The Japanese American Citizens League, one of the oldest and largest Asian American civil rights organizations, called Thursday for a negotiated ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas, after months of pressure from older members. young people who believed the group had a duty to defend Palestinians.
The organization’s leaders and some older members were reluctant to take a position on the war, in part because of the league’s long-standing ties to prominent Jewish civil rights groups in the United States. In the 1970s, the American Jewish Committee was the first national organization to support Japanese Americans’ push for reparations for their imprisonment during World War II.
But younger members of the Japanese-American group said Palestinians were suffering human rights violations and that their organization had long advocated for those victims.
The League, in a statement Thursday, noted the “staggering” death toll of Palestinians and Israelis in the conflict and the immense and continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
As a group “dedicated to safeguarding the civil liberties not only of Japanese Americans but of all individuals subjected to injustice and intolerance,” the group said, “we must denounce these egregious violations of human rights.”
The organization did not call for an unconditional ceasefire, but instead said it wanted Israel and Hamas to reach an agreement and urged President Biden to advance such negotiations.
The rift within the league was another example of how the war between Israel and Hamas has divided cultural, academic and political institutions far beyond the Middle East, and not just between groups with direct ties to the region. As in many organizations, the division within the league has occurred primarily along generational lines.
In its ceasefire statement, the group did not address one of the young activists’ main demands: cutting ties with Jewish organizations they called “Zionist.” David Inoue, the league’s chief executive, said in an interview Thursday that the group was not considering that option.
“That’s not how we work in coalition,” Inoue said. “I think it’s inherently unfair for anyone to make demands like that.”