There is North Korea and its autistic tyrant, equipped with a by and large operational nuclear arsenal.
There is Pakistan, armed with warheads -- no one knows how many, nor precisely where they are located, nor what guarantees we have that they will not, one day, fall into the hands of groups linked to Al Qaeda.
There is Putin's Russia, which, in the space of two wars, has accomplished the exploit of exterminating a quarter of the population of Chechnya.
There is the butcher of Damascus, whose body count so far is at 10,000 and whose criminal stubbornness threatens the region's peace.
There is Iran, of course, whose leaders have made it known that their nuclear arms, when they will have acquired them, will serve to strike one of their neighbors.
In short, we are living on a planet where candidates for the most officially pyromaniac State, openly aiming at its own citizens and the surrounding populations, threatening the world with conflagrations or disasters unprecedented in decades, are by no means lacking.
Yet here is a European writer, one of the greatest and most eminent, for he is Nobel prize laureate Günter Grass, who has nothing better to do than to publish a poem in which he explains that there is only one serious threat hanging over our heads, and that this threat comes from a tiny country, one of the smallest in the world, one of the most vulnerable as well and, by the by, a democracy: the State of Israel.
This declaration filled the fanatics who reign in Tehran with pleasure, so much so that, through the intermediary of their Minister of Culture, Javad Shamaghdari, they could not wait to praise the "humanity" and the "spirit of responsibility" of the author of The Tin Drum.
It was the object of ecstatic comments in Germany and throughout the world, among all the Pavlovian cretins who confuse the refusal of the politically correct with the right to let loose and, in so doing, liberate the stench of the most pestilential of thoughts.
It was the occasion for the habitual and boring debate about the "mystery of the great writer capable of being a coward or a scoundrel" (Céline, Ezra Pound) or, worse still, about the "moral indignity, or the lie, that must never be literary arguments" (in consideration of which one permits throngs of sub-Célines or poor man's Pounds to wallow in abjection).
But, for the observer with a bit of common sense, the affair inspires three simple observations.
The poverty of spirit sometimes characteristic of great age. This terrible moment, which even the most glorious are not spared, when a sort of intellectual anosognosia causes all the dikes that usually hold back the flood of the ignominious to crumble. "Farewell, old man, and think of me if you have read me" (Lautréamont, -Maldoror , Chant 1).
Grass's own past. What he admitted six years ago, when he told of joining a Waffen SS unit at 17. How can one not think of it today? How can one fail to make the connection between the two sequences? Between this and that, between the Burgrave social democrat confessing that he learned the ropes under the Nazis and the scoundrel who declares today, like anyone else who is nostalgic for a fascism that has become taboo, that he can no longer remain silent, that what he is saying "must" be said, that the Germans are "already sufficiently burdened" (one wonders with what) without becoming, what's more, "complicit" in the present and future "crimes" of Israel. Isn't the connexion, unfortunately, patently obvious?
And then, Germany. Europe and Germany. Or Germany and Europe. This ill wind that blows across Europe and has filled the sails of what one is compelled to call a neo-antisemitism. No longer racist antisemitism. Nor Christian. Nor even anti-Christian. Nor, really, anticapitalist, as it was at the beginning of the 20th century. No. The new antisemitism. The one that has a chance of being audible and, before that, expressed, only if it can identify "being Jewish" with the supposedly criminal identity of the State of Israel, ready to launch its thunderbolts upon the innocent Iranian State. This is what Günter Grass is doing. And this is what makes this affair terribly indicative.
In my mind's eye, I can see Günter Grass in Berlin in 1983, on Willy Brandt's birthday.
I hear him, first from the rostrum, then sitting down at a table, surrounded by a small group of admirers, his hair thick, his speech dense, looking a bit like Bertolt Brecht in his oval-framed glasses, his heavy face, cheeks trembling with feigned emotion as he urges his comrades to look their famous "past that is not past" in the face.
And here he is, 30 years later, in the exact same situation of those men who suffer from a hole in the memory, unwitting fascists, unwillingly haunted, that he invited, that very night, to come to terms with their unspeakable reservations. Posture and imposture; a statue made of sand and a sideshow; the Commander was a Tartuffe, the teacher of morality the very incarnation of the immorality he assailed. Günter Grass, this big fish of letters, this turbot, frozen by 60 years of posing and lies, has finally decomposed. And that, to the letter, is what is called a debacle -- how sad.
Alan Dershowitz: Gunter Grass Shouldn't Be Barred From Israel
Israel Bars Günter Grass Over Poem - NYTimes.com
Günter Grass's Poem, and the Israeli Reaction - NYTimes.com
Israel bars German author Gunter Grass over poem | The Raw Story
Günter Grass, Israel and the crime of poetry - Opinion - Al Jazeera ...
