Israel Forced To Apologise To Japan Over Offensive Hiroshima Comments

[Purveyor]

Israel has been forced to issue a formal apology to Japan over offensive comments posted on Facebook by its head of online public diplomacy.

The apology followed a complaint by the Japanese ambassador to Israel, Hideo Sato, after senior government official Daniel Seaman disparaged commemorations for the victims of the 1945 atomic bombs, causing a wave of protests in Japan.

"I am sick of the Japanese, 'Human Rights' and 'Peace' groups the world over holding their annual self-righteous commemorations for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims," Seaman wrote on his Facebook page. "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the consequence of Japanese aggression. You reap what you sow."

According to the Haaretz newspaper, Israel's ambassador in Tokyo, Nissim Ben-Shitrit, was forced to embark on a damage control exercise. "The incident is very slowly subsiding, but it's too early to assess the damage to Israel's image that it caused," the Israeli embassy in Tokyo wrote in a cable to the foreign ministry in Jerusalem.

MORE...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/22/israel-apologise-japan-offensive-facebook-comments

[ZombieHorde]

1. In my opinion,

Israel would benefit greatly from hiring a new head of online public diplomacy. Unless of course they hired someone even worse.

[GP6971]

42. K&R

[The Link]

2. I don't have a problem with what he said.

Probably should not say it in his position, however.

[KT2000]

5. Really?

Our government has done some awful things lately - torture, drones, etc. The average citizen did not approve these things but it could be said that a nuclear bomb dropped on the city where we live, in retaliation, would not make us victims because we brought it on ourselves. The families that were vaporized in Japan were not the drivers of their county's military aggression.

[The Link]

6. We can just disagree.

[dairydog91]

7. Me too. Japan's government has not exactly been apologetic about the Invasion of China.

Which was considerably more morally repulsive than Pearl Harbor and the Japanese-American war in general. Japan's little escapade in China caused the deaths of over 20 MILLION CHINESE CIVILIANS, not to mention killing more than a million Chinese soldiers. I'd be inclined to view memorials to dead German citizens a lot more favorably, seeing as how much of the German public has long adopted an apologetic stance about Germany's belligerence. For instance, the only major German-constructed war memorial you'll find in Berlin is a Holocaust memorial. Japan, on the other hand, has the Yasukuni shrine (and museum!) in Tokyo, which commemorates all soldiers who died in WWII, even those pesky war criminals. Also, there's the recurring scandals where Japanese textbooks have been revised to make the Nanking Massacre sound more like an out-of-hand frat party than an enormous murder/gang-rape session, or play down Chinese casualties in general, or sing praises of Japan's pure intentions to create an Asian "Prosperity Sphere", or dismiss all those wacky medical experiments done on Chinese civilians and POWs.

[Bonobo]

9. Yes, they have been EXACTLY apologetic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_Japan

They have been apologizing for decades. Take a look at the list on the above link. It will take a long, long time to read through them.

Will you actually look at it and inform your opinion with facts? I wonder.

[dairydog91]

10. Diplomacy aside, there's the matter of overall cultural attitude.

And you know, reading that article and "informing myself with facts" ain't proving your case all that well: "In October 2006, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's apology was followed on the same day by a group of 80 Japanese lawmakers' visit to the Yasukuni Shrine which enshrines more than 1000 convicted war criminals. Two years after the apology, Shinzo Abe also denied that the Imperial Japanese military had forced comfort women into sexual slavery during World War II . In addition, Prime Minister Abe claimed that the Class A war criminals "are not war criminals under the laws of Japan". He also casted doubt on Murayama apology by saying, "The Abe Cabinet is not necessarily keeping to it" and by questioning the definition used in the apology by saying, "There is no definitive answer either in academia or in the international community on what constitutes aggression. Things that happen between countries appear different depending on which side you're looking from.""

I mean, Jesus Christ, the PRIME MINISTER was talking like this. Imagine Angela Merkel going around saying that, for example, Rudolf Hoess was not a war criminal under the laws of Germany at the time (Technically true!).

And it's not like Japan has taken a page from Germany's book and built a huge memorial to its misdeeds in its own capital city.

