Shinzo Abe, Chaver

Shinzo Abe, the just-murdered former Prime Minister of Japan, has been recognized by Benjamin Netanyahu, Naftali Bennett, Benny Gantz, and many other Israelis and Jewish leaders around the world as a friend both of Israel and of the Jewish people. Prime Minister Yair Lapid said in a statement that “Abe was one of the most important leaders of modern Japan and a true friend of Israel who brought about flourishing and prosperous relations between Israel and Japan. His heinous murder will not change his distinguished legacy. Today, Israel bows its head and mourns the loss of Abe together with the people of Japan.”

It was Abe who transformed Japan’s Middle East policy. Until Abe became Prime Minister in 2012, Japan’s policy had been based on its desire to maintain close ties with oil-producing Arab countries, countries that were historically hostile to Israel (two of those countries are today members of the Abraham Accords, with others likely soon to follow). Abe understood that there was no need to do favors to obtain Arab oil – all you had to do was pay the market price. Ever since 1973, many countries had been laboring under the delusion that they had to win Arab political favor, by being anti-Israel, in order to be allowed to buy oil; it was just as absurd as someone thinking that whenever he goes to his service station to fill up his tank, he must not only pay the bill but also bring a present for the attendant. There never was an “oil weapon”—only the collective illusion of one. Oil was, and remains, a commodity like any other.

Abe was keenly aware of Israel’s innovative economy, and was determined to expand ties with the “Start-Up Nation.” In 2012 , when he became Prime Minister, trade between the two nations amounted to a paltry $20 million. By 2019, the year before he left office, total trade between Japan and Israel had increased spectacularly, to $6 billion. After Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to Tokyo in 2014, historic pacts on tourism and security were entered into between the two states. “I am determined, together with Prime Minister Netanyahu, to make further efforts to strengthen Japan-Israel relations, so that the potentials are fully materialized,” Abe said at the time. Abe was greatly impressed with Israel’s military expertise, and wanted his own military to benefit both from the defensive weapons it could buy from Israel, but even more, from lessons his own military could learn from the IDF.

Abe was also moved by what the Jews had suffered in the Holocaust. Really moved. He was not one of those political leaders who, on a trip to Israel, make the dutiful one-time visit to Yad Vashem, and write – what else? – in the Book of Remembrance “Never again!” Abe had read the Diary of Anne Frank early on, and it made a deep impression. During his tenure, Shinzo Abe made several trips to Holocaust-related museums and memorials. In 2014, he went to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. A foreign ministry spokesman said at the time that the visit aimed “to reiterate the lasting and profound friendship between Japan and the Jewish people around the world.” Abe himself spoke during his visit of a “deep connection” between Japan and Anne Frank’s diary.

Looking ahead to the many years of the 21st century, I would like to ensure that we will never see the same things happening, and I share the responsibility of realizing this goal.

The following year, Abe visited both the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and Memorial and the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, where he honored Chiune Sugihara, who as Japan’s representative in Lithuania during World War II, defied orders from his superiors in order to issue thousands of visas to Jews between 1939 and 1940. At the U.S. Holocaust Museum, Abe and his wife each lit a commemorative candle in the Hall of Remembrance and met with three survivors who had been helped by Sugihara. ”As a Japanese citizen, I feel extremely proud of Suigihara’s work,” Abe said at the time.

In 2018, Abe became the first Japanese leader to visit Lithuania, and again honored Sugihara, the ”Japanese Schindler,” with a visit to the consulate where he had served and from where he had distributed his life-saving visas to several thousand desperate Jews. “The courageous and humanitarian action of Mr. Sugihara provides us with guidance as to how we should survive in this world, where the rule-of-law based international order is being challenged In various forms.”

No doubt those Israelis who manage to visit the grave of Shinzo Abe in Japan will place on it the same one-word message that Israelis place on the grave of Captain Orde Wingate (a collective grave, containing the commingled remains of nine American and British fighters who died in a plane crash) in Arlington National Cemetery: Chaver. That is to say: Friend.