博客

Thirty-five-year-old Shoko Kawata, mayor of the small scenic town of Yawata south of Kyoto, is about to make unprecedented history in Japanese politics: she will become the first Japanese sitting mayor to take maternity leave. What she expected would be a routine announcement of personal leave has instead thrown her into the center of a fierce national conversation, a conversation that cuts to the core of Japan’s ongoing struggles with falling birth rates, gender representation in public office, and outdated workplace norms.

Kawata, who made history three years ago as Japan’s youngest female city mayor when she took office at 33, has always navigated a heavily male-dominated political landscape. As of 2025, just 4% of Japan’s 1,720 municipal leaders are women, and the country ranks 118th out of 146 nations on the World Economic Forum’s 2025 Global Gender Gap Index – the lowest performer among G7 countries. Even with Japan’s first female prime minister in office, successive governments have faced widespread criticism for failing to implement meaningful policies to remove barriers that keep women out of politics. A 2025 Cabinet Office survey explicitly named pregnancy, the pervasive cultural assumption that politics is a male sphere, and systemic harassment as the top obstacles holding women back from public service.

Because no existing legal framework outlines maternity leave provisions for locally elected officials in Japan, Kawata cannot take formally recognized maternity leave. Instead, she has arranged for her 62-year-old deputy mayor Shigeto Nose to act as interim mayor during her four-month absence: two months leading up to her mid-September due date, and two months following childbirth. Nose, a father of two who never took parental leave himself and now sees his own son-in-law taking six months of leave to care for his second child, will hold full mayoral authority during Kawata’s leave, with a weekly remote check-in to discuss major municipal matters. Kawata’s in-office colleagues, who have an average age of 39, have all voiced full support for her decision.

Public reaction, however, has been sharply divided, with thousands of posts on X and dozens of YouTube videos weighing in on the debate. Supporters argue that Kawata’s choice breaks new ground for working women across Japan, pointing out that Japanese society has long failed to build institutional support for pregnant people in public and professional life. Many praise her for normalizing the idea that women do not have to choose between holding public office and building a family, noting that her precedent will make it easier for other women to pursue political careers in the future.

Critics, by contrast, have labeled her decision irresponsible. Some argue that if she wanted to have a child, she should have done so before running for office, while others demand that she resign for taking an extended leave from public duties or that her salary be cut during her time away.

Kawata has pushed back firmly against these criticisms. She remains unapologetic about her choice to start a family while serving in office, noting that barring elected officials from taking maternity leave effectively excludes all women of childbearing age – women in their 20s through 40s – from holding public office. “We really need to create a society where it’s so common for women to do both – and not have to choose between working and having a family,” she said in an interview with the BBC.

Former Akitakata city mayor Shinji Ishimaru framed the debate as an opportunity for constructive change, noting that while most people agree maternity leave is a positive right, the conversation needs to focus on creating clear systems to ensure public services are not disrupted when elected officials take leave. Kawata’s groundbreaking move has already shone a bright spotlight on the gaps in Japan’s workplace policies, even for elected officials, and is pushing the country to confront long-held cultural norms that have held back gender equality for decades.

On Wednesday, a contentious Israeli bill that would impose strict new restrictions on the Muslim call to prayer, known as the adhan, cleared its first major legislative hurdle, passing a preliminary reading in the Knesset by a vote of 50 to 36. The legislation, tabled by lawmaker Zvika Fogel of the far-right party led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, now moves to a parliamentary committee for further review before advancing to a series of additional votes required to become law. If enacted, the bill would require all mosques to obtain official government approval to install and operate loudspeaker systems for the adhan, which is called five times daily.

Permits would be issued at the discretion of Israeli authorities, with eligibility tied to a set of criteria including maximum noise levels, required sound-mitigation infrastructure, geographic location of the mosque, proximity to residential neighborhoods, and documented impact on local residents. The bill also grants Israeli police broad authority to immediately shut down any unapproved or non-compliant sound systems, allows for full confiscation of audio equipment after repeated violations, and imposes steep financial penalties: up to 50,000 Israeli new shekels (approximately $16,700) for operating without a permit, and up to 10,000 shekels (around $3,300) for violating permit terms. Ben Gvir and Fogel have framed the proposal as a necessary public health measure, arguing the volume of the adhan constitutes intrusive noise pollution that harms nearby communities.

The legislation has triggered fierce condemnation from Palestinian leaders, rights advocates and religious communities, who decry it as an deliberate attack on Islamic religious practice and a declaration of religious war. Speaking to Middle East Eye, Khaled Zabarqa, a human rights lawyer based in Lod, called the framing of the adhan as a mere noise problem a direct insult to Muslim religious identity. “By justifying this proposed legislation, the Israeli government is laying the groundwork for a religious war within the country,” Zabarqa said, noting the bill forms part of a wider state-led campaign to “Judaise public space” by erasing non-Jewish religious symbols. He added that targeting the adhan and mosque minarets specifically, which anchor the Islamic and Palestinian identity of public spaces across historic Palestine, makes the legislation’s discriminatory goals clear, warning that Palestinian communities will not accept the targeting of their core religious rituals.

The Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem Governorate has also joined in condemnation, warning that the bill could have severe ramifications for the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites located in occupied East Jerusalem. While the legislation’s text does not explicitly state whether it would apply to Al-Aqsa – a site that Israel annexed in 1980 in a move unrecognized by the international community, which universally classifies East Jerusalem as occupied Palestinian territory – Palestinian officials warn the law sets a dangerous precedent for further interference at the site. “The proposed law exposes the true nature of the occupying state as an apartheid system that uses its legislative tools to impose religious persecution,” the governorate said in an official statement.

