https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1983529306300338565
The other day I posted that it was intellectually incoherent to simultaneously support the Palestinian cause and Taiwan.
This 
is a perfect illustration of this.
Even post-Gaza, senior Taiwanese leaders - such as Joseph Wu here - have no qualms about referring to Israel (and the US) as "sharing their values" and publicly boasting about "deepening ties."
During the war, Taiwan was also probably one of the places in the world with the strongest public support for Israel, with a poll by the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation finding that Israeli supporters outnumbered those supporting Palestinians by over two to one (globaltaiwan.org/2023/11/assess), far higher than even among US republicans (pewresearch.org/politics/2025/), which is quite a feat!
My friend , who writes for Middle East Eye, wrote a good article last year on Taiwanese-Israeli relations and explained some details behind the close ties: middleeasteye.net/news/israel-ta In particular he reminds the famous Mao quote: "Israel and Taiwan are bases of operation for imperialism in Asia. They created Israel for the Arabs and Taiwan for us. They both have the same objective."
Which goes to show this is not a new thing: for more than half a century both have been seen as sharing the same fundamental DNA as US-backed outposts designed to advance Western interests.
This all goes to show that in the mainland-Taiwan cross-strait confrontation, if there is an Israel equivalent it isn't the mainland, but very much Taiwan: not only do Taiwanese leaders proudly revendicate this ("we're the same, we share the same values") but the general population identifies as such too.
Everyone is of course free to support whatever cause they wish but if you do support Palestinians you should at least grapple with the contradiction: why support the Palestinian struggle against a US client state while defending another who proudly proclaims its alignment with Israel and serves parallel functions?
A common argument is "self-determination" but again here Taiwan separatists are much closer in spirit with Zionists than they are with Palestinians (which is why they feel closer to one than the other): they both rely on the logic that a minority can claim exclusive sovereignty over territory through the military guarantee of an external patron, regardless of regional integration or the will of the broader population.
They negate the self-determination of the much larger population on the other side. Just as Israel's "self-determination" requires the permanent suppression of millions of Palestinians and of the broader population in the entire region, Taiwan separatism requires suppressing 1.4 billion Chinese people - the immense majority of whom see Taiwan as part of China and for whom national reunification remains unfinished business from the century of humiliation and the civil war.
Moreover, like Israel, Taiwan separatists reject any compromise. Palestinians have repeatedly accepted two-state solutions - it's Israel that has rejected them. Similarly, the mainland has offered One Country, Two Systems, which Taiwan separatists reject outright. In both cases, they stick to maximalist positions backed by American military might, while gaslighting about the other side being the intransigent ones.
Self-determination isn't supposed to mean that a small minority, backed by the world's dominant military power, can impose indefinite partition on a civilization against the wishes of the vast majority while serving as a military outpost against them. That's not self-determination, that's imperial divide-and-rule.
is a perfect illustration of this.
Even post-Gaza, senior Taiwanese leaders - such as Joseph Wu here - have no qualms about referring to Israel (and the US) as "sharing their values" and publicly boasting about "deepening ties."
During the war, Taiwan was also probably one of the places in the world with the strongest public support for Israel, with a poll by the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation finding that Israeli supporters outnumbered those supporting Palestinians by over two to one (globaltaiwan.org/2023/11/assess), far higher than even among US republicans (pewresearch.org/politics/2025/), which is quite a feat!
My friend , who writes for Middle East Eye, wrote a good article last year on Taiwanese-Israeli relations and explained some details behind the close ties: middleeasteye.net/news/israel-ta In particular he reminds the famous Mao quote: "Israel and Taiwan are bases of operation for imperialism in Asia. They created Israel for the Arabs and Taiwan for us. They both have the same objective."
Which goes to show this is not a new thing: for more than half a century both have been seen as sharing the same fundamental DNA as US-backed outposts designed to advance Western interests.
This all goes to show that in the mainland-Taiwan cross-strait confrontation, if there is an Israel equivalent it isn't the mainland, but very much Taiwan: not only do Taiwanese leaders proudly revendicate this ("we're the same, we share the same values") but the general population identifies as such too.
Everyone is of course free to support whatever cause they wish but if you do support Palestinians you should at least grapple with the contradiction: why support the Palestinian struggle against a US client state while defending another who proudly proclaims its alignment with Israel and serves parallel functions?
A common argument is "self-determination" but again here Taiwan separatists are much closer in spirit with Zionists than they are with Palestinians (which is why they feel closer to one than the other): they both rely on the logic that a minority can claim exclusive sovereignty over territory through the military guarantee of an external patron, regardless of regional integration or the will of the broader population.
They negate the self-determination of the much larger population on the other side. Just as Israel's "self-determination" requires the permanent suppression of millions of Palestinians and of the broader population in the entire region, Taiwan separatism requires suppressing 1.4 billion Chinese people - the immense majority of whom see Taiwan as part of China and for whom national reunification remains unfinished business from the century of humiliation and the civil war.
Moreover, like Israel, Taiwan separatists reject any compromise. Palestinians have repeatedly accepted two-state solutions - it's Israel that has rejected them. Similarly, the mainland has offered One Country, Two Systems, which Taiwan separatists reject outright. In both cases, they stick to maximalist positions backed by American military might, while gaslighting about the other side being the intransigent ones.
Self-determination isn't supposed to mean that a small minority, backed by the world's dominant military power, can impose indefinite partition on a civilization against the wishes of the vast majority while serving as a military outpost against them. That's not self-determination, that's imperial divide-and-rule.
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