Shattering the Iron Wall
TRANSLATED BY KEVIN LI
Portrait of martyred Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar by Chinese web artist Dong Tian (東田)
Qiao Collective is pleased to present an original translation of a video essay by Chinese political analyst Jianghuqizi (江湖弃子), exploring in detail the dialectic of colonial counterinsurgency, collaboration, and anti-colonial resistance through martyred Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s semi-autobiographical novel The Thorn and the Carnation and its many parallels with China’s War of Resistance against Japan.
Editor’s Foreword
As the Zionist project continues to show its true, ugly colors, the parallels between the Chinese and Palestinian struggles grow clearer each day. For the Chinese people, Israel’s genocidal offensive in Gaza evokes painful, sobering memories of their own history. In 1931, following the annexation of Taiwan 36 years prior, the Imperial Japanese Army began its formal conquest of Mainland China as it annexed Northeast China and formed Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet state.
Over the next 14 years, over one million Japanese settlers occupied the Northeast. They took control of Chinese farmland and formed segregated communities not dissimilar to the modern-day Israeli settlements. Throughout the Second Sino-Japanese War between 1937 and 1945, Japan made its way through China, conquering vast swaths of land and slaughtering over 20 million Chinese (the second-highest number of total casualties, following the Soviet Union). While Imperial Japan formally surrendered in 1945, China’s path to victory was paved with inner turmoil, ideological struggle, and painful tragedy.
Chinese political commentator content creator Jianghuqizi (江湖弃子) articulates the similarities between the Chinese and Palestinian struggles against occupation in his video essay “Shattering the Iron Wall,” part of a long-running series on Israel and Palestine. Jianghuqizi’s essay begins with a discussion of the infamous traitor Wang Jingwei before a lengthy analysis of Star Wars, Japanese and Israeli occupation strategy, and their Fanonian effects on the colonized psyche. He details the life and work of Yahya Sinwar, drawing from Sinwar’s autobiographical fiction The Thorn and the Carnation. Recalling painful memories of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Jianghuqizi masterfully shows that commonalities between China and Palestine run more than skin deep.
Qiao Collective is proud to transcribe, translate and present Jianghuqizi’s latest work. For a detailed history of Chinese support for the Palestinian struggle, we invite a close reading of our four-part essay, The Gates of the Great Continent: Palestine, China, and the War for Humanity’s Future.
Introduction
On the Double-Ninth Day I climbed the Polaris Pavilion. While reading Yuan Haowen’s ci poem, I was struck by the line “Like a painting: mountains and rivers in my lost fatherland; / In drunkenness I forget about the rise or the fall [of states].” It stirred endless sorrow in my heart. So I composed the following song.
A soaring city tower leans against a gray sky;
Wild geese glide leisurely below.
Across the land the rustle of fallen leaves.
Yellow chrysanthemums hold back the sinking sun.
My palms have pounded all the railings;
My chest weighs heavy with a lump;
An airy landscape stretches before my eyes.
I ask the green mountains, the emerald waters:
How many rises and falls can you stand?
Yuan Haowen, witnessing the fall of the Jin Dynasty, refused to serve the ascendant Yuan Dynasty, living the remainder of his years in hiding, editing Jin Dynasty literature and history. Wang’s line “My palms have pounded the railings” was borrowed from the famous patriotic poet, Xin Qiji, whose grandfather Xin Zan served the Jin Dynasty. Xin Qiji fled southwards to Song Dynasty territory, where he spent his life dreaming of resisting the Jin, and for the Song Dynasty to reclaim the land that was once their own.4
Yuan Haowen and Xin Qiji. One was left a faithful orphan by the fall of the Jin Dynasty. The other dedicated his life to resisting the very same regime during its golden age. Nonetheless, the sands of time are not driven by sheer will alone. Yuan Haowen’s loyalty didn’t save the Jin Dynasty. Xin Qiji’s passionate resistance could not recover lost Song land. History, a never ending cycle of rise and fall, carries the people, who, unbeknownst to themselves, drown in its tides.
The above poem, written by Wang Jingwei, was written as a question to himself. Facing a seemingly indefatigable Imperial Japanese Army, he questions whether he has made the correct choice.