The Hindu : News / International : Outcry as Gunter Grass poem ...
Following poem, Israel bans German author Guenter Grass from ...
Günter Grass barred from Israel over poem | World news | guardian ...
Netanayahu blasts Gunter Grass poem | JTA - Jewish & Israel News
http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name
Günter Grass aimed for publicity and he got it. Now it is time to use this publicity to help solving the conflict. The moment has come to show that literature is able to solve conflicts and problems and not only describe them or hit others with words...... Is Grass able to show this?
Hans-Jürgen John from johntext.de - literature with purpose to help
No, I haven't read the poem. Frankly, the whole Israel vs her neighbors stuff is just cut and paste by now. Nothing new.
What Levy fails to see (or understand?) is that there is currently an international agenda to make a preemptive attack on Iran as there is a fear that they may be developing nuclear weapons (and not even now, but in the future).
All Grass meant in his poem is to prevent the war between Israel and Iran to happen by revising nuclear potential in both countries. How should Iran allow any international experts in if there is a threatening Israel nearby calling for invasion?
Interesting how many opinions on the poem and Grass you can find but almost no real analysis of the text, neither quotations.
Feel free to "like" FB page "I support Gunter Grass What Must Be Said" if you indeed support him.
TACTIC 1. "point to other 'bad' countries" - a criminal's defense 'look at them your honor, stop picking on me!' what is implicit here is that there is no denial of guilt. Further, none of these have threatened or actually attacked their neighbors in modern times. 1967: Israel attacked Egypt and ignited a regional war. 1982: attacked Lebanon, destroyed their infrastructure, & orchestrated the massacres in Sabra and Shatila. 1996: attacked Lebanon, again, committing another massacre at Qana (Butros Gali was relieved of his UN post b/c he pushed to hold Israel accountable). 1981: attacked Iraq, unprovoked. 2007: Israel attacked Syria, unprovoked. 2006: Israel attacked Lebanon, again, unprovoked, decimating the south. This is not to mention repeated atrocities against Palestinians, nor the fact that it illegally occupies parts of Lebanon (no, they did not fully withdraw), Syria, and of course, Palestine.
TACTIC 2. "emphasize 'poor little Israel'" - in fact, Israel is not the tiny 'most vulnerable' state, but a nuclear power, armed with the most sophisticated death machines ever known, which it unleashes regularly against its neighbors and against the unarmed civilian population it is ethnically cleansing from the land.
TACTIC 3: "repeat the 'only democracy' mantra" - A state with multi-tiered legal and social infrastructure that judges the worth of a human being based on his/her religion is not a democracy. It is an Apartheid State.
TACTIC 4: "Invoke the Jewish holocaust and scream anti-Semitism" - really?
Why, for example, did our government without much debate finance 1/3rd of the 6th Dolphin U-boat Israel ordered in 2011? Why was there no debate about the fact that the first two were entirely paid by Germany, the third was paid 50:50 and the other two also 1/3rd financed by Germany?
Why are these not conventional U-boats like the German navy uses but some with special torpedo tubes that allow to be refitted for the use of nukes?
It was interesting to watch in German media: Politicians mostly stayed away from the entire debate. There was a lot of outrage from all sorts of senior journalists, writers and senior celebrity.
But then they obviously noted that the reaction in forums, blogs, etc. was quite different, very extensive and much more pronounced.
so why do you allways have to drag others into your internal issues?
Not directly, no, because what Israel does or does not ... we have very little influence on that. Israel is a sovereign nation. The question is - and Grass raises that - how not become complicit in something that probably a majority of Germans opposes? Because there is this huge gap between the German political leadership and our public debate/consent/opinion. In simple terms: Do we still have a special obligation towards Israel? And if not, how does this change in attitude - from "special obligation" to normal "friendly relations" - translate into political actions?
One might feel sorry for Günter Grass were he not so dangerous, exploiting his reputation—even if it is based on one undoubted success—to foster a deception that encourages the enemy who schemes not only Israel’s, but our demise as well. It is no surprise that Iranian Deputy Culture Minister Javad Shamaqdiri has eulogized Grass’ poem as a “literary work of human and historical responsibility [that] warns beautifully.” What must be said is that Günter Grass is a pitiable specimen of bad faith and muddled thinking who sounds current, given that he parrots the Leftist line, but is actually superannuated. From the perspective of his actual writing, the Grass was greener in the far distant past; today, to quote a genuine poet, Keats, it is withered sedge where “no birds sing.”
Clearly you know something no one else knