What Communist China’s Engineers Were Doing in Hamas’s Gaza Tunnels

Plus, Harvard task force urges less reliance on Jewish donors, more help for anti-Israel students

The Israel Defense Forces captured two Chinese Communist engineers inside Hamas’s Gaza tunnel network, says Guermantes Lailari, a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force who is now based in Taiwan.

Lailari made the claim in a May 28, 2024, webinar of the Committee on the Present Danger: China.

“There were two PLA engineers that they found in the tunnels. And China rapidly tried to put pressure on Israel to return them and even try to get the Russians to put some pressure on Israel to return these two guys. And they went back to China,” Lailari said in the webinar. “I don't think they were interrogated. I don't know for sure. But why are there two PLA tunnel engineers in Gaza? To me, that's very suspect….we can suspect that that there was some involvement of China in helping Hamas design these tunnels that went on for miles and miles and were very sophisticated.”

The claim attracted some curiosity last year from venture capitalist and Palantir founder Joe Lonsdale, who posted on X, “Is this true that CCP helped Hamas build its tunnel network?” He referenced this dispatch.

It also was mentioned in a May 19, 2024 dispatch from New Delhi in the Sunday Guardian: “That both Chinese tunnel engineers found in one of Gaza’s tunnels belonged to China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) gives reasons to suspect the PRC and the technical expertise that the PRC—the PLA in particular—provided in building the tunnels, says Lailari.” 

It was mentioned again in a June 17, 2024, piece in Newsweek that I saw this morning via a newsletter from the Paul E. Singer Foundation: “Lailari also told me that two tunnel engineers from China's People's Liberation Army were discovered by the IDF, meaning that China helped Hamas significantly in its construction of the massive tunnel networks under the Gaza Strip. (The engineers were returned to China after pressure on Israel.)”

Lonsdale’s curiosity on this one is shared by me. It seems clear enough, though, that plenty of people don’t want to pull on the thread. It might run against the whole Biden-Blinken approach of trying to de-escalate the Middle East war rather than permit Israel to win it. The Biden administration often barely seems to want to acknowledge that Hamas and Hezbollah are both proxies of Iran, let alone expand the conflict to encompass not only Tehran but also Beijing. One can understand the impulse—the Israel-Hamas war is deadly and destructive enough, why widen it?—yet a fuller understanding of the enemy and its sources of support might improve the chances of a victory.

I have no independent knowledge of how credible is the claim about People’s Liberation Army engineers in Gaza’s tunnels, though I’m doing what I can to try to check it out. Lailari is known as eccentric but not a fabulist. Communist China represses Muslims in Xinjiang, and it also imports a lot of petroleum from Iran and generally likes to make trouble for America and American allies. If the story turns out to be true, it’s one more piece of evidence that the U.S. can’t solve the China threat merely by imposing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles or by reshoring the surgical glove supply chain, but will need a more forward strategy. 

Jet Ski guy: If America is looking for courageous leaders for the project of “help free China from Communist Party domination so it poses less of a threat,” it could do plenty worse than reaching out to Kwon Pyong. That’s the dissident who escaped from China via a 200-mile journey on a Jet Ski—actually, a Yamaha WaveRunner. 

The New York Times’s John Yoon has a wonderful interview with and profile of Kwon:

He said he wore a black life jacket and motorcycle helmet for the journey, where he crashed into 10-foot waves and dodged floating rice wine bottles. As his skin burned from the summer sun, he fell into the sea twice, losing his sunglasses….He first drew the ire of the Chinese authorities when he began criticizing the Communist Party online. …He is traveling to the United States on a visa for visitors….An immigration law specialist said that while a case for seeking asylum in the United States appeared to be strong, a decision could take years. 

The Times editors who decided not to place on the front page Yoon’s story about Kwon Pyong are guilty of journalistic malpractice, but it’s a heck of a tale no matter where in the paper it appears. It’s a reminder that the desire for freedom and democracy is universal, not limited to “the West.” It seems like a great opportunity for the U.S. government to expedite permanent resident status for this particular immigrant. It would be a pointed reminder to the world that America’s big “problem” is too many people wanting to come here, while Communist China’s problem is preventing people from leaving who want to escape. The freedom-oriented charities—National Review Institute, Manhattan Institute, Hudson Institute, American Enterprise Institute, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Commentary, and so on—should be competing for the chance to give Kwon Pyong a medal and a standing ovation at their next dinner with donors.

Harvard’s task forces: Harvard should reduce its reliance on Jewish and pro-Israel donors and do more to help students hide their anti-Israel activities from potential future employers, a Harvard faculty task force is advising.

One of interim Harvard president Alan Garber’s first moves was to name a pair of task forces, one on anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias and one on antisemitism. The two task forces released their preliminary recommendations today.

The Presidential Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim and Anti-Arab Bias issued 22 suggestions. At least one, grouped under the heading of “transparency and trust,” seems aimed at assuring that the university doesn’t depend on donors such as Bill Ackman, Len Blavatnik, Les Wexner, Idan Ofer, and Ken Griffin, who publicly paused giving or cut ties to Harvard out of dismay at the university’s response to the October 7 attack on Israel. “We also encourage the University’s and the Schools’ alumni and development offices to expand current engagement efforts by striving to augment their networks to fully reflect and represent the diversity of our students, staff, and faculty,” the report says.

