How the Nobel Peace Prize Justified the Genocide in Gaza

Hiroshima Palestine Community Vigil marks a year of standing nightly in front of the atomic bomb dome in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

When Toshiyuki Mimaki-san heard the announcement that Nihon Hidankyou had won the Nobel Peace Prize, he pinched himself and said, “I thought the prize would have gone to the people who worked hard for peace in Gaza.” Two days later we witnessed the image of Sha’ban al-Dalou, a twenty-year-old engineering student, burned alive in his tent outside Al-Aqsa Hospital in northern Gaza, with an IV still in his arm. Today, as we protest in front of the Atomic Bomb Dome here in Hiroshima against the genocide of the Palestinian people, it is impossible not to remember the radioactive fires and mass deaths as part of a long series of American weapons experiments that continue to this day. moment in Palestine.

“When I saw children being carried in Gaza while they were covered in blood, I remembered the scenes that happened in Japan 80 years ago,” Mimaki-san shared with the press in Oslo, recalling his experience when he was exposed to the bomb on Hiroshima as a three-year-old. But his statements about Gaza were removed from most mainstream media. How unfortunate – yet not surprising – that the words of a nuclear genocide survivor, expressing empathy for other child victims of war, are manipulated to cover up the current genocide.

Hibakusha bet for No more Hiroshimas! No more Nagasakis! must guide us Unpleasant solidarity with the Palestinian people, and not distract us from it. From Hiroshima, Palestinian solidarity activists urgently repeat: Palestine is a nuclear issue. Free Palestine must include a Nuclear-free Palestine and resistance to the normalization of militarization, the proliferation of nuclear weapons AND the power – that exists to create nuclear weapons. Anti-nuclear activists worldwide should sound the alarm about Palestine and take concrete action to stop it all weapons and escalation to nuclear war.

Has the Nobel Peace Prize long “tainted” and used to pacify nuclear deterrence. In 2009, Obama received the prize for his alleged commitment to nuclear non-proliferation. then actually spent nearly $1 trillion upgrading the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Both Biden and Obama celebrated the victory, while Israel’s ambassador to Japan, Gilad Cohen, criticized Mimaki-san for his comparison of Gaza to Hiroshima. Can we imagine if UNRWA – the UN agency whose schools, hospitals and aid workers were utterly destroyed and slaughtered while trying to do their work – had won this year’s Peace Prize?

In the years after the bomb the American occupation censored anyone who wrote, spoke, or created art about their experiences with instant destruction and radiation sickness. Not only were the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki shunned and shamed by their own communities, they were subjected to invasive medical testing by the U.S. Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission for most of their lives. Nevertheless, they have worked tirelessly toward the abolition of nuclear weapons by recording and repeating their personal testimonies. Most hibakusha who were children at the time are now in their 80s and 90s and continue to share their legacy with the next generation of anti-nuclear activists.

Hiroshima, the ‘International City of Peace’, has a complex history as a victim and perpetrator of war. As a historic military outpost and center of Japan’s navy, the symbol of the atomic bomb dome and Hiroshima’s victimhood narrative illustrate for right-wing nationalists the root of Japan’s weakness and threat to its national security. This perceived need for “security” has justified Japan’s rapid militarization and defense against China building missile bases in Okinawa, buy drones from Israel, production of robots for Israeli arms companiesor relaxation of regulations surrounding the transfer of defense equipment.

This same narrative of victimhood obscures imperial Japan’s atrocities in China, Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific—its vast networks of sex slavery, chemical weapons experimentation, genocidal extermination, and colonial territorial expansion. An estimated 40,000 Koreans were killed by the bombs and thousands more were exposed to radiation after being mobilized as forced labor to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Reacting to the peace prize, the president of the Korean A-bomb Survivors Group, Kim Jin-Ho, says that both the US And Japan should apologize to the Korean hibakusha community: “Japan, which is both an aggressor in the war and a victim of the atomic bomb, must join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and lead us to a world without nuclear weapons.”

Chukakuha and student activists sit all night in the early morning hours of August 6, protesting the Israeli delegate attending the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony, the rapid militarization of Japan, and the protest restrictions imposed by the city.

As leaders of the anti-nuclear movement, Hibakusha must reject this persistent Japanese nationalist victim narrative that makes their experience exceptional and continue to use their position as peacemakers to advocate for all victims of the nuclear fuel cycle – from the Shinkolobwe uranium mine in Congo to the Sahtu Dene people in Canada who transported the uranium for the Hiroshima bomb, to the marginalized victims of nuclear testing in Bikini Atoll, Micronesia, Kazakhstan, the Aboriginal people of Australia, the Navajo Nation, the Nevada Test Site downwinders, Algeria and more. By connecting these global histories of nuclear colonialism, we can better understand how the anti-nuclear movement intersects with anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggles such as the Palestine Solidarity movement, which is also an anti-war and anti- weapons testing movement.