As he looked towards the lush tree-covered mountains surrounding Nanjing mountains, perhaps he would wonder, one day, far away beyond the western seas, if there would be another hero, facing an equally Sisyphean endeavor. A hero using his last breaths to hurl his wooden club towards his loathsome fate.
Not just a wooden club, but a torch. A torch that set our hero aflame, illuminating the road for the Palestinian people.
Under Wang Jingwei’s rule, Nanjing appeared at peace. But peace shrouded a system of slavery. Under Yahya Sinwar, Gaza has been reduced to rubble, a rubble of resistance.
Who is right, and who is wrong? Sinwar gives an answer in his autobiography:5
A minute of living with dignity and pride is better than a thousand years of a miserable life under the boots of the occupation.
The Tarkin Doctrine and the Iron Wall
Why do the Israeli Occupation Forces inflict unnecessary violence on civilians, and why did the Imperial Japanese Army lead a massacre in Nanjing? These are two separate questions united by a single answer, which is that invading forces require military superiority to kill and pacify the resistance.
In Star Wars, Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin stated that state terror is the foundation of the Empire’s rule. Demonstration of oppressive military might, rather than military might itself is the most efficient means of preserving internal stability and the loyal subservience of the surrounding periphery. Known as the Tarkin Doctrine,6 this ideology is the basis by which the Empire constructs the Death Star and destroys Princess Leia’s home planet, Alderaan.
Prior to the founding of Israel, during the 1920s, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the spiritual father of current Israeli ruling party Likud, proposed the Iron Wall Doctrine, a series of ideas nearly identical to the Tarkin Doctrine. The Iron Wall doctrine correctly recognizes that Israel, as an outside colonial entity, would never be able to earn the genuine respect of the Palestinian people. The only way for Israel to exist would thus be an unbreakable, impermeable iron wall.
The practice of occupation, whether it be Japanese expansionism or Zionism, inflicts atrocities upon innocent civilians as a matter of military strategy. It hopes to use an unending barrage of attacks to create an atmosphere of terror, where the people are unwilling to stand up for themselves. The goal is to trick the occupied people into mistakenly believing that they have lost control of their own destiny. The occupied are deceived into seeing their imperialist occupiers as gods that threaten to take their lives at any moment. They are made to believe that the only means of living is to serve these gods.
The practice of occupation, whether it be Japanese expansionism or Zionism, inflicts atrocities upon innocent civilians as a matter of military strategy. It hopes to use an unending barrage of attacks to create an atmosphere of terror, where the people are unwilling to stand up for themselves.
However, this is merely the first step of oppression. Soon, the oppressed come to the sober realization that they are indeed oppressed. But a sizable portion of these people, facing the might of imperialism, lose hope. To combat their hopelessness, they lie to themselves, convincing themselves that there is some good in their occupiers, concluding that there is so called legitimacy in their occupiers’ governance.
The lie is nonetheless temporary. When the occupied come to their senses, they realize that they cannot breach the iron wall, yet simultaneously refuse to accept their fate. Following this realization, they begin to hate themselves and internalize the supremacy of their occupiers.
At the same time, the occupiers may exercise benevolence. For example, Israelis once gave lower class Gazans work permits, allowing them to work in occupied Palestine. And Hamas, in the interest of national sovereignty, had no choice but to destroy these permits. Resistance fighters were trapped between their nation and the struggles of survival, which Sinwar depicts in his autobiography. He writes of a middle-aged man who begged the resistance not to destroy his work permit, saying that he had a family of eight to feed. The resistance fighters intimately understood this reality, and denied his request with tears in their eyes, ripping his permit apart.
Incidents like these caused a handful of Palestinian laborers to sell resistance intelligence to the Israelis. Stories like these run abound. A Shin Bet spy would give an imprisoned Palestinian child a piece of bread and blanket in exchange for intelligence. These supposed acts of kindness coming from the Iron Wall, were designed so that the imprisoned would forget about the wall itself. The Palestinian child, given bread and a blanket such that they would cease to wonder who caused them to go cold and hungry in the first place.
Palestinians grew to hate themselves and turned towards Israel. Simultaneously, the coldhearted oppression created an epidemic of Stockholm Syndrome, such that Israelis could give away a tiny drop of kindness and see an unimaginable amount of intelligence in return.
