Nobel
Prize Winner Günter Grass publishes poem, drawing condemnation
from Israeli diplomat, Jewish leaders, NGOs and politicians.
BERLIN – The German writer Günter Grass published a poem in three major newspapers
on Wednesday, including The New York Times, in which he accuses
Israel of jeopardizing world security.
In his writing, the 84-year-old poet and novelist aligns himself with the Islamic
Republic of Iran and calls for the administration of German
Chancellor Angela Merkel to stop its delivery of Dolphin
submarines to the Jewish state.
In response to Grass, Israel’s Embassy
in Berlin, Jewish leaders, NGOs and German politicians fiercely
criticized the writer, including accusations that he harbors
an anti-Semitic attitude and lacks Mideast political knowledge.
Grass, who revealed in 2006 that he
had been a member of the Nazi Waffen-SS, a group designed
to exclusively eliminate European Jewry during WWII, wrote
in his poem titled "What must be said," that “Why do I only say now, aged and with my last ink: The atomic power Israel
is endangering the already fragile world peace?”
The writer and Social Democratic party
activist was the winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize in literature
for his body of novels. His poem also appeared in European
papers, including the left-liberal German Süddeutsche Zeitung
and the Italian paper la Repubblica.
Israeli diplomats reacted swiftly
to Grass on Wednesday. Emmanuel Nahshon, deputy chief of
mission for the Israeli Embassy in Germany, said, “what must
be said is that it belongs to the European tradition to accuse
the Jews of ritual murder before the Passover celebration.”
“It used to be Christian children
whose blood the Jews used to make matza, today it is the
Iranian people that the Jewish state purportedly wants to
wipe out.”
Nahshon added that “We want to live
in peace with our neighbors in the region. And we are not
prepared to assume the role that Günter Grass assigns us
in the German people’s process of coming to terms with its
history.”
Grass wrote that Germany could be
a “supplier to a crime” in connection with Merkel’s decision
to supply Israel with a sixth nuclear-capable Super Dolphin-class
submarine.
“I admit: I will be silent no longer,
because I am sick of the hypocrisy of the West,” added Grass
in his poem.
Steffen Seibert, a spokesman for Merkel,
said: “In Germany, the freedom of artistic expression applies,
as, fortunately, does the freedom of the government not to
comment on every work of art.”
Speaking from Jerusalem via telephone,
Dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of the capital’s Simon Wiesenthal
Center and known as the world’s leading Nazi-hunter, told
The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday, “Günter Grass’s attack on
Israel and outrageous accusations against the Jewish state
are a reflection of the transformation of German anti-Semitism
in recent years.”
Zuroff continued: “While attacks on
individual Jews as Jews are politically incorrect and generally
unacceptable in the Federal Republic, Israel has become the
whipping boy for anti-Semitic Germans sick of the Holocaust
and seeking to rid themselves of any responsibility for its
aftermath."
“In this respect, the outrageous comments
by Grass are not unusually surprising, since his moral integrity
was totally compromised by his admission of service in the
Waffen-SS, and his status as a moral conscience for the country
in terms of facing its World War II guilt was obviously unjustified.”
Zuroff further said that “Grass is
speaking for a spectrum of ostensibly respectable Germans
who harbor anti-Semitic views which which cannot be uttered
at home in Germany, but can be directed at Israel, which
has become a symbol for the hated Jews. The tin drum he is
banging is not the one of moral conscience but of deep-seated
prejudice against the Jewish people, the primary victims
of German anti-Semitism, racism, and xenophobia.”
The Tin Drum, which Zuroff cited in
his criticism, is the name of Grass’s
most famous novel about the lead up to World War II in Poland
and Germany and the time during the war.
The Central Council of Jews in Germany
said Grass’s writing was an “aggressive pamphlet of agitation.”
Henryk M. Broder, a leading expert
on modern anti-Semitism and a German-Jewish journalist and
author, wrote that Grass is “the prototype of the educated
anti-Semite.”
Broder added in his Die Welt commentary
that “Grass has always had a problem with Jews but he has
never articulated it as clearly as with this ‘poem’… haunted
by feelings of guilt and shame and also driven by the desire
to settle history, he is now attempting to disarm the ‘cause
of the recognizable threat.”
Philipp Mißfelder, the foreign policy
spokesman for Merkel’s party in the Bundestag, told the daily
Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger that “the poem is tasteless and un-historic
and shows a lack of knowledge about the situation in the
Middle East.”
Grass received support from German
Left party deputy Wolfgang Gehrcke.
He said Grass has the “courage” to
say what is silenced. In the past Gehrcke has participated
in pro-Hamas and pro-Hezbollah rallies and has compared Israel
to Nazi Germany.
Critics accuse Gehrcke of spreading
hatred of Jews and Israel in the Federal Republic. The Left
Party has been engulfed in series of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic
scandals over the last few years.
“Günter Grass is turning the situation
upside-down by defending a brutal regime that not only disregards
but openly violates international agreements for many years,”
said Deidre Berger, director of the Berlin American Jewish
Committee/Ramer Institute.
“[Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad
bears responsibility for grave human rights violations, rejects
Israel’s right to exist and denies the Holocaust. It is a
grotesque reversal of reality to depict President Ahmadinejad
as an adventurous bragger while denouncing Israeli politicians
for their position countering Iranian aggression,” added
Berger.
“Grass is causing huge damage to German-Israeli
relations by depicting the Israeli government as criminal
while protecting the policies of Iran, the real instigators
of the conflict,” Berger said. “Grass asserts that criticism
of Israel is neither allowed and is in any case not anti-Semitic.
He is simply diverting attention from
the real issues. Instead of denouncing Israel, Günter Grass
should answer the question as to why he does not condemn
the many authoritarian regimes in the Middle East that, until
now, have made regional peace impossible. It might be useful
for him to reflect as well on his own controversial statements
regarding Germany’s Nazi past.
“In past years, Günter Grass has repeatedly
cast the Israeli government as the root of all evil in the
region. The author chose to release his newest attack on
Israel, whom he claims is threatening Iran, just two days
before the start of Passover, when Jews for time immemorial
have been murdered for alleged blood libel,” said Berger.
“Grass’s seeming indifference to Israel,
Jewish history and religion prompts the question as to his
own relation to German history." jpost.com
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