2m ago
Justin McCurry
Japan’s government has been criticised over its evacuation of citizens from
Israel, after just eight people joined a flight that flew only as far as Dubai, with passengers charged a fee for boarding the plane.
Social media users and opposition politicians contrasted Sunday’s evacuation on a government-chartered commercial plane with an earlier flight on a South Korean military aircraft, whose passengers included dozens of Japanese nationals.
Passengers on the Japanese flight were charged ¥30,000 each (US$200), sparking anger on X, formerly known as Twitter, with some users accusing the government of being “stingy”. The South Korean government, by contrast, did not charge 51 Japanese nationals who boarded its flight – along with 163 South Koreans and six Singaporeans – from Israel to Seoul on Saturday.
Kenta Izumi, head of the main opposition Constitutional Democratic party, was similarly critical: “A Japanese government-chartered plane arrived in Dubai with eight Japanese on board for a fee,” he wrote on X. “The South Korean government transport plane carried not only South Koreans but also 51 Japanese, and arrived in South Korea, and for free.”
The Mainichi Shimbun said the tiny number of people aboard the Japanese flight had taken foreign ministry officials by surprise. “We hurried to avoid Japan being accused of responding too slowly, but with only eight people on board, it backfired on us,” the newspaper quoted a source close to the ministry as saying.
But another official defended the evacuation, saying the quickly changing situation in the Middle East meant the government wanted to fly its citizens out of Israel as soon as possible.
“The purpose of evacuating Japanese nationals was to get them out of the country, not to get them back to Japan,” the official told the Mainichi. “We are glad we did it, even with eight people.”
About 1,200 Japanese nationals were in Israel and
Palestinian territoriesbefore the conflict broke out, and 1,000 were still there as of Saturday, the Kyodo news agency reported.
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