３大失態: Hostage crisis may be Abe's "Triple Fiasco"

“Abe completely clueless.” – Nikkan Gendai; video screenshot courtesy of YouTube user Railgunmani.

“Japanese Prime Minister Abe committed a triple fiasco” when responding to the crisis, claimed a widely read article by tabloid daily Nikkan Gendai. 

What did Abe do wrong, according to Nikkan Gendai? 

1) Abe dispatched a notably pro-Israel Japanese lawmaker to Jordan to deal with the crisis. 

Strike 1, according to Nikkan Gendai‘s analysis, was Prime Minister Abe's decision to send Yasuhide Nakayama, a deputy Minister of Foreign affairs, to Jordan to coordinate Japan's response to the crisis. 

Nakayama has long been seen as being close to Israel, something problematic when dealing ISIS, which as a nominally Islamic organization, according to Nikkan Gendai, naturally holds antipathy towards Israel. 

And sending someone known to be aligned with Israel to coordinate with Arab countries to release the hostages was a misstep as well, Nikkan Gendai asserts.

2) Abe delivered his response to ISIS's demands standing in front of an Israeli flag.
According to Nikkan Gendai's analysis, Strike 2 was Abe's decision to “resolutely condemn” ISIS's ransom demands as “despicable acts of terrorism” while standing in front of an Israeli flag in Jerusalem. 

Unfortunately for Prime Minister Abe, ISIS released its video of the hostages and its ransom demands during his state visit to Israel. Presumably, the emergency media briefing was held in the very same space where hours earlier Abe and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had held a joint press conference promising greater collaboration between the two countries. 

But that was no excuse for Abe to respond to ISIS in front of an Israeli flag, which Nikkan Gendai calls “clueless”, guaranteeing little support for Japan from the rest of the Arab world. 

3) By immediately stating Japan would never pay a ransom, Abe effectively delivered a death sentence to the two men. 

On January 21, the day ISIS released its ransom demands, Masahiko Komura, a senior member of Japan's governing party, stated that Japan would never pay. This effectively signed the death sentence for the two hostages, says Nikkan Gendai. 

The Nikkan Gendai article's term “triple fiasco” (３大失態) is a reference to the triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in March 2011 that devastated Japan. By the end of Friday January 23, the term ３大失態 had already generated dozens of online discussions on the Japanese internet.

(Global Voices)