Western ambassadors pull out of Nagasaki memorial after Israel not invited

TOKYO, Japan — Ambassadors from Western countries including the United States will skip a ceremony marking the 79th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki after Israel was snubbed, officials say.

Nagasaki’s mayor said last week that Israel’s ambassador Gilad Cohen was not invited to Friday’s event in the southern Japanese city because of the risk of possible protests over the Gaza conflict.

The US and British embassies say that their ambassadors would not take part as a result and that their countries would be represented by lower-ranking diplomats.

Media reports say that Australia, Italy, Canada, and the European Union, which together with the United States, Britain, and Germany signed a strongly worded joint letter to Nagasaki’s mayor last month, would follow suit.

US Ambassador Rahm Emanuel will not attend “after the mayor of Nagasaki politicized the event by not inviting the Israeli ambassador,” an embassy spokesperson tells AFP.

Instead, Emanuel, 64, who was ex-US president Barack Obama’s chief of staff, will go to a separate event at a temple in Tokyo, the spokesperson says.

The British embassy states that Ambassador Julia Longbottom would also not be in Nagasaki, saying that not inviting Israel “creates an unfortunate and misleading equivalency with Russia and Belarus — the only other countries not invited to this year’s ceremony.”

A spokesperson for the French embassy says that its number two would attend, telling AFP that the “decision not to invite the representative of Israel is regrettable and questionable.”