In 2023, the G7 summit was held in Hiroshima, where Kishida and the other nuclear states held their paradoxical ‘Hiroshima Vision’ statementwho are committed to nuclear disarmament through the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Many hibakusha expressed shock and disappointment that the states that refuse to sign the TPNW could, from the hypocenter of the atomic bomb, proclaim their continued commitment to nuclear weapons as a method of “security”: “Nuclear weapons, as long as they exist, must be defensive purposes, deter aggression and prevent war and coercion.” One could argue that the city itself has become a peacekeeping pawn of the Japanese national government, under the thumb and “nuclear umbrella” of American influence.

The city council has become increasingly conservative, removing the classic anti-nuclear manga, Barefoot Genof peace education materials in primary school and utilizing portions of the Imperial Rescript on Education, part of Japan’s Imperial Militaristic Training, as part of the training text for new city employees. The arrest in February of five anti-war activists on false charges of attacking a worker from the city of Hiroshima during last year’s anti-war protests on August 6 was used to justify the ban on protests during this year’s Peace Memorial Ceremony . Under the guise of maintaining “silence” and “security,” the city suppressed public dissent while still inviting Israel—effectively “peaceful” their own complicity in the genocide.

While activists pressured the city not to invite Israel, Mimaki-san’s hidankyou was the only one of seven local hibakusha groups to sent a letter to the mayor requesting cancellation of Israel’s invitation. Ultimately, both Rahm Emanuel, the US ambassador to Japan, and an Israeli delegate attended the ceremony, laying flowers for the victims of the atomic bombs as the death toll in Gaza rose to 40,000. Activists carried out actions across the park that day, including a nighttime sit-in to protest restrictions on freedom of expression, successfully bypassing regulations banning speakers or protest materials during the ceremony. Zengakuren students, union workers and elderly activists from across Japan attended the all-night and early morning ceremony, waving Palestinian flags and demanding an end to Japanese militarization.

Other groups of anti-war activists and Buddhist monks performed a die-in during the ceremony, while activists from across Japan waved signs at the park entrances. During the ceremony itself, protesters held their keffiyehs high above their heads during the 8:15 a.m. moment of silence for the bomb victims. On the evening of the 6th, as colorful floating lanterns floated down the river to commemorate Hiroshima’s ancestors, Waleed Siam, a Palestinian ambassador to Japan, gave a virtual speech during a people’s peace ceremony. His image was projected onto a crowd in front of the Atomic Bomb Dome, a huge fiery explosion in Gaza as his Zoom background, in which he called for justice and “for the world to uphold the principles it so often preaches but rarely practices.”

The saving grace of the anti-nuclear movement’s solidarity with Palestine came from Nagasaki, where the mayor did not invite Israel to their August 9 peace ceremony and invited a delegate from Palestine instead. In the wake of this invitation, Emanuel and the rest of the G7 ambassadors refused to attend the ceremony, shocking the Nagasaki community, including Hibakusha. Local activists from Nagasaki for Palestine held their own event, welcoming the Palestinian delegate with peace music sung by a hibakusha choir.

The mental gymnastics we have had to do to understand the logic behind each of these scenarios – the manipulation of the ‘culture of peace’ to justify war; the use of genocide testimonies to conceal genocides; the respectability politics of “silence” to censor and police dissent – ​​is mind-boggling. “Peace” and its ancient proponents, such as the hibakusha, continue to be manipulated by the press and local and world governments to conceal their lucrative perpetual wars and diplomatic exploits.

With the doomsday clock set to just 90 seconds to midnightthe message of No nuclear weapons! is far-sighted. By erasing Palestine from the lips of the few remaining hibakusha, the news media continues their complicity in inciting this genocide. As we sink deeper into the horrors of Gaza and blood continues to flow throughout the region, the voices of the hibakusha remind us of our responsibility to human life – and time and time again their voices are co-opted to justify war. But we have heard their stories and we know the messages. How much further will we allow ourselves to be dragged into the abyss of genocide denial and human humiliation?

In the words of the Hibakusha poet: Toge Sankichi:

にんげんをかえせ
Ningen or Kaisei
Give me humanity back

No nuclear weapons! No war! Liberate Palestine!