of New Jersey but you’d never know it from how many people are obsessed with it and absolutely certain it is responsible for everything terrible in the world.”
https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/1388186743057395714?s=20
Former New York Democratic Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who also heads the Americans Against Antisemitism watchdog, also tweeted, “China has unsurprisingly publicly joined the side of Jew-haters.”
So the @ChnEmbassy_jp decided to randomly post this cartoon that depicts America as the grim reaper and Israel as its scythe used to visit death upon the Middle East.
Then they deleted it.
Conclusion? China has unsurprisingly publicly joined the side of Jew-haters. pic.twitter.com/IuSLrG9Kzc
— Dov Hikind (@HikindDov) April 30, 2021
