Last month, the Japanese author Haruki Murakami accepted the Jerusalem Prize as part of the Jerusalem International Book Fair. Murakami was widely criticized for attending and rejecting calls to boycott the event. At the award ceremony Murakami addressed the controversy in his acceptance speech:
I chose to come here rather than stay away. I chose to see for
myself rather than not to see. I chose to speak to you rather than to
say nothing.Please do allow me to deliver one very personal
message. It is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing
fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper
and paste it to the wall: rather, it is carved into the wall of my
mind, and it goes something like this:"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg."
Yes,
no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand
with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what
is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist
who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what
value would such works be?What is the meaning of this metaphor?
In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and
rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs
are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them.This
is not all, though. It carries a deeper meaning. Think of it this way.
Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique,
irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and
it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser
degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: it is
"the System." The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it
takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us
to kill others — coldly, efficiently, systematically.
Murakami's speech was greeted with some confusion in the Israeli press. He is now making his point a bit clearer back in Japan.
Murakami has written about his experience in a recent article in the Shunjuu Bungei literary journal. Although he did not venture into Gaza or far into the West Bank, he had enough experiences in Jerusalem to get the picture. Murakami says he witnessed "an Israeli soldier [take] an entire family out of their
car and beat up the father in front of his children." He also describes seeing the Separation Wall driving with an Israeli taxi driver, "I asked him what was the purpose of the security wall that
runs along the highway. He replied that it was there in order to keep
the animals from crossing the border." Murakami continues,
"Israel has adopted a policy that seals off
the Palestinians inside the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, a policy that
denies the refugees' right to return to their land in order to protect
the interests of the Jewish people; this is unjust," Murakami writes.While Murakami notes that "Israel
isn't a tyrannical state and is founded on free speech," the encounters
with Israelis he describes reflect a racist, militant and aggressive
society."I sense a very strong patriotic approach
when I talk to Israelis. The schools instill it in them through the
official history, and three years of military service for boys and two
years for girls is mandatory," he writes.Murakami claims that Israelis fail to understand that their
policy towards the Palestinians is wrong. "Palestinians have to undergo
thorough security checks whenever they want to go somewhere and their
economic activity is limited. They are not free to build their homes
when and where they want to, and in fact have no sovereignty over their
land," he explains.
The egg has spoken.
