Officials said on Wednesday ( Aug 7 ) that ambassadors from Western nations, including the United States, will not attend a ceremony marking the 79th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki following Israel’s snub.
Due to the possibility of protests over the Gaza issue, Nagasaki’s president last year claimed that Israel’s adviser Gilad Cohen was never invited to the event in the southern Chinese city on Friday.
The ministers of the US and the UK do not participate in the event, according to the offices, and their nations may be represented by lower-ranking diplomats.
Media reports said that Australia, Italy, Canada and the European Union, who together with the US, Britain and Germany signed a clearly worded shared text to Nagasaki’s president last month, did follow suit.
According to a representative from the US Embassy, Nagasaki’s president “politicized the occasion by not inviting the Jewish ambassador.”
Otherwise, Emanuel, 64, who was ex-president Barack Obama’s chief of staff, will go to a distinct celebration at a church in Tokyo, the spokesperson said.
Ambassador Julia Longbottom, who was also not invited to this year’s ceremony, was informed by the British Embassy that the country’s embassy would not be in Nagasaki. The statement read,” No invitation to Israel creates an regrettable and false equivalence with Russia and Belarus, the only other places that were not invited to this year’s ceremony.”
The second-guess will be there, according to a French embassy spokesman who told AFP that the “decision not to ask the consultant of Israel is terrible and dubious.”
Shiro Suzuki, the governor of Nagasaki, had previously stated last week that the decision to not encourage Cohen was” not politically motivated,” but rather motivated by the desire to “hold the meeting in a peaceful and gloomy atmosphere.”
In June, Suzuki said Nagasaki had sent a notice to the Israeli military calling for an “immediate peace” in Gaza.
Last year Cohen, who was invited to and attended a memorial service in Hiroshima on Tuesday, claimed the Nagasaki selection” sents a bad message to the world.”
Israel has been a near friend and a neighbor of Japan for many years, in honor of the victims and their families, he wrote on social media platform X.
Cohen claimed on Monday that the security issues had been “invented” and that he was “really surprised by ( Suzuki ) hijacking this ceremony for his political motivations.
The six European envoys had warned Suzuki that if Israel were to be excluded, “it would be hard for us to have high-level contribution at this event.”
Yoshimasa Hayashi, a spokeswoman for the state, said requests were up to the organizers, Nagasaki City, on Wednesday.
A Nagasaki official in charge of the service said it was “obviously better to include high-level people, like ministers themselves, taking element”.
He told AFP,” Representations of the nations will attend the ceremony is what’s crucial.”