Another suggestion says that Harvard should “compile and publicize a comprehensive set of resources for those affected by or at risk of doxxing. This should include expert cybersecurity advice, legal counsel, and services like DeleteMe.” “Doxxing” is the term that anti-Israel students and faculty use to describe being held publicly accountable for their activities.

Garber issued a letter declaring himself “profoundly grateful” for the recommendations and promising, “we will commence detailed review and implementation of the shorter-term, recommendations over the summer.”

Alexander “Shabbos” Kestenbaum, a lead plaintiff in one of the three federal civil cases Harvard faces for its mishandling of antisemitism, said on social media that he found the antisemitism task force’s recommendations “infuriating.” He said it does “NOTHING to combat the pervasive and systematic nature of antisemitism at Havard.” Among the13 recommendations was increased availability of kosher food, a development that was reported here last night, in advance of the release of the recommendations. That was in the works already outside the work of the antisemitism task force.

Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, the Jackie and Omri Dahan Harvard Chabad Jewish Chaplain and the founder and president of Harvard Chabad Center for Jewish Life, issued a characteristically wise and thoughtful statement that deserves to be read in its entirety. “There are numerous Harvard academic centers that essentially function as Hamas or Palestinian embassies. They include among others: the FBX Center for Health and Human Rights, The Center for Middle East Studies, the Harvard Divinity School almost in its entirety, but the Religion in Public Life Program actually in its entirety, large swaths of the School of Public Health, and the Carr Center for Human Rights at HKS. it’s stunning that there is no call for some of these programs and centers to be shut down or rebuilt in its entirety,” Zarchi said. He said grouping the antisemitism task force together with one on anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias is “a failure to understand the severity of what is happening at Harvard and in the world at this moment.” 

“That after the greatest massacre and genocidal intent and attempt against the Jewish people since the Holocaust continues to excused and supported at Harvard - most recently at Commencement, and after John Harvard sitting in a keffiyeh for weeks, that there’s an inability to focus on antisemitism without making false equivalencies, does not engender confidence,” Zarchi said.

As an example of how demeaning the antisemitism task force’s recommendations are, consider that one of them says, “The University should explore allowing newly hired staff to ‘pull forward’ yet-unearned vacation or personal leave days as necessary for religious observance, to assist observant Jewish new hires who lack the vacation time they need to blend their religious observance with their new role at Harvard University.” Harvard shuts down entirely between Christmas and New Years and gives off Juneteenth and Martin Luther King Jr. Day. But if someone wants to observe a Jewish holiday they have to give up vacation time for it? The gentiles get their vacation time plus the Christian holidays, while the Jews are supposed to be grateful that Harvard might “explore” letting them use their vacation time for the Jewish holidays? This is a recommendation to counter antisemitism? It looks to me like an example of antisemitism, that is, a double standard in which Jews are held to different standards than other employees. 

People will reply that some of these days I mention are federal holidays, so Harvard is just applying a federal holiday standard rather than privileging Christian or Black employees over Jewish ones. The issue isn’t Harvard, it’s America, the reply goes. Maybe. But in a six page report with interim recommendations supposedly geared at combating antisemitism, why focus at all on this incremental human resources smallball rather than the big issue? The big issue is that a lot of Harvard faculty, including a co-chairman of the antisemitism task force, Derek Penslar (in the infamous “elephant in the room” letter), have been falsely accusing Israel of apartheid and trying to reduce the flow of American arms to Israel. When the Harvard antisemitism task force itself is referring to Israel as “Israel/Palestine,” you know you’re in trouble. The report does say that, “We have heard disturbing reports that faculty members and teaching fellows discriminate against or harass students because they are Israeli or have pro-Israel views.” But it doesn’t name the faculty or investigate or substantiate the reports.

It sure looks like Raffaella Sadun made the right move in resigning as a co-chair of this task force. It nets out as good news for Dartmouth, Brown, Yale, Emory, the University of Chicago, Yeshiva University, and other campuses that capable Jewish students are increasingly choosing instead of Harvard.

Nate Silver on 2024:

Nate Silver

, who is hoping Biden wins the presidential election, writes that Trump has the advantage: 

the reasons that Trump would win have gradually become somewhat more compelling than the reasons for Biden. Emphasis on gradually and somewhat. Biden clearly could win in November. He won the same matchup four years ago. Not only would he be within a normal-sized polling error of Trump if the election were held today, but there are still four-and-a-half-months to go.

Still, the items on the “reasons to think Trump might win” list have proven to be more robust. There’s Biden’s age, which voters have extremely persistent concerns about. There’s the very high inflation of mid-2021 through mid-2023 — which has considerably abated, but still is reflected in much higher prices than when Biden took office. There’s the fact that the global mood is pessimistic and that incumbents have been getting crushed everywhere around the world. Plus, some of the factors I thought would be an advantage for Biden haven’t proven to be. There’s less of a fundraising gap than I expected, for instance, and I’m not sure that Biden has run the smarter tactical campaign…

Biden has the lowest approval ratings of anyone running for re-election since either George H.W. Bush or Jimmy Carter, depending on how you squint at the numbers.

It’s a preview/tease for Silver’s paywalled Substack (for which I get no referral fee, and which certainly doesn’t need the boost from me), and the situation could change between now and the election (there’s a debate tomorrow night, and the Trump vice presidential pick or other events could change things) but that summary seemed worth passing along.

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