These two phenomena combined together to create the broad, popular base for Fatah’s surrender. When Israel created the impermeable Iron Wall, Fatah became the executors of Israeli governance. When the Japanese Army demonstrated a seemingly insurmountable, violent offense and military might, Wang Jingwei and his cohort of hanjian chose to surrender.
To this day, the Iron Wall Doctrine has demonstrated the fidelity of its theoretical foundations.
When Israel created the impermeable Iron Wall, Fatah became the executors of Israeli governance. When the Japanese Army demonstrated a seemingly insurmountable, violent offense and military might, Wang Jingwei and his cohort of hanjian chose to surrender.
Betrayal
However, upon reading Sinwar’s autobiography, one realizes that Sinwar is not as vengeful towards the Israelis as expected. In his work, he describes quite a few kind, humane Israeli employers, some of whom would even cross the border to Gaza to attend their Palestinian employees’ weddings.
As for Palestinian traitors, however, Sinwar had much to say and zero mercy. And sadly, under Israel’s Iron Wall, traitors were everywhere. In the first chapter, Sinwar writes of an incident where a Palestinian civilian is singled out for providing intelligence about resistance fighters to Israel. This civilian lamented that all he gave was information on products that the resistance had purchased, not knowing that it would lead to death.
These were, according to Sinwar, the ignorant masses that unknowingly lived off the flesh and blood of their own kin. The Palestinian people had not undergone systematic information security training. They had no idea that seemingly innocent and exchangeable intelligence was in fact, lethal. At the same time, the Israeli security apparatus obtained other intelligence through means of force, torturing their prisoners.
These leaks led the resistance to retaliate against civilians. In his autobiography, Sinwar writes about how all factions of the resistance would treat the informants. Retaliatory measures included capital punishment, flogging, public execution, forced consumption of sand, interrogation through branding, and even live burial.
Sinwar denounces these acts of uncontrolled violence as “grave errors,” criticizing the lack of legal solutions to an increasingly severe informant problem. In other words, under enormous pressure from Israel, the Palestinian resistance weakened, and their reckless, violent treatment of informants deepend the mistrust the civilians had towards the resistance. A rift emerged between resistance forces and civilians. Israel continued their seduction and recruitment of informants, which the Palestinian resistance, trapped in chaos and violence, failed to stop.
This is a paramount problem in a war of resistance. The enemy’s strength allows them to buy out informants at relatively low cost. When informants run rampant, resistance forces cannot trust one another, creating a chain of suspicion. And when resistance forces lack trust among each other, they cannot communicate their wartime strategy, never mind fighting as a united front. This causes power to disperse, which in turn causes the resistance to become less and less effective.
Informants continued to grow in number. And when informants were indiscriminately killed, inevitably, there were civilians who were killed either unintentionally or erroneously. For a resistance that was already in critical condition, the consequences were severe. Sinwar illustrates this in his biography, where the resistance kills a civilian mistakenly believed to be an informant. His family, suffering an unrightable injustice, have no choice but to turn towards Israel.
[Sheikh Ahmed] Yassin, the founder of Hamas, valued Sinwar because Sinwar did not let his hatred of informants affect his judgment. He hated informants with every fiber of his being, but always stressed the importance of creating a security apparatus designed to handle these very situations. He stressed that this apparatus required strict internal standards. In the 1980s, Sinwar founded Hamas’ security agency, Majd. His writings tell us that he was neither a butcher nor a madman, but the opposite. He was a rational fighter for the resistance. Refusing to be blinded by vengeance, he worked tirelessly to find the long path to victory.
A fork in the road
On this long road, the Palestinian people considered giving up. On some level, the Iron Wall Doctrine is scientifically sound. When the Palestinian people face Israel’s insurmountable military strength, there were many voices from within Palestine calling for so-called peace. These voices led to the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords.
Today, many scholars criticize Hamas’ resistance strategy, asserting that Hamas’ violent attack on Israel is what led to the present tragedy. All I can say is, these scholars are either malicious or full-blown idiots. As one of the greatest historical victims of non-violent resistance, somehow there are Chinese people who still believe that non-resistance can be exchanged for peace. When China faced Japanese invasion, the Nanjing government7 would often be led astray by the Japanese, who claimed that they did not seek expansion. During the Marco Polo Bridge incident,8 the same government continued to believe that so long as they fulfilled Japan’s demands, the two sides would be able to enter negotiations and peacefully resolve the issue at hand.