Saying that Japan's government has been "Exactly apologetic" wildly overvalues diplomatic niceties. If I publicly apologize to someone for breaking into their house, stealing their jewelry, and shooting their dog, the "sincerity" of my apology would be somewhat muted if I went back home and threw a loud party celebrating my glorious adventures in their house.

[Bonobo]

11. Thanks for admitting you were totally wrong in your statement.

About 5 minutes ago, you claimed that Japan has not apologized for what they did to China.

I showed you to be phenomenally wrong and I am not going to waste my time as you continue to move the goal posts for a complex discussion.

I live here in Japan. I see nothing wrong with visiting Yasukuni just as I see nothing wrong with any other country visiting cemetaries where evil fucks who murdered people are buried.

The only reason there weren't countless Americans declared war criminals is that they won.

As for what Abe said, I agree and support what he said.

Japan did not engage in an organized holocaust like Germany did. Period. They were in China and Korea to colonize them as Western countries had taught them to do. If they had left Japan and China the fuck alone in the mid-1800's, maybe Japan wouldn't have learned that Imperial aggression was the only way to prevent themselves from becoming victims of Western Imperialism.

[dairydog91]

18. "Japan did not engage in an organized holocaust like Germany did. Period."

Jesus tapdancing Christ. Over 20 MILLION HUMAN lives, an enormous roll call of war crimes, and you're trying to draw a moral distinction because it was more disorganized?!? Yeah, I'm sure every Chinese woman who had 50 dicks rammed into every orifice before having her intestines ripped out with a bayonet really appreciated that fine distinction. "Hey, at least this is spontaneous thing! I'd really hate it if they'd given this some planning."

"About 5 minutes ago, you claimed that Japan has not apologized for what they did to China."

After which I mostly wrote about the difference between Japan and Germany's post-war behavior. I brought up Germany's cultural response, including the extraordinary fact that the only major memorial they build in their capital was a testament to evils committed by the German military. OK, fine. Japan's government has issued a plenitude of nice official apologies. Relative to the overall German cultural attitude toward the victims of their military, which at least tries to be "We are sorry", the Japanese response has far more of a barely concealed "Poor us!" attitude.

Yes, hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians got roasted by napalm, nuclear weapons, and conventional bombs. Too fucking bad. That's what happens when you stand behind a government that kills tens of millions of people in halfwit imperial adventures, and then, when those adventures bog down, engages in one of the stupidest military decisions in human history by attacking a country with over 10 times the industrial capacity. Moronic, evil, and much smaller than your rival military powers is no way to conduct yourself on the world stage. If my government was doing that, I'd sure as hell be getting out of dodge.

[Bonobo]

19. They did not kill 20 million people and even YOU did not say they did.

So quit with the bullshit.

Don't throw 20 million around when you clearly don't know what the fuck you are talking about.

[dairydog91]

22. I said 20 right there in the original post.

20 million is the baseline number for Chinese killed during the Sino-Japanese war. And you can keep revising the number down if you want. 15 million? STILL REALLY EVIL. 10 million? STILL REALLY EVIL. A mere 5 million? STILL REALLY EVIL. Once you accept being mass-murdering fuckheads as a foreign policy, the exact number of lives you extinguish becomes somewhat academic. You've already accepted that mass slaughter of innocent people is acceptable. You're at the bottom of the barrel of human morality. You can't go any lower than accepting mass murder as acceptable and carrying it out. After that, it's just a question of how long and how effective you are at killing.

[Bonobo]

25. How many did the US kill in Vietnam? nt

[dairydog91]

28. Several million.

Though I'm sure we could break that number down into the people directly killed by the US, the people who would have been killed anyway, the people who died because the US prolonged the inevitable, etc. Yup, just because you're killing people for Murica and Democracy doesn't make it right.

[Bonobo]

31. Well we agree on something.

Now would you be willing to say there was no distinction between THAT and what the Nazis did at concentration camps?

Because that's what you argued about Japan.

[dairydog91]

33. At least in the early stages, the US might claim that it was trying to stop a war between factions.

Later, it was just prolonging a war to try to avoid a blow to its national pride. However, regarding American policies versus Nazi policies, I think there is a closer moral similarity in America's behavior towards the Native American tribes. I'd say there is very little moral difference between the exterminationist policies implicit in Manifest Destiny (Open lands for White Men) and the philosophy of Lebensraum. Both were arrogant, essentially sociopathic policies of stealing huge plots of land for the nation's benefit and slaughtering any inferior races which got in the way. Germany just had more "inferior" people in the way of its dreams (And as stuff like Plan Madagascar showed, they even considered the "American" solution of herding the "inferior races" into controlled areas).