Omar Rajoub, director of the Jerusalem Governorate’s media office, emphasized that the bill is not a targeted response to noise pollution, but part of a long-running policy to erode Palestinian religious and cultural identity, particularly in Jerusalem. “In Jerusalem in particular, the proposed legislation comes amid an unprecedented escalation in measures targeting the city’s Islamic character,” Rajoub told Middle East Eye, pointing to ongoing Israeli incursions into Al-Aqsa, restrictions on Muslim worshippers’ access, removals of senior Islamic religious leaders and mosque caretakers, and growing interference in the independent administration of Islamic religious affairs. Rajoub added that the bill’s impact extends far beyond noise regulation, as it would formalize Israeli state control over the internal affairs of mosques and open the door to even more raids and restrictions under the cover of legal authority.

A growing wave of primary election victories by left-wing Democratic candidates critical of Israel has sent shockwaves through Israeli media and pro-Israel advocacy circles, with commentators warning that unwavering backing for Israel can no longer be counted on as a path to political success in U.S. Democratic politics.

The most high-profile of these upset wins came Tuesday in Colorado, where democratic socialist Melat Kiros defeated 15-term incumbent pro-Israel U.S. Representative Diana DeGette. Kiros’s triumph is not an isolated outlier: it follows a string of similar wins by left-wing candidates who have openly challenged Israel’s outsized influence on American policy, condemned the ongoing military campaign in Gaza, and labeled Israel an apartheid state. Prior to Kiros’s win, three democratic socialist candidates endorsed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani claimed victory in their primaries, alongside one winner in a Philadelphia congressional primary and another in the Democratic primary for Washington, D.C.’s mayoral race.

The Democratic Socialists of America, a left-leaning faction that regularly challenges establishment Democratic candidates in primary contests, has rapidly emerged as a formidable force shaping the direction of the broader American left. For Israeli political and media institutions, however, these results are far more than a footnote in domestic U.S. politics. Israeli outlets have universally framed the upset wins as clear evidence that Israel’s standing among U.S. voters — and particularly among Democratic base voters — is crumbling in the wake of Israel’s concurrent military operations across Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.

In a Thursday editorial from The Jerusalem Post, a publication whose owner has longstanding close ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, editors warned that the Democratic Party is drifting steadily further from its decades-long bipartisan alignment with Israel. “Who would have thought that we would ever be looking back nostalgically on the days when the anti-Israel ‘Squad’ in the US Congress numbered only four people?” the editorial read.

The Squad, the informal caucus of progressive Democratic lawmakers first formed with four founding members — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib — first rose to prominence for pushing the Democratic Party leftward on issues including healthcare, climate justice, racial justice, and Palestinian rights. Nearly all of the newest wave of primary-winning candidates have built their campaign platforms around a shared set of progressive priorities that go beyond domestic policy: alongside calls for universal healthcare, a universal basic income, and publicly operated grocery stores, they demand an end to U.S. military aid to Israel, a halt to what they term the genocide in Gaza, and formal recognition of Israel as an apartheid state.

The Jerusalem Post framed the string of left-wing upsets as a fundamental “Israel problem” for the Democratic Party, arguing that the growing influence of these candidates is already reshaping the party’s core priorities, altering how sitting Democratic politicians engage with the topic of Israel, and rewrites the rules of public debate around the U.S.-Israel relationship. That sense of anxiety is echoed across Israeli media, including another leading outlet, The Times of Israel.

One Times of Israel contributor compared the recent democratic socialist wins in New York to the 1917 Russian Revolution that established the Soviet Union, framing the results as an urgent “cautionary tale” for pro-Israel groups. Another writer at the outlet argued that the resounding primary victories prove a new generation of Democratic voters has fundamentally turned against Israel.

These election results align with a dramatic, well-documented shift in U.S. public opinion toward Israel. Recent polling from the Pew Research Center finds that nearly 80 percent of Democratic and independent voters hold critical views of Israel’s policies. A June 24 survey from Quinnipiac University further underscores this shift: 48 percent of all American voters say the U.S. is “too supportive” of Israel, compared to just 38 percent who say current levels of support are appropriate, and 7 percent who say the U.S. is not supportive enough.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency noted that New York’s recent primary results have felt far more seismic than Mamdani’s own upset win for New York City Hall last November. “Being staunchly anti-Israel is no longer a road block to success in Democratic politics… This is the first time that incumbent congressmen have lost their seats in campaigns in which they were repeatedly attacked for being too supportive of Israel,” the outlet reported. Regardless of the local issues that shaped each individual race, the JTA added, the success of candidates who openly criticized both Israel and the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) sends an unmistakable, transformative message to the party.

The Free Press, a pro-Israel publication founded by Bari Weiss — the current controversial editor-in-chief of CBS News — framed the primary upsets as part of a growing ideological civil war within the Democratic Party, pitting the party’s old, pro-Israel establishment guard against an insurgent grassroots left it describes as “virulently anti-Israel”.

Even among more liberal Israeli outlets, the implications of the shift are clear. In an opinion piece for Haaretz, one writer noted that “The new mayor [Mamdani] has remade his city’s politics, at the expense of pro-Israeli incumbents who were tossed aside”, adding that much of the “political ammunition” used against those incumbents was “Made in Israel” — a reference to growing anger over Israel’s military actions in Gaza. Another analysis in Haaretz argued that the victories of Israel-critical Democrats demanding a break from the long-standing status quo of the U.S.-Israel relationship are “now a feature of Democratic Party demands rather than a bug”. The analysis added that Democratic voters are not only frustrated with the Israeli policies AIPAC defends, but also with AIPAC’s outsized role as an outside spender in Democratic primary races — spending often fueled by mega-donors from the Republican party.