By Eduardo Martinez,
On an early spring morning in a suburban Tokyo park, Hanin Siam stands proudly in her thobe, the blooming cherry blossoms around her in stark contrast with the rich red embroidery of the traditional garment from her native Palestine.
Siam moved to Japan with her family when she was seven years old amid a period of intense conflict in her birthplace of Gaza.
"I didn't know it wasn't normal until I left," she said, recalling how surprised she was to encounter "a world not filled with troops, random airstrikes, the sound of drones" or checkpoints.
For Siam, now 27, the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation is nothing new.
But after the world turned its attention to Gaza following Hamas' Oct. 7 attack last year, Siam gave up much of her ordinary life to dedicate herself to protesting for Palestinian liberation and participating in cultural events to educate others about her people and their history.
The thobe, she says, is traditionally worn on celebratory occasions. "They are cross-stitched by hand, which takes a lot of time," she said, adding that a thobe's patterns vary and are representative of what region in Palestine the wearer is from.
In 1948, some 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their homeland to make way for the creation of Israel. The event became known as the Nakba, meaning "catastrophe" in Arabic.
Many Palestinians say the Nakba never ended, referring to the numerous conflicts that have broken out with Israel over the decades, including the 2000-2005 second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, which Siam experienced as a child.
"I've personally lived through the horror of war," Siam said, "Although what we're seeing now...is on a completely different scale."
Over 36,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in response to Hamas' cross-border attacks, which killed over 1,200 in Israel and saw around 250 taken hostage.
Human rights groups have criticized Israel's military campaign for the huge number of civilian casualties it has inflicted, despite its government saying it is only targeting Hamas in Gaza.
In February, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to ensure its forces do not commit acts that could amount to genocide in Gaza, which it said was "plausible" given current events.
Then, last week, the ICJ ordered Israel to halt its assault on the southern Gazan district of Rafah. On Sunday alone, however, an Israeli airstrike hit a tent camp in a designated safe zone in Rafah, killing 45 Palestinians and drawing international condemnation as images spread online of the dead and the burning campsite.
In Tokyo, Siam and others have worked tirelessly to bring attention to what can be done to help Palestinians despite being thousands of kilometers away, such as collecting donations for Gazan families and putting pressure on Japanese firms to cut ties with Israel.
In February, Japanese trading giant Itochu Corp. said it was ending an agreement with Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems, citing the ICJ order.
But Siam believes public pressure, including an online petition submitted to Itochu with 25,000 signatures demanding it sever its ties with Elbit, also contributed to the decision.
"That was a great win for us," she said. "You need wins to keep that spirit with people, (it shows) we do actually have power."
Weam Numan's voice is one of the loudest at recent protests. A PhD student and game designer in Tokyo, Numan says her grandfather was expelled during the Nakba from his home in Zeita, now in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. He fled to a refugee camp in Jordan, the country of her birth.
Numan, 28, was wary of speaking to Kyodo News, saying she had negative experiences with media asking her to "cry on camera," while also rejecting the notion that Palestinians should play the "perfect victim."
"This conflation that a victim has to be perfect, that they forfeit all their rights for justice" if they react to injustice "doesn't make sense to me," she said.
Numan said she found it exhausting when Palestinians are referred to as activists. "We're not activists," she said, "It's just our home."
Amid growing support for the plight of Palestine around the world, some critics have labeled such movements antisemitic.
U.S. President Joe Biden said there had been a "ferocious surge" in antisemitism in the United States and around the world following Hamas' attacks during a speech in remembrance of the Holocaust earlier this month.
Jewish groups in the United States and other countries have also noted spikes in reported antisemetic incidents.
Organizers in Tokyo, however, have been explicit in stating their struggle is not against Judaism, but state violence.
Prior to a protest commemorating the anniversary of the Nakba on May 15, they advised a highly diverse crowd of supporters that no discrimination would be tolerated, including on the basis of ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.
Jews also count themselves among the supporters of the movement in Japan. Hannah Breslau, 28, is one of them.
Breslau, who is half-Japanese and half-Jewish American, said it "took years" of study to understand the Palestinian struggle, and what really led to a decision to reject Zionism, or the belief that supports the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, was anti-Zionist writing by Jewish scholars.
Tatiana, 26, who declined to give her surname, is half-Japanese and half-Palestinian. She led a recent protest march through Tokyo's busy Shibuya district, and while her family is able to travel to the Palestinian territories due to having Japanese passports, she said they refuse to go unless it is to a "liberated Palestine."
Tatiana said the protests get various responses from the public. "Sometimes you get positive reactions," she said, while sometimes people "give us dirty looks, as if we're inconveniencing them for asking (Israel) to stop killing our people."
"But If we don't do anything about it, then nothing changes," she said. "I hope the marches make people stop for a second, pay attention, and see why we're doing this."
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