North Korean Arms Found Among Weapons Hamas Has Fired at Israelis as Pyongyang Blames the Conflict on the Jewish State
Senator Schumer gets the Chicom party boss, Xi Jinping, to temper his tone, even as China refuses to condemn Hamas attack.
SEOUL – Score one for Hamas in their war against Israel: China may be ambivalent, but for sure they’ve got North Korea on their side. North Korean arms are reportedly showing up in the inventory of weapons Hamas has fired on Israelis, and the North is blaming Israel entirely for provoking Hamas.
While North Korea may not seem like much of an ally, North Korea’s unequivocal support for Hamas contrasts with the distinctly blurry position of China, the huge ally on which poverty-stricken North Korea relies for fuel and food.
The North Korean Communist party paper, Rodong Sinmun, reporting “a large-scale conflict,” called the Hamas attack on Israel “the consequence of Israel’s ceaseless criminal actions against the people of Palestine.”
North Korean support for Hamas, it seems, goes well beyond mere rhetoric.
The X account of a self-described “part-time weapons and Conflicts researcher,” who writes under the moniker “War Noir,” displayed what it called an “alleged cache of weapons belonging to Al-Qassam Brigades,” or Hamas, that “was captured” by the Israeli military near Gaza. The cache includes an “F-7 HE-Frag rocket,” a type of rocket-propelled grenade, made by North Korea.
Earlier, the American-funded Radio Free Asia, relying on another War Noir tweet, had reported that while “not able to conclusively determine if the weapon was North Korean,” a rocket launcher shown in the hands of a Hamas fighter “closely resembles the F-7” in a guide to North Korean weapons published by the Small Arms Survey in Geneva.
North Korea is believed to have been slipping weapons to Hamas forces in Gaza for years. The author of books and articles on North Korea’s military leadership, Bruce Bechtol, believes North Korean aid for Hamas may be much more extensive than indicated in a tweet or two.
Beside the F-7 rocket launcher, Mr. Bechtol tells the Sun that “other weaponry” provided to Hamas by North Korea “could include rockets and rocket launchers.” It was “troubling to me,” Mr. Bechtol said, that North Korea may have shipped “Bulsae anti-tank systems” produced from an old Soviet design for wiping out tanks. Also, he added, the North may “have assisted Hamas with the tunnels they built under the border into Israel.”
Besides getting into Gaza via tunnels, how do or did the weapons get past the Israeli blockade? “Hamas has been very clever at smuggling weapons into the Gaza strip,” said Mr. Bechtol. “There may have been other shipments of North Korean weapons to Hamas that were simply not detected.”
Another “key point,” Mr. Bechtol added, is the Hamas invasion of Israel marked “the first time” that Israel’s vaunted “iron dome” for defense against enemy missiles, rockets and planes “has been overwhelmed by rockets fired into Israel by Hamas. “
“Why,” Mr. Bechtol asked rhetorically. The reason: “the huge amount of rockets fired.” Analysts “did not detect that North Korea actually not only sold Hamas rockets, but multiple-rocket launchers,” he said. As for “how they got into Gaza,” he said, that’s “anyone’s guess.”
As for North Korea’s support for Hamas, it is a far cry from the carefully uncertain view of China, whose leader, President Xi, avoided taking a strong stand either way after receiving a bipartisan delegation of six American senators led by the majority leader, Senator Schumer.
Incredibly, by telling Mr. Xi that he was disappointed that Communist China had not decried the Hamas attack, Mr. Schumer got the Red regime to “condemn violence and attacks against civilians.”
While far from condemnation, the statement at least shows China is not joining North Korea, Iran, and others in supporting Hamas.
Unlike North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un, Mr. Xi, in an 80-minute session with the senators, seemed anxious to ease up on the increasingly acrimonious tone of relations between Beijing and Washington.
The Communist Chinese news agency, Xinhua, quoted Mr Xi as calling relations with Washington “the most important bilateral relations in the world.” He cautioned against falling into the “Thucydides trap” – which holds that conflict is inevitable between a rising power and a great power rival.
Mr. Xi also no doubt was motivated by his desire to form viable relations with Israel, with which China has made deals on technology while urging peace with the Palestinians. In that sense, China’s position resembles its proposal to bring about peace between Russia and Ukraine.
The mood of goodwill engendered by Mr. Schumer and his delegation did nothing to soothe the fears of South Korean leaders, who say North Korea might follow the Hamas example and stage a shock attack when least expected.
A senior fellow at the Asan Institute here, Yang Uk, warned that North Korea could take South Korea by surprise. The Hamas attack “showed that a country relying heavily on advanced military hardware could fail to defend itself in the case of sudden attacks,” he told the Korea Times
North Korea, with more than 1,000 artillery pieces north of the line between the two Koreas, poses an existential threat quite aside from the nukes and missiles that the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, often talks about raining on the South.
