Why reward a moron like this??

How many thousand people are living in Japan without any rights? I talk about Koreans and other nationalities.

Once and for all, people need to understand that Palestine, as a sovereign nation, has never existed. During the Jewish diaspora, many Arab immigrants came into ' Palestine ' and called themselves Palestinians. The term ' Palestine ' came only into existence during the Roman empire. Israel has always been Jewish land. There is therefore ' no right of return ' for those Palestinian refugees.

Next time, Mr. Murakami please just stay home and if you have nothing nice to say to your hosts, just zip it.

Israel thinks that if they award foreigners nice prizes they will turn into Zionists and lovers of Israel. The truth is usually the opposite. These foreigners happily grab the Israeli money and then rush to the foreign media to condemn Israel. I don't know why we bother.

the country is small, there are places designated for building, and others remain rural

he obviously got a prize for living in his imaginations. he thinks he has a right to imagine actuality in another country, based on sensing the atmosphere, and his interpritation shall become consensus.

at least he would ask why doesn't israel like him enough to agree with everything he writes

up for the ceremony wearing an explosive belt! How about the Israel prize to chavez or the little monkey from iran?

that Mr. Murakami is receiving death-threats? Either that, or just like in his books, he is living in a world with no clearcut distinction between reality and imagination.

I had previously enjoyed Mukrahami's novels, but after his anti-Israel remarks, I will not be able to read his books anymore. Shame on him for accepting our prize and then damming us with his unwarrented criticism.

actually, he's often said that japan has too easily ignored its history of atrocities during WW II. still, it would be nice to know that someone the world is listening to would be responsible enough to examine the facts before he opens his oft-too-sealed lips. he did have the guts to come here in spite of threats and calls to the contrary. and i'm hoping that: 1. it was an utterance made to increase his chances with the nobel committee. and 2. he will eventually admit that he was wrong. after all - he stands to lose more jewish/israeli readers than gain arab/moslem ones.

muakami might try opening both eyes so he can see the truth.

just wondering...

Well, if he was so against "Cast Lead" and our policy, he had the opportunity NOT to accept the prize. Instead he chose to accept and then, a week later (after the check cleared the bank), his "conscience" had a rebirth. Another reurrection in Jerusalem. Slezoid hypocrite.

All theself righteous hypocrites! I no care what they think, they are not worth my annoyance! Their words are uneducated, hypocrytical and empy. Beginning in 1931 or 1932 and continuing throughout the duration of the Asian/Pacific wars, the Japanese Government instituted a system of sexual slavery throughout the territories it occupied.1 During that time, women were recruited by force, coercion, or deception into sexual slavery for the Japanese military. These women were referred to as "comfort women" by the Japanese Imperial Army. Although historians often disagree about the number of "comfort women," the most widely used figure is estimated at 200,000 .

Please forgive me my nice Israeli friends but I had to say that because I am worried about my book sales in other parts of the middle east. So thanks for the prize and I didn't really mean what i said and I hope this doesn't effect my book sales with Jewish people or Israelis but you know, there are less Jews in the world than Arabs and Moslems, sorry for being a slimeball liar.

Israelis are patriotic and so are Japanese, that is not wrong at all. A little knowledge can be more harmful especially it ones chooses to speak publicly on the "subject" It sounded like he has been told things ("The schools instill it in them through the official history"( Is their and unofficial one that he knows better? Seems he needs to read up far more. His psychological profiling of Israelis is superficial at best. In trying to understand he has made some very big generalisations. Not bad for a novice though. Better luck next time. Though if I were him I would not have come to Israel pretending to be a friend - Israeli prefer up front honesty , even if it seems rude, to polite deception.

I expected the author of 'The Underground' would have a more nuanced and perceptive view of the situation in Israel. Based on his latest article, however, he might as well be an Aum Sinrikyo propagandist. The pleasure of reading Murakami's books (I have read every single one available in translation) was the incredible level of nuance and deep understanding of human nature. I am now allowing the thought that perhaps what I took for insight was just slick stylistic professionalism. Yes, Haruki Murakami, as you yourself have said you, are a lier. I feel like I am saying good bye to a friend that stabbed me in the back. Good bye!

