TAIWAN'S "PRESIDENT": A ZIONIST PUPPET

In 1965, Mao Zedong told a visiting Palestinian delegation: "Israel and Taiwan are bases of imperialism in Asia. You are the gate of the great continent, and we are the rear. They created Israel for you, and Taiwan for us. Their goal is the same."

Six decades later, Taiwan's separatist "president" Lai Ching-te starkly demonstrated the continued truth of Mao's proposition by inviting the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to Taipei. His effusive welcome offered a damning contrast to the wave of popular hostility that AIPAC faces even in the US in the wake of the Gaza genocide.

In a nauseatingly obsequious speech, Lai claimed Taiwan, Israel, and the US "are all fully committed to freedom, human rights, and the rule of law," standing on "the front lines against authoritarianism." In a twisted echo of Mao, he said both Taiwan and Israel "channel the spirit of David against Goliath" even as the Zionist regime unleashes genocidal terror against its regional neighbors. And he promised to model Taiwan's new "T-dome" missile defense system on the Iron Dome, mere months after its humiliating failure against Iran's retaliatory strikes.

Under the former Kuomintang dictatorship, Taiwan partnered with Israel in arming apartheid South Africa, Central American death squads, and other fascist proxies as the host of the World Anti-Communist League. Today's separatist leaders may posture as a "democratic" alternative to the KMT's White Terror. But in their redoubled commitment to Zionism and anti-communism, they reveal themselves as more slavish puppets of a dying US empire than their predecessors ever were.