Israel envoy criticises Japan atomic survivor’s Gaza comparison

TOKYO – Israel’s ambassador to Japan criticised on Oct 13 a leader of Nihon Hidankyo, the atomic bomb survivors’ group awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for comparing their experiences to the children of Gaza.

Mr Gilad Cohen congratulated Mr Nihon Hidankyo for winning the 2024 prize but said in a post on social media platform X on Oct 13 that the comparison drawn by the group’s co-chair, Mr Toshiyuki Mimaki, “is outrageous and baseless”.

“Gaza is ruled by Hamas, a murderous terrorist organisation committing a double war crime: targeting Israeli civilians, including women and children, while using its own people as human shields,” Mr Cohen said.

“Such comparisons distort history and dishonour the victims” of

the Oct 7 Hamas attack on Israel

that triggered the war in Gaza, he added.

Mr Mimaki said after the prize was announced on Oct 11 that the plight of children in Gaza was similar to what Japan faced at the end of World War II.

“In Gaza, bleeding children are being held (by their parents). It’s like in Japan 80 years ago,” he said.

A representative for the Hiroshima chapter of Nihon Hidankyo could not be reached for comment about Mr Cohen’s post.

Around 140,000 people were killed when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug 6, 1945, and 74,000 more were killed in Nagasaki three days later.

Survivors of the blasts later formed Nihon Hidankyo to tell the stories of those atomic bombings and to press for a world without nuclear weapons.

Nagasaki decided not to invite Mr Cohen to mark

this year’s 79th anniversary of the bombing

, citing security reasons to avoid possible protests.

That decision prompted the ambassadors of the United States, Britain and the European Union, among others, to

skip the ceremony and send lower-level officials

instead.

The Hamas attack on Israel on Oct 7, 2023, resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

The health ministry in Gaza says 42,175 people, a majority of them civilians, have been killed since Israel’s military campaign began there. The United Nations acknowledges these figures to be reliable. AFP