We seem to kowtow to every idiot on this planet,not only kowtow to them but also give them prizes to spit in our faces.When do we start to fight back. Sucking up to them doesn't work,do what the Muslims do,they use every dirty trick in the book,and some.No one loves losers.

As an Asian whose family suffered under the Japs,I will tell this fraud to shut his mouth,the Japanese till today haven't acknowledged their sick barbaric cruel occupation of Asia.They tortured and murdered millions in WW2.And they have never repented for their sick occupation of Asia.In fact they have completely ignored it.

Your article's audience (Japanese public) is hardly a friend of Jews or Israel. The perceptions within your country are firmly skewed in favor of the Arab narrative. Instead of enlightening and offering a different perspective, you use your podium to feed more crude one-sided generalizations to an anti-Israeli choir. What is even more appalling is your adopted stance as someone who "has been there and witnessed things", using two anecdotal examples to tar and feather an entire society (a society, incidentally, with the highest proportion of your readers outside Japan, which largely shares your humanist values) No, Haruki Murakami, you are certainly no egg. You have firmly taken up a niche in the monolithic wall of deligitimization and denial of the basic rights of Jews and Israelis to live in live in peace in our national homeland, to defend ourselves against the 60-year concerted effort to wipe out our tiny country by dozens of far more powerful states. Your comments after visiting Yad Vashem are an epitomy of callousness. After viewing the documents of the horror of annihilation of 1/2 of world's Jewish population, you so 'perceptively' conclude that "Israel is suffering from some kind of trauma"...then going on with some pop-psycho-babble of an analysis. Trauma!?! Did it take a lot of contemplation for you to realize it? Yes, we are suffering from trauma. A trauma of six million fragile eggs being broken against a cold solid wall. A trauma of seeing former 'friends' joining the wall, deligitimizing and denying our humanity. The wall that is tightening to crush the rest of us. The wall, of which you have now declared yourself a part.

Murakami is saying something every single Israeli knows. Yet it is besides the reality of Israel's history and the context. You deduced they suffer from Trauma because of Yad Vashem? What about suffering trauma from every single war it has had to fight against its neighbors, constantly surrounded by threat, suicide bombings, rocket fire, and silent cold wars between its neighbors? Duuuuuuuuuuuh.

If he was alive and a diplomat in Europe,he would not saved Jews.Thank God for a Japanese diplomat who saved a lot Jews during the Holocaust. Remember Bataan Death March? My mom told me tha during WW II ,Filipinos dug their own graves and Japanese pushed them into the graves they dug.

to Caleb,forefather of the Jewish people? Why don't you blame your leaders for not taking care of you! They don't care about you and your people.They built shelters for Hamas and their weapons but not for your people.

with your spouse.I know a lot of Filipinos that are married to Japanese, every 6 months they go home to renew their visa or something.It's very inconvenient. They're very nationalistic people. They can be mean,if you accidentally park in their drive way.They maybe nice to Americans,but to me as Asian,they can be mean.They feel that they're above us.

It is kind of funny. Japan is possibly the most racist country in the world. I am not exaggerating.

This quote especially strikes the point: "encounters with Israelis he describes reflect a racist, militant and aggressive society." The talkbackers here on Ynet only further indicate what kind of society this "democracy" is.

Unfortunately you have become guilty to great manipulations of the history that even Israeli historians have pointed out. ((During the Jewish diaspora, many Arab immigrants came into ' Palestine ' and called themselves Palestinians)) Never mind that over 500 villages were expelled of its inhabitants in 1948, most of them dating back for centuries, with Palestinian Arabic majorities in all areas. Never mind that you talk of an Arabic immigration (population from 400,000 in 1890 to circa 1 million in 1948, 250% increase in 60 years) and not of a European Jewish one (43,000 in 1890 to circa 630,000 in 1947, a 1465% increase in population!) and yet you give legitimacy to the latter. There has been so much denial, so much that is being covered up, "debated" in a sense of destroying and revising history; it's all stimulated by people who had bad intentions (expel Palestinians), intending to use the result to their own benefit (a state of their own), before these bad intentions became their basis of decision making and ideology (everything from 1948 to the present). Your post reveals that you have fallen victim to this. If you want to learn history, PLEASE do not look at sources like Ynet for answers.

I think that Mr. Murakami is right, and the Israelis are right. That is the problem.