Tokyo – Japan Requests Israeli Help

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    In this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, officials are busy at work to examine residents living near the troubled nuclear power plant for radioactive exposures in Fukushima city, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, Saturday, March 19, 2011.  (AP Photo/Xinhua, Huang Xiaoyong)Tokyo – The Japanese Foreign Ministry issued an official request for Israeli aid to help with the victims of the earthquake that shook the country last Friday.

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    A small Israeli delegation is leaving to Japan Saturday night to examine the needs ahead of a larger delegation of doctors and medical equipment. In the next few days, the foreign and defense ministries will ship blankets, coats, gloves and portable toilets to the city of Kurihara, where survivors from Sendai are currently staying.


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    27 Comments
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    13 years ago

    Kol hakavod what a kidush hashem!!! also please don’t forget 2 ask them for the release of the 2 inocent bochurim who are still sufering in jail there!!!

    Balaboos
    Balaboos
    13 years ago

    CHUTZPAH!!!! UNBELIEVABLE NERVE!!! Let ’em release the 2 remaining bachurim and we’ll then first consider if we want to send in some help. Let’s NEVER forget the Japanese during WW2.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    13 years ago

    To Nos. 1 and 2

    Your comments are despicable. There is NO linkage between the great mitzvah of assisting in kavod hames (whether yiddin or goyim) and the political and legal dispute of how to adjudicate the cases of two Israelis who were caught sumggling drugs (albeit due to their lack of common sense and blind trust in a stranger). The two are totally unrelated and withholding assistance would be a real chilul hashem.

    BaalMussar
    BaalMussar
    13 years ago

    To the previous commentators Japan didn’t ask help from the Chariedim, Israel never requested the boys be released.

    ExpatriateOwl
    ExpatriateOwl
    13 years ago

    1. One must appreciate Japanese government’s predicament. If they let the bochurim off too easily then it compromises the public face of Japan’s no-nonsense attitude towards crime. There also is the personal honor of the judges involved.

    The extenuating circumstances of the bochurim warrant some sort of leniency (albeit total; the boys did intend to evade customs duties), but the scenario does not fit into Japan’s standard “play book.”

    Recall that the youngest bochur, Yossi Bando, has already been prematurely set free after transfer to Israel, and that the Israeli government did let it slip that Yossi’s release was with the approval of Japanese authorities.

    Methinks that Japan is searching for a face-saving exit from its current predicament. And Israel’s aid to Japan has distinct possibilities for a quid pro quo, explicit or otherwise.

    2. Whatever out current attitudes and policy towards Japan may now be, we cannot forget the Japanese misdeeds during World War II, including but not limited to Pearl Harbor, Manila (one-tenth of the civilian Jewish community killed), Alexandra Hospital, Nanking, Palawan, Bataan, etc.).

    13 years ago

    To #10 - As Jews, we are particularly sensitive about revisionists, especially when it comes to Holocaust deniers or revisionists. Hence, we must also be especially sensitive to not revising our own history. The Pacific War with Japan was a war, which we did not seek or want. We were at peace with Japan, when we were brutally attacked. The soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army and sailors of the Japanese Imperial Navy, showed no compassion to civilians or soldiers. Their heinous acts, such as tying Allied prisoners to submarines, and then diving and drowning them, beheading captured flyers, placing our POWs in cages with animals in the Tokyo Zoo, slaughtering the civilian populations of Nanking and Manila, etc. are unprecedented. Therefore, don’t make us feel guilty about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not only were hundreds of thousands of American lives saved, but millions of Japanese lives were also saved, as a result, of their surrender!

    Mark Levin
    Mark Levin
    13 years ago

    Perhaps HKBH had to punish Japan with the tzoros so they should be forced to release them in a manner of kovod to Japan. Not everything is a major open miracle.

    13 years ago

    To #12 - The USA never dropped any hydrogen bombs on Japan, as the hydrogen bomb was not developed until after World War Two. Please read my remarks in #13 , as they apply to you, as well as to #10 .

    Berl
    Berl
    13 years ago

    Screw the Japs! What have they ever done for us aside from denouncing our building policy! Now Hashem once again destroyed their country to remind them of what it means to be homeless.And let us not forget the wonderful death march from BataanThe “march”, or forcible transfer of 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war,[1] was characterized by wide-ranging physical abuse and murder, and resulted in very high fatalities inflicted upon prisoners and civilians alike by the armed forces of the Empire of Japan.[2]
    Route of the death march. Section from San Fernando to Capas was by rail.

    The treatment of the American prisoners was characterized by its dehumanization, as the Imperial soldiery “felt they were dealing with subhumans and animals.”[3] Trucks were known to drive over those who fell or succumbed to fatigue,[4] and “cleanup crews” put to death those too weak to continue. Marchers were harassed with random bayonet stabs and beatings.[5] Accounts of being forcibly marched for five to six days with no food and a single sip of water are in postwar archives including filmed reports.
    So no rachmones on them

    13 years ago

    18,000 innocent people dead is not a fair exchange for 2 boychickles in detention for smuggling illegal drugs that can kill.