Japan's Nagasaki excludes Israel from ceremony, Washington denounces | News

The US and British ambassadors decided to boycott the annual ceremony to commemorate the victims. nuclear bomb which was thrown on the city Nagasaki Japanese during World War IIAfter the city's mayor announced that he would not extend an invitation to the Israeli ambassador because of the war on Gaza.

Instead, a letter was sent to the Israeli ambassador, “calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip,” said city mayor Suzuki Shiro.

Last week, the mayor of Nagasaki said there was concern about the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, and that protests over the war could disrupt the annual ceremony to commemorate the victims of the atomic bomb, scheduled for Friday.

The city invited the Palestinian representative to Japan to attend the ceremony, as it does every year, according to the Nagasaki Municipality.

The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth said that Western ambassadors will boycott the annual ceremony because the Israeli ambassador was not invited.

US Ambassador Rahm Emanuel and British Ambassador Julia Longbottom announced that they would not attend the atomic bomb memorial ceremony.

The US embassy said Wednesday that Emanuel would not attend the ceremony because it had been “politicized” by the city's decision not to invite Israel.

Lower-level diplomats are expected to attend in place of Western ambassadors who will be absent from the ceremony.

The US Ambassador attended the ceremony held by the Hiroshima City Administration yesterday, Tuesday, to which the Israeli Ambassador was invited but no Palestinian representative was invited.

It is noteworthy that on August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima Japan, which killed about 140,000 people.

Three days later, US forces dropped a second atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, killing nearly 70,000 people.