Japanese hotel refuses Israeli reservation over ‘actions taken against Palestinian people’

A hotel in Nagano, Japanese refused to take a reservation from an Israeli travel agency over "actions taken against the Palestinian people," local media reported Wednesday.

During negotiations with the Israeli travel agency, the company's management reportedly said that they were "dissatisfied with actions taken against the Palestinian people," Yomiuri Shimbun daily reported.

The Israeli Embassy sent a letter of protest to the local government on Oct. 21 after the incident and asked it to investigate.

After the investigation, Nagano's government issued a verbal warning to the hotel's operating company due to the decision being possibly perceived as a refusal based on nationality.

Earlier this year, a hotel in Kyoto asked an Israeli tourist to sign a declaration that he had not committed war crimes during his military service as a condition to check in.

Since October 2023, Israel has killed over 70,000 people, most of them women and children, and injured more than 171,000 in Gaza and reduced the enclave to rubble.