Israel has attacked a prominent survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing over a comparison he made between the blast and the current assault on Gaza.
Toshiyuki Mimaki, a leader of the Nihon Hidankyo organisation that represents survivors of the US attack, compared the two after the group was announced as the recepient of the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.
“I thought for sure it would be the people working so hard in Gaza, as we’ve seen," he told reporters in Tokyo after the announcement. In Gaza, bleeding children are being held by their parents. It’s like in Japan 80 years ago.”
In response, Israel’s ambassador to Japan attacked the comparison as “outrageous and baseless”, and said such comparisons “distort history and dishonor the victims”.
Imagine saying “it dishonours the victims” to one of the actual victims
It keeps happening in history: people using horror suffered in the past to give cover to their own crimes. Attacking others in the name of their own holy dead.
Sharing stories or pictures of a previous genocide to make others overlook a current genocide. Accusing others of being enemies to their religion and ethnicity when voices raise in protest.
Over a hundred times in the world, in the last few thousand years. It’s just particularly galling to me to see this, now, in my name.