"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg. . . . 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. . . . 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."
Though many of his compatriots criticized him for accepting Israel's Jerusalem Prize for 2009, Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami nonetheless went to Israel to accept it. In his moving acceptance speech, delivered in English on Feb. 20, Murakami identified with the Palestinian victims, the eggs, against what he called "the System" that Israel has created in various physical and psychological forms to contain and isolate Palestinians.
"The System," said Murakami in this speech, "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."