[Bonobo]

34. And THAT is what Abe meant when he said that different countries see things differently.

I believe that, starting with Commodore Perry blowing Japan open at gunpoint, Japan was very frightened to see how helpless they and the other Asian nations were in the face of Western Imperialism.

When they saw China busted wide open and abused by all the Western Powers, they rightfully thought "How are we going to stop that from happening to us".

China occupies an important place in the culture and history of Japan. It is, in many ways, the progenitor of much of its culture and Japan has always, always known this. When they saw China beaten badly, I think they became a bit contemtuous and arrogant perhaps towards China and also wanted to prevent Western incursion.

So, in that sense, the East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was a very real and understandable reaction and goal.

I have met Chinese who speak Japanese because they grew up in colonized China. Japan was very serious about it and no, they did not abuse everyone as you may believe. They were trying to colonize exactly as they said.

That is a far cry from the Nazi's genocide and you do no service to your reputation as a thinker to deny that.

[dairydog91]

37. And at the time of WWII, many Germans justified their own country's invasion.

After all, they'd just seen Russia collapse into a bloody civil war and emerge into a Communist juggernaut, which had launched military efforts as far as Poland. They'd seen their own country dismembered by the League of Nations. They'd seen Germany hit the skids with its own revolution, with tanks roaring through the streets and gun battles aplenty. They'd heard propaganda, some of it true, about Germanic people being abused by the governments of the countries that had absorbed them. They'd heard stories about how Germany had almost won the war and had been betrayed at the last moments by striking unions, scheming Jews, and cowardly generals. They lived in a country, a continent, where Jews had been regarded as nefarious "others" for hundreds and even thousands of years. Some, including a couple of my distant relatives, went to war viewing themselves as the protectors of not just Germany, but all of Western Europe, from an ill-defined Judeo-Bolshevik-Asian menace. You can even read the autobiography of the man who built and operated Auschwitz, if you're so inclined. He thought, pretty much to the second the noose snapped his neck, that what he'd done had been for the good of his country. So I guess, in the end, I think that what the conquerors actually DID is what matters, not what they thought they were doing or why they thought their actions were justified.

[Bonobo]

38. I completely agree.

However, the German military conquests are not the same as the rather bureaucratically handled mass genocide and concentration camps.

There was no behavior by the Japanese that was analogous to that kind of cold-blooded killing nor was it done on Japanese soil. So unlike the German citizens who KNEW that the genocide was going on, the Japanese people in Japan cannot be blamed in the same way.

Yes, many things are horrible but it does not make them the same -if it did, then you should admit that the US took part in a holocaust in Vietnam that is also the same.

[Romulox]

58. This is no different from Holocaust denial. nt

[Scootaloo]

12. ...

[Bonobo]

13. LOL. +1 nt

[Gravitycollapse]

46. You are a feisty little rascal. Enjoy your incredibly brief stay.

[TreasonousBastard]

49. I was just on the jury for a rare 6-0 call for his head...

MIRT got him fast, didn't they.

[Gravitycollapse]

51. Another troll was just nixed below me. Probably the same loser.

[Gravitycollapse]

53. Jesus Christ, dude. Go away. Tell your mom to make you a grilled cheese or something.

[Art_from_Ark]

15. While Japan did some nasty things in China,

it was also at a time when Chinese were fighting each other in the long, bitter Chinese Civil War (1927-1950). While the Communists and Nationalists supposedly joined together to fight the Japanese beginning around 1937, one of Mao Ze-dong's tactics was to slaughter Nationalist supporters and blame it on the Japanese. So the Chinese government likes to blame all those deaths on the Japanese, when in actuality a lot of them can be attributed to Mao, who has gone down in history as the worst mass-murderer of all time.

[dairydog91]

20. Interesting point.

The Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War were definitely tangled. The highest death toll I've seen ascribed to the Civil War is maybe 7.5 million, which still leaves plenty to the Japanese invasion. I would imagine that since the Japanese invasion primarily hit the well-populated eastern portions of China, the casualties went up pretty quick.

