Japan’s Pro-Palestine Lawmakers Hold on to their Seats in Parliament Elections

October 28, 2024 News, Videos
Japanese lawmaker Akiko Oishi leads a Pro-Palestine rally. (Photo: video grab)

By Palestine Chronicle Staff  

Amid a majority loss by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, the two Reiwa Party voices of Gaza retain their seats in Parliament.

Japanese pro-Palestine parliamentarians Akiko Oishi and Mari Kushibuchi held to their seats after sudden elections in the country on Sunday, Anadolu news agency reported.

The two lawmakers who represent the Reiwa Shinsengumi Party have become the voices of Gaza in Parliament since the onset of the Israeli genocide on the Strip over a year ago.

The two parliamentarians were vocal in objecting to the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Akiko Oishi who originates from Osaka province is a 47-year-old engineer who was first elected to parliament in November 2021.

Since the start of the Israeli genocide on the besieged Strip, the Japanese lawmaker has been outspoken on the issue, requesting the coalition Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito Party to adopt a solid position to end the aggression.

Akiko held her seat in Sunday’s swift elections, which saw Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party lose its parliamentary majority for the first time since 2009.

According to CNN quoting the public broadcaster NHK, the Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner Komeito Party won only 215 of the 465 seats in the House of Representatives, falling back 233 seats needed to retain the majority in parliament.

Likewise, the 57-year-old parliamentarian Mari retained her seat.

The Japanese lawmaker celebrated her win by thanking voters for their support.

“I will work hard to make a new start, to create politics that will save the people living in this country and never allow war to happen,” she told her supporters as quoted by Anadolu.

Akiko and Mari were always at the forefront of countless protests that took place in the country demanding an end to the genocide in Gaza.

The streets of Tokyo have been witness to Pro-Palestine protests throughout the genocide on Gaza, one of those was in protest of the United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s presence early this year at the Quad meeting.  

Pro-Palestine protesters also interrupted an exhibition organized by a defense company in the Japanese capital calling for an end to military support of Israel.  

“We feel suffocated at a time when we cannot stop genocide, but we must not give up. Let’s act!” Mari was quoted by Anadolu as saying during the November rally last year.

Reiwa in Support of Palestine

The Reiwa Party to which the two parliamentarians belong had three seats in the former parliament.

The Japanese party condemned Tokyo when it halted funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) earlier this year, upon Israeli allegations that staff members of the organization had participated in the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation, which was carried out by the Palestinian Resistance movement Hamas on October 7 last year.

After the Israeli claims were proved wrong, Tokyo resumed its funding of UNRWA.

The three parliamentarians of the Reiwa Party slammed the Japanese government’s decision at the time, and offered one million Japanese yen-equivalent to 7,000 US dollars-in donation to UNRWA.

“We stand in solidarity with those who are raising their voices to end the occupation policy in Palestine,” the party was quoted as saying by Anadolu in February.

Tribute to Gaza

Earlier this month, the co-chair of a Japanese anti-nuclear weapons movement, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, expressed surprise that the organization won instead of “those fighting hard for peace in Gaza.”

“Never did I dream this could happen. They selected Nihon Hidankyo?” Toshiyuki Mimaki stated at a press conference on October 11. “I thought those fighting hard for peace in Gaza would deserve it.”

The grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha, received the Peace Prize “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again,” the Nobel Foundation said in a statement.

“The images of the children in Gaza covered with blood held by their parents remind me of Japan 80 years ago,” Mimaki stated, fighting back tears.

“(Children) lost their fathers in the war and lost their mothers with the nuclear bomb.

They became orphans,” the campaigner, who is a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing, added.

Gaza Genocide Continues

Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire, Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza.

Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7.

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 42,924 Palestinians have been killed, and 100,833 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7, 2023.

Moreover, at least 11,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.

Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire’.

LIVE BLOG: 53 Killed in Gaza | Dozens Wounded in Tel Aviv | Talks in Doha – Day 387

Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.

The Israeli war has resulted in an acute famine, mostly in northern Gaza, resulting in the death of many Palestinians, mostly children.

The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.

Later in the war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians began moving from the south to central Gaza in a constant search for safety. 

(Anadolu, PC)

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