Short answer: No. There is no record of Haruki Murakami endorsing or supporting Israel politically. He accepted Israel's Jerusalem Prize in 2009 despite calls to boycott the ceremony, but he used his acceptance speech to criticize war and state power in general, and within weeks of his Jerusalem visit he published an essay explicitly calling Israel's West Bank and Gaza policy "unjust." No donations, event appearances beyond the 2009 ceremony, boycott refusals, or Jewish-identity connection turned up. No statement from him on the 2023-2026 Israel-Hamas war was found in any reputable outlet as of August 2026.
What Haruki Murakami has actually said and done
1985 (Japan); 1991 in English translation: Murakami's novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World includes a fictional, offhand line imagining "Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village" as one item in a list of possible disasters. It is a line of fiction, not a real-world political statement, but a Times of Israel blog later cited it as evidence of his general disposition toward Israel.
February 17, 2009: Murakami traveled to Jerusalem and accepted the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society, despite public pressure and calls from pro-Palestinian groups to boycott the ceremony over Israel's military campaign in Gaza that winter, in which more than 1,000 people had died. In his acceptance speech, titled "Of Walls and Eggs," he said, "Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg," and said "I do not approve of any war, and I do not support any nation." He did not endorse Israel's policies, according to Haaretz.
Around November 2009 (published in the December 2009 issue of Bungei Shunju, reported December 3, 2009): About a month after his Jerusalem trip, Murakami published an essay explicitly criticizing Israeli policy. He wrote that 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." He also wrote that Israeli society showed strong nationalism and that Israel "suffers from some sort of trauma" leading to disproportionate responses, while noting he had not visited Gaza or the West Bank himself, per Ynetnews.
June 2, 2022: A Times of Israel blog by Mitchell James Kaplan revisited the 1985 novel line above, arguing it reflected a "hard-boiled anti-Israel line," but concluding it was not antisemitic, more a symptom of unexamined one-sided framing common in literary circles.
October 2024 (context only): Over 1,000 authors, later more than 7,000, signed a public letter organized by the Palestine Festival of Literature vowing to boycott Israeli literary institutions over the Gaza war, as reported by Truthout. Searches found no reporting that Murakami was among the signatories, and no outlet lists him on the letter.
July 3, 2026: Murakami is confirmed alive and active. His newest novel went on sale in Japan, with midnight release events at Tokyo bookstores, and he gave press comments about AI and literature, according to The Japan Times. No statement on Israel, Gaza, or Jewish identity appeared in this coverage.
The context behind the question
Haruki Murakami is one of the world's best-known living novelists, the author of Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore, and 1Q84, and Japan's most internationally recognized literary voice. His actual public record on Israel runs in the opposite direction from "support." In 2009 he accepted the Jerusalem Prize in person in Jerusalem, over objections from pro-Palestinian groups who wanted him to boycott it, and used the platform to deliver a pointed anti-war, anti-state-power speech without praising Israel. Within weeks of that trip he went further in a Japanese literary essay, explicitly calling Israel's policy toward Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza "unjust." A 2022 Times of Israel blog also flagged a brief fictional aside in one of his 1980s novels as reflecting an unexamined anti-Israel framing, though the author of that piece concluded it was not antisemitic. No reputable source turned up any donation, Israel-focused public appearance beyond the single 2009 prize ceremony, boycott refusal, statement of solidarity with Israel, or Jewish-identity connection. Extensive searches covering the 2023-2026 Israel-Hamas war period and the 2024 authors' boycott letter against Israeli literary institutions found no on-record Murakami statement about that war at all, and no evidence he signed the 2024 letter either. He remains alive and publishing as of mid-2026.
The bottom line
Haruki Murakami does not support Israel. His only direct, on-record engagement with Israel is critical: he accepted the 2009 Jerusalem Prize as a platform to warn against state power and war in the abstract, then followed it with an essay explicitly calling Israeli policy toward Palestinians "unjust." There is no donation, no pro-Israel statement, no boycott refusal in Israel's favor, and no Jewish-identity link in his record. He has made no public statement, positive or negative, about the 2023-2026 Israel-Hamas war as far as this research could confirm.
Wear your support, regardless of who else does
Celebrities and public figures come and go on this question, but plenty of people don't need a novelist's endorsement to say where they stand. If you want to make your own position clear, our I Stand With Israel collection has pieces built for exactly that, simple, wearable ways to show support for Israel every day.
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Last updated August 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.