Maybe the Japanese invasion prolonged the Civil War? Maybe the KMT would have lasted had Japan not piled into the already chaotic Chinese situation? No matter how it goes, Japanese behavior on China was pretty rapacious, even by Western Imperial standards.

[Bonobo]

21. Yet you think drawing a distinction between aggression and a meticulously planned genocide is

"splitting hairs".

It shows you know nothing of the Holocaust. Nothing.

[dairydog91]

24. Mass murder is mass murder.

Were the Chinese any less dead because their deaths were less planned? I wouldn't particularly care if the person exterminating me and my entire family was doing it by the book or "only" doing it because they were part of an invading army. "It was kind of an informal thing" isn't at all a good excuse. And if you're going to lecture me about "knowing" the Holocaust, shouldn't you know that there is plenty of reputable historical scholarship of the "functionalist" school (not crazy denialist) arguing that it had something of a spontaneous character, and was heavily a product of poorly planned military aggression and efforts to handle millions of supposedly "hostile" citizens the Germans found themselves holding after they barged into Eastern Europe?

[Bonobo]

26. How many millions have the US killed? Is that mass murder?

Were ANY of those responsible imprisoned?

Ummmm, nope.

[dairydog91]

32. And had the Vietnamese sent agents to blow up American pro-war supporters...

I might have said that the supporters kind of deserved what they got. Funny how that works. Honestly, Germany kind of stands alone as the only country which seems to have adopted a sincerely apologetic stance for at least some of the people killed by its military adventurism. What we usually get is something ranging from a pity-party if the country was defeated (a la Japan), or outright "Fuck you" denial if the country succeeded (a la Russia and the US).

[Gravitycollapse]

48. Post-WWII Germany was incredibly unapologetic.

Anti-Semitism ran much, much deeper than the Third Reich. After the war, the only real reason why Germans abandoned the remaining Nazi infrastructure was out of shame. Shame of failure and embarrassment at being found out.

[Blue_Tires]

57. Please...Israel of ALL nations doesn't have

nary a square foot of moral high ground to stand on, much less lecture other nations on...

[bunnies]

3. .

[markiv]

4. 'it's too early to assess the damage to Israel's image that it caused'

what a narcissistic remark

'Israel's image'?

like that's the only harm done?

So Israel's annoyed by someone 'playing the victim' over WWII, just because someone dropped a couple of nukes on them.....isnt that interesting

[Scootaloo]

14. Well, the statement IS from the Israeli ambassador.

Israel's image in Japan is his job, after all

[markiv]

17. diplomacy is his job, too

i think his remark was pretty undiplomatic, and showed no concern for the feelings of the Japanese whatsoever, beyond how it affects Israel

[Jim Lane]

44. That may not have been intended for public consumption.

The article says it was a cable to the foreign ministry. There's no indication of how the statement found its way into the mass media.

[tritsofme]

16. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the consequence of Japanese aggression, that is clear.

Clearly not appropriate language for a diplomat, but that is all.

[Hydra]

23. Wow, I hardly recognize DU these days

"They deserved to be Nuked."

How does one qualify for that?

And I have to admit this is pretty funny by Israel- they're obviously working their way up to using their nuclear stockpile if they're talking about who deserves to be vaporized "for the greater good."

[dairydog91]

27. How does one qualify for that? Same way the Germans "qualified" for urban bombing.

Specifically, your government acts like a raging international asshole and doesn't have the military power to back up its aggression. It's unfortunate that so many individuals, possibly many of them pacifists or anti-war people, paid the price for what their governments did in the name of the collective good.

[Hydra]

29. Ah, but that's might makes right

That would mean if someone used a suitcase nuke on Los Angeles, it was justified because the US is an international asshole and didn't watch their borders carefully enough.

When is it ok to use a weapon that will definitely kill civilians? Where's the bar on that?

[dairydog91]

35. When is it ok to use a weapon that will definitely kill civilians? I don't know.

For example, imagine if America had developed an atomic bomb in 1943. It couldn't really knock out the whole Holocaust system (Too few bombs, too many camps, too robust a network), but there might be a realistic chance that it could shock the German High Command into rolling over and surrendering by nuking major cities. Maybe it could provoke saner German officers into carrying out a coup and ending the war. Would it be moral to threaten the High Command to surrender, or at least stop mass extermination operations, or risk an immediate nuclear attack on a major German city?

