“After comprehensively considering the matter, including the risk that an unexpected situation may arise, I made the decision to refrain from inviting the Israeli ambassador,” Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki said, according to Japanese media on Thursday.
Suzuki first decided not to invite Israel in July, saying the decision was not politically motivated. He said he feared that protests against the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza would overshadow the ceremony, which commemorates the victims of the atomic bomb dropped by the U.S., killing 74,000 people.