Today, many scholars criticize Hamas’ resistance strategy, asserting that Hamas’ violent attack on Israel is what led to the present tragedy. All I can say is, these scholars are either malicious or full-blown idiots. As one of the greatest historical victims of non-violent resistance, somehow there are Chinese people who still believe that non-resistance can be exchanged for peace.
Sinwar spent nearly 20 years in an Israeli prison. While incarcerated, he self-studied Hebrew and translated books written by Shin Bet officers. This process enabled Sinwar to develop a deep understanding of his enemy. In his autobiography, Sinwar criticizes the Oslo Accords, whose signing Hamas denounced as meaningless. Sinwar described the accords as a “strategic goal,” which provided Israel a means to delay an imminent crisis.
A month following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident (August 25th, 1937), the Communist Party of China stated clearly in “For the Mobilization of all the Nation's Forces for Victory in the War of Resistance"9 that the challenge brought by the Marco Polo Bridge Incident and the occupation of Beiping (Beijing) and Tianjin marked the start of a large-scale Japanese invasion of China. They remarked that the Japanese had already begun to mobilize throughout China. Their so-called “non-expansion” propaganda was simply a smokescreen, obscuring their offensive.
Unfortunately, the imprisoned Sinwar saw much further than the Palestinian people. The existence of the Oslo Accords allowed the transformation of Israel’s gradual annexation of the West Bank from a cold hard invasion to the subtle expansion of its settlements. And among the Palestinians crying for peace, it seems that it was only Sinwar and his organization, Hamas, who foresaw this outcome and unambiguously opposed the Oslo Accords.
In May of 1935, the Japanese China Garrison Army released a statement denouncing the Republic of China-sponsored assassination of Bai Yuhuan, the editor-in-chief of Zhenbao, a Tianjin-based pro-Japanese newspaper. The statement libelously denounced the Chinese Volunteer Army for entering a demilitarized buffer zone in Northeast China defined by the Tanggu Truce.10 Along with the statement, the Japanese Army once again expanded its troop presence in China. The Republic of China government sought damage control, and dispatched He Yingqin11 to negotiate with Yoshijiro Umezu.12 The two signed the He-Umezu Agreement, which guaranteed “the suppression of all anti-Japanese activity in China” and the removal of Chinese troops from the front line. As a result, China effectively lost all sovereignty in Hebei and Chahar13 Provinces, and Chinese people were forbidden from resisting the Japanese.
At the time, the Nanjing Government stated that He Yingqin did not formally sign the agreement, but in 2018, Taiwanese authorities revealed that Chiang Kai-shek had personally directed He Yingqin to accept the terms of the agreement. The documents revealed that Chiang wanted to publicly reframe the withdrawal of troops as a reorientation to destroy the communists in the name of defense. At the same time, knowing that the agreement would be unpopular, Chiang had He Yingqin inform Japanese authorities that Nanjing would acquiesce to Japanese demands, but request that the deal be made verbally, rather than in writing. The Japanese agreed to this request, and to this day, there is no written record of the He-Umezu Agreement.
The contents of this agreement highlights the difficulty faced by the resistance. It shows us that even under such dire straits, people are susceptible to the enemy’s supposed compromises. The Nanjing government continued to accept supposed “peace proposals” offered by the Japanese, demonstrating a willingness to give up its own territory in exchange for an end to the war.
But despite the Republican government’s compromises, the Japanese invaders refused to stop. Instead, the Japanese invaders’ voices grew in strength. In other words, one by one, Nanjing’s concessions fed into Japanese expansionist ambitions.
This is precisely why Hamas under Sinwar’s leadership cannot accept any compromises with Israel. While Israel proposes a softer 1:1 prisoner exchange, Hamas remains steadfast in its demand for Israel to release all Palestinian political prisoners.
The wooden club destroys the Iron Wall
Based on the above, we observe a few points:
Israel is incomparably strong. Israel’s governance over Palestine did not happen overnight. It was not done through reckless violence, but through a systematic, step-by-step oppression of the Palestinian people.