[Bonobo]

30. You have slipped into incoherence.

Perhaps it is time to take a break.

By the way, these are ovens designed for mass murder.



And this is a rifle.

[Romulox]

60. "As for what Abe said, I agree and support what he said." - Bonobo

"In October 2006, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's apology was followed on the same day by a group of 80 Japanese lawmakers' visit to the Yasukuni Shrine which enshrines more than 1000 convicted war criminals. Two years after the apology, Shinzo Abe also denied that the Imperial Japanese military had forced comfort women into sexual slavery during World War II . In addition, Prime Minister Abe claimed that the Class A war criminals "are not war criminals under the laws of Japan". He also casted doubt on Murayama apology by saying, "The Abe Cabinet is not necessarily keeping to it" and by questioning the definition used in the apology by saying, "There is no definitive answer either in academia or in the international community on what constitutes aggression. Things that happen between countries appear different depending on which side you're looking from.""

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023516234#post11

[Generic Other]

36. I'd take a diplomat like Chiune Sugihara over a Daniel Seaman anytime.

This man saved 6000 Jews. He was a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania. When the Nazis began rounding up Jews, Sugihara risked his life to start issuing unlawful travel visas to Jews. He hand-wrote them 18 hrs a day. The day his consulate closed and he had to evacuate, witnesses claim he was STILL writing visas and throwing from the train as he pulled away. He saved 6000 lives. The world didn't know what he'd done until Israel honored him in 1985, the year before he died.

[dairydog91]

39. Good man. I guess I've got a soft spot for people who "betray" their group to save innocents.

If the world was full of people like him, it would be a much better place.

[Generic Other]

43. WW2 never rests in peace for long

The ghosts are all so near us.

[steve2470]

55. awesome story, thank you nt

[darkangel218]

40. So the world shouldnt be sympathetic to Japan, and the Japanese people shouldnt comemorate

The horible attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
But at the same time, Israel wants the world to engage in a preemptive attack against other nations , so a possible Hiroshima won't happen to them? Lololol

Hypocrisy at its max.

I wouldn't be surprised if Japan closes their embassy.

[dairydog91]

41. LOL. Good perspective.

I agree completely. Of all the countries to be delivering a lecture about how bad it is for the public to cheer on military aggression, Israel is nowhere near the top of the list. Sadly, I think about the only country that could credibly deliver that lecture would be Iceland, or maybe Canada.

[Gravitycollapse]

47. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Jesus.

[PotatoChip]

54. Seaman was definitely the wrong guy for the job.

Last edited Fri Aug 23, 2013, 05:42 AM - Edit history (1)

The head of Israel's government PR office. Really?!?... Check out this statement he made in regard to Saeb Erekat. Whatever one's view of the I/P conflict, Erekat did not deserve this comment.

The Guardian:

The gagging order followed a series of trenchant comments made by Daniel Seaman, who recently took up the post of head of Israeli public diplomacy on the internet, over the past few months.

They included a response to a demand by the Palestinian chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, for an end to new settlement expansion that read: "Is there a diplomatic way of saying 'Go F*** yourself'?"

Somewhat off topic, but something I found interesting, was the paragraph below, presented w/out comment...

Again from The Guardian:

Seaman was known for his abrasive approach to the foreign media when he was director of the government press office. Among his initiatives in his new role is a programme to pay university students to post pro-Israel comments on Facebook, Twitter and other internet sites and forums.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/16/israeli-daniel-seaman-facebook-postings

Apparently Israel has suspended Seaman from his position, as well as ordering that he not speak to the media. Additionally, they have apologized, so at least there is that.

On edit: spelling error

[davidpdx]

56. Regardless of how one feels about the bombings

Japan has the right to seek nuclear weapon proliferation and peace in the world. The guy should be canned as it was a not a very nice thing to say.

[Romulox]

59. Japan engaged in a genocidal war of aggression during WWII that killed in excess of 10 million

civilians on the Asian mainland.

This recasting the Japanese as the victims of WWII (while denying the very existence of Japan's victims) is extremely similar to Holocaust denial.