Israel’s Envoy to Japan Challenges Protest Organizers Over Anti-Israel Chants

Israel’s ambassador-designate to Japan, Emmanuel Navon, challenged demonstration organizers on November 4 over what he described as a contradiction between their anti-discrimination rules and chants at a previous protest. Writing in Japanese before a demonstration he said was planned for that evening, he said the organizers prohibited discrimination based on ethnicity or nationality. He accused participants at the preceding demonstration of chanting for Israel’s elimination and the destruction of its embassy. Navon set out two objections to those demands. He argued that denying the Jewish people their national right to self-determination constituted discrimination based on ethnicity. Denying Israelis the right to have their country’s embassy in Japan, he said, constituted discrimination based on nationality. His criticism addressed the organizers’ stated rules and the way he said demonstrators had acted under them. “First, please follow your own rules,” Navon wrote in a direct appeal to the organizers. He attached a video response to his statement. The Israeli embassy’s official biography identifies him as ambassador-designate and says he arrived in Tokyo in August 2026 to assume his duties. Before his diplomatic posting, he taught international relations and diplomatic studies at Tel Aviv University; he holds a doctorate in international relations from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.