A top Chinese scholar was seen confronting an Israeli official about the military onslaught on Gaza in a video that has now gone viral on social media.
Yan Xuetong, the dean of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University, clashed with Elad Shoshan, the military attaché of the Israeli embassy in Beijing, at the annual Xiangshan forum in Beijing on Wednesday.
On the sidelines of the annual defence forum, Mr Yan confronted the military representative, saying that Israel should have only shot "the terrorists".
"Not the children! Not the women! When you [shot] the women and the children, you lost the legitimacy to carry out any actions for that reason," the scholar said in the purported video viral on Chinese social media Weibo and X.
Mr Yan then used a bank robbery as an analogy and asked Mr Shoshan if police officers should resort to killing the hostages to get to the criminals.
The UN Human Rights Council this week concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, issuing a report that called on the international community to end it and take steps to punish those responsible for it.
Despite the findings, the Israeli military has escalated its ground offensive in Gaza City, forcing more than a quarter of a million Palestinians to flee the enclave. The international community and global organisations have called on the Israeli military to abandon its plans to seize the city, warning that such an assault could further worsen an already dire humanitarian crisis.
Mr Shoshan told the Chinese scholar during the exchange that Israel does "all that we can, not to hurt the citizens".
In reply to statement from🇮🇱#Israeli military staff that if 🇵🇸#Hamas releases the hostages, give up arms, then 🇮🇱#Israel will agree to 2 state solution, 🇨🇳Prof. Yan Xuetong responded, 'This type of propaganda no one believe it, except few Israelis.'
— Shen Shiwei 沈诗伟 (@shen_shiwei) September 18, 2025
"You killed more than 70,000… pic.twitter.com/VnWU4664rK
Mr Yan shot back, accusing Israel of killing "more than 70,000 civilians".
"The fact is not decided by you... the facts [are] decided by the international community. It's not decided by your government. Your government has no legitimacy [or] the right to decide or defend what is fact," he added.
He suggested that Israel should go to the UN and agree to the two-state solution to establish a state of Palestine. "Once you have two states, you can work with the Palestinians together to fight against the terrorists. If you do not work with the Palestinians together, you can never win the war over terrorists," the scholar said.
Mr Shoshan rejected the allegations, adding that war will end when Hamas releases the Israeli hostages and give up its weapons. Mr Yan responded saying that there has been "too much" of such "propaganda" and "no one believes it, except for a few Israelis".
Israel's two-year-long offensive in Gaza has killed more than 65,000, according to the health authorities in the Hamas-run Strip.
Last week, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to support a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and urged Israel to commit to a Palestinian state.
The resolution involved the establishment of a Palestinian State that is viable and sovereign, the disarmament of Hamas and its exclusion from governance in Gaza, as well as normalisation between Israel and Arab countries in the wake of Israel's attack on Qatar.
Previously, China's top diplomat Wang Yi noted that Gaza belonged to the Palestinian people. "It is an inseparable part of the Palestinian territory. Changing its status by forceful means will not bring about peace, but only new chaos," Mr Wang said.
China on Thursday condemned prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s accusation that Beijing was helping orchestrate a “political blockade” against Israel.
“China is shocked by the remarks of the Israeli leader,” the Chinese embassy in Israel said, calling the claim groundless, which "undermines China-Israel relations, and is something that China is deeply concerned about and firmly opposed to".
Speaking to a large delegation of US officials earlier this week, Mr Netanyahu accused China and Qatar of “organising an attack on Israel… [through] the social media of the Western world and the United States.”
He told i24News: "There is now an attempt to impose a blockade on Israel by various entities and countries, led by Qatar. First of all, a media blockade funded with enormous sums of money, both from Qatar and from other countries such as China."
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