{"id":47998,"date":"2024-06-05T07:27:18","date_gmt":"2024-06-05T15:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=47998"},"modified":"2024-06-05T07:27:18","modified_gmt":"2024-06-05T15:27:18","slug":"nagasaki-mayor-withholds-israels-invitation-to-peace-ceremony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2024\/06\/05\/nagasaki-mayor-withholds-israels-invitation-to-peace-ceremony\/","title":{"rendered":"Nagasaki Mayor Withholds Israel’s Invitation to Peace Ceremony"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The mayor of Nagasaki said Monday that he is withholding Israel’s invitation to the annual peace ceremony commemorating the 1945 U.S. nuclear attack on the Japanese city and will call on the country’s far-right government to accept an immediate cease-fire in Gaza<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Given the critical humanitarian situation in Gaza and international opinion, there is a risk of unpredictable disruption occurring at the ceremony,” said Mayor Shir\u014d Suzuki, according to<\/a> The Asahi Shimbun<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“The situation is changing day by day, so we have put sending an invitation letter on hold,” Suzuki explained. “We need to carefully monitor the situation as it develops.”<\/p>\n

The ceremony is held each year on August 9, when at 11:02 am local time in 1945 a U.S. B-29 bomber dropped a single nuclear bomb over the city, killing tens of thousands of people instantly and dooming many thousands more to slow death by radiation-induced ailments.<\/p>\n

Suzuki said he would extend an invitation to Israel<\/a> once it’s clear that doing so won’t cause any problems. Palestine’s envoy is invited to attend, although Japan is one of a global minority of nations that do not formally recognize a Palestinian state.<\/p>\n

Once again, Russia \u2013 whose forces have been invading Ukraine since February 2022 \u2013 and Belarus, which supports the invasion, are not invited.<\/p>\n

City officials in Hiroshima are also calling on Israel to stop attacking Gaza. However, Israel is invited to take part in the city’s annual commemoration of its August 6, 1945 atomic annihilation by the United States. A group of hibakusha, the Japanese word for atomic bombing survivors, have petitioned city officials to invite all the world’s nations to attend.<\/p>\n

Israel’s 242-day assault on Gaza \u2013 which is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide investigation \u2013 has left more than 130,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing, according to Palestinian and international agencies. Most of those killed are women and children. Around 2 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced. Widespread starvation caused by Israel’s siege and blockage of aid has become what one top United Nations food official last month called<\/a> “full-blown famine” in the northern Gaza Strip. Children are starving to death<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A cease-fire remains elusive. Responding to reports<\/a> of a three-point Israeli proposal to end the war, Japan’s Foreign Ministry said<\/a> Sunday that it “strongly supports” efforts by the United States \u2013 which has been accused<\/a> of complicity in genocide for providing Israel with billions of dollars<\/a> in military aid as well as diplomatic support<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 to broker a cease-fire deal.<\/p>\n

Brett Wilkins is is staff writer for Common Dreams<\/a>. Based in San Francisco, his work covers issues of social justice, human rights and war and peace. This originally appeared at CommonDreams<\/a> and is reprinted with the author\u2019s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The mayor of Nagasaki said Monday that he is withholding Israel’s invitation to the annual peace ceremony commemorating the 1945 U.S. nuclear attack on the Japanese city and will call on the country’s far-right government to accept an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. “Given the critical humanitarian situation in Gaza and international opinion, there is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":372,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-47998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"\"Given the critical humanitarian situation in Gaza and international opinion, there is a risk of unpredictable disruption occurring at the ceremony,\" Mayor Shiro Suzuki said."},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/372"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47998"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48002,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47998\/revisions\/48002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47998"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=47998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}