Analysis: Taiwan's Relationship With Israel

While there have been protests against Israel's war on Gaza in Taiwan, the government has been getting closer to the country.

Transcript

00:00 Could you tell us about Taiwan's relationship with Israel and why the two countries may be growing closer at the moment?

00:07 Taiwan

00:09 sees Israel as a sister democracy, which is fighting a hostile environment and

00:15 the fact that Taiwan sees Israel as a role model in

00:19 in terms of civil resilience, in terms of military capacities, in terms of

00:27 relations with the US. Here you could connect it also to the issue of

00:32 support for like-minded countries which represent democratic and liberal values

00:39 in comparison to the Palestinians and not necessarily just about

00:45 Hamas and the fact that we are talking about opposing

00:50 views and values and norms. The fact that the Palestinians are

00:57 for the most part aligning themselves publicly

01:00 with the Chinese intention of

01:03 unifying

01:06 with Taiwan. And how does Israel view Taiwan and China?

01:10 I think that nowadays we could see

01:14 interesting development. It's still very very slow and low-key, but it seems that

01:21 Israel is

01:24 considering its position vis-a-vis China and

01:26 it started even before that, before October 7, during the Trump administration and then with Biden's

01:32 administration, with the immense pressure on

01:35 the Israelis to detach from a Chinese investment and

01:41 Taiwan's trying to exploit this fact to get closer to Israel and

01:48 certainly after October 7 with the Chinese

01:52 response and

01:54 complete support for the Palestinians and for Hamas and

01:57 very very, I would say even extreme criticism to the verge of anti-semitism

02:04 towards Israel. Here in Taiwan we've seen public rallies in support of Israel

02:09 but also in support of Palestine and condemning some of Israel's actions in Gaza. Do you think the

02:17 Taiwan-Israel relationship may change?

02:20 I don't think that we will see any change

02:24 regardless if we have

02:26 demonstrations or not in Taiwan. The Taiwanese were one of the, Taiwan was one of the first countries

02:34 to support Israel, to condemn the terror attack and if we look at the Taiwanese

02:40 statements and also actions, we didn't see any change whatsoever in the last seven months

02:46 and I don't think that it's going to change anytime soon.

02:49 [BLANK_AUDIO]