Israel will use any means necessary, including international treaties and so-called “suggestions for peace” to accomplish its goals.
Israel maintains a comprehensive intelligence network inside of Palestine. Under Israel’s oppressive rule, a portion of the Palestinian public’s will to fight is insufficient.
These factors both reflect the Iron Wall, and make up the Iron Wall itself. It exists on the border between Gaza and Israel, splitting Gaza from Israeli-occupied soil. It exists in the militarized zones of the West Bank that split apart Palestinian settlements. It exists in media narratives, which report Israeli benevolence to suppress the strength of the Palestinian anti-colonial resistance. It exists in the heart of the Palestinian people, who lose faith in their own futures.
The Iron Wall, both tangible and intangible.
Yet everything changed when the war broke out in October. Under Sinwar’s command, Hamas commando units crossed the Iron Wall under the cover of rocket fire. In Israel-occupied land, they captured their occupiers. They put Gaza on the world stage, putting on display Israel’s violent bloodthirst for all to see. And the Palestinian people have realized they control their own destinies. What’s interesting is that in his original essay, Jabotinsky warned Israelis that their plan could only work if the Wall was absolutely airtight. As long as there was a sliver of hope, the occupied would forever strive to break free from Zionism.
Despite the martyrdom of Hamas’ leadership and rank-and-file, the cracks in the Iron Wall grow bigger every day. The wooden club wielded by Sinwar has transformed into a great torch and has shattered Jabotinsky’s Iron Wall. Sinwar teaches us that we do not need a Dongfeng missile to win, nor do we need swarms of fourth generation heavy duty fighter jets. Even if all we have left is a wooden club, we can resist our occupiers.
Remember, comrades! As long as you have the will to fight, a wooden club is just as lethal as the Dongfeng missile!
Sinwar teaches us that we do not need a Dongfeng missile to win, nor do we need swarms of fourth generation heavy duty fighter jets. Even if all we have left is a wooden club, we can resist our occupiers.
- 汉奸, or traitor to the Chinese people. Commonly used as a derogatory epithet for Chinese individuals who collaborated with foreign imperialist powers at the expense of the Chinese nation. arrow_upward
- Leader of the Japanese collaborationist regime based in Nanjing from 1940-45, known officially as the “Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China.” His name is synonymous with “quisling” in modern-day China. arrow_upward
- Translation sourced from: Yang Zhiyi. Poetry, History, Memory: Wang Jingwei and China in Dark Times. University of Michigan Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12697845. arrow_upward
- A note on the dynastic Chinese history referenced here: the Song Dynasty (960-1279) lost northern China to the Jurchen-led Jin Dynasty (1115-1234) in a series of wars culminating in the Jin capture of imperial capital Kaifeng in 1127, after which the Song court retreated south of the Yangtze River to present-day Hangzhou. The Mongol Empire conquered the Jin Dynasty in 1234 and subsequently defeated the Southern Song, bringing all of China under the rule of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). arrow_upward
- Al-Sinwar, Yahya. The Thorn and the Carnation (Part I), 2024. arrow_upward
- From the Chinese 塔金主义. English language Star Wars fandom uses the term “Tarkin Doctrine” as a reference to Imperial Communiqué #001044.92v, though other less common terminology include “Tarkinism” and the “Doctrine of Terror” (https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Tarkin_Doctrine/Legends) arrow_upward
- Another term for the Republic of China. arrow_upward
- On July 7th, 1937, at the Marco Polo bridge outside of Beiping (presently known as Beijing), the Japanese army requested to search the Chinese town of Wanping for a missing soldier. The Chinese army refused, and the two sides exchanged fire. This incident is generally regarded as the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War and of World War II in Asia. arrow_upward
- https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_02.htm arrow_upward
- The Tanggu Truce was a ceasefire and unequal treaty signed between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan on May 31, 1933. The truce formally ended the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, which had begun in September 1931. arrow_upward
- At the time, the Acting Chairman of the Peiping National Military Council. arrow_upward
- At the time, commander in chief of the (Japanese) Kwantung Army. arrow_upward
- A former Chinese province whose territory is currently contained within present-day Inner Mongolia. arrow_upward