JERUSALEM—Israel's
prime minister lambasted German poet and Nobel Prize laureate
Günter Grass on Thursday for saying Israel is a threat to
world peace and for calling for international oversight of
both Israeli and Iranian nuclear facilities.
The 84-year-old Mr. Grass published a poem in a German newspaper on Wednesday
in which he questioned how Israel could call for ending Iran's
nuclear program while holding what is widely believed to
be its own atomic arsenal.
Mr. Grass said he wrote the poem,
titled "What Must Be Said," after Berlin sold Israel submarines that could launch nuclear warheads and that
could potentially be used in an attack on Iran. He noted
that for years he resisted criticizing Israel's nuclear program
for fear of being labeled an anti-Semite.
In the poem, published in the Sueddeutsche
Zeitung and Italy's La Repubblica, among others, Mr. Grass
said "the nuclear power Israel is endangering the already fragile world peace."
He also called for "unhindered
and permanent control of Israel's nuclear capability and
Iran's atomic facilities through an international body."
Benjamin Netanyahu blasted Mr. Grass
for comparing Israel to Iran.
"Günter Grass's shameful
moral equivalence between Israel and Iran, a regime that
denies the Holocaust and threatens to annihilate Israel,
says little about Israel and much about Mr. Grass," Mr. Netanyahu said.
He also noted that Mr. Grass, late
in his career, admitted to serving in the Nazi paramilitary
unit the Waffen SS.
"So for him to cast the
one and only Jewish state as the greatest threat to world
peace and to oppose giving Israel the means to defend itself
is perhaps not surprising," the Israeli leader added.
Israel has never admitted it has nuclear
weapons, preferring a policy of nuclear ambiguity. In 1986,
technician Mordechai Vanunu carried hundreds of pictures
he took of the Israeli nuclear reactor out of the country
and gave them to the London Sunday Times. From his photos
and information, experts concluded Israel had hundreds of
nuclear bombs.
Israel has also ignored calls to join
the nonproliferation treaty, which requires members to open
nuclear facilities to inspection and to disarm.
Tehran claims its nuclear program
is for peaceful purposes, but Israel and the West believe
it is pursuing atomic weapons. Israel has threatened military
action if international sanctions and diplomacy fail to curb
Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Mr. Grass established himself as a
leading literary figure with "The Tin Drum," published in 1959, and won the Nobel Literature Prize in 1999. He urged fellow
Germans to confront their painful Nazi history in the decades
after World War II. He admitted to his SS service in a 2006
autobiography.
Mr. Netanyahu's comments joined a
chorus of condemnations from the Jewish community and German
leaders.
Abraham Foxman, national director
of the Anti-Defamation League, called Mr. Grass's comments "shocking."
"Grass appears convinced
that Israel is the wrongdoer at a time when most responsible
countries and people are calling on Iran to abandon its nuclear-weapons
ambitions," Mr. Foxman said.
Efraim Zuroff, who leads the Nazi-hunting
Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, said Mr. Grass' poem
is a sign of Israel "becoming the whipping boy for the frustrations of those who are sick of hearing
about the Holocaust."
The head of the German Parliament's
foreign-affairs committee—lawmaker Ruprecht Polenz, a member
of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats—told the
daily Mitteldeutsche Zeitung that Mr. Grass is a great author, "but he always has difficulties when he speak about politics and mostly gets it
wrong." online.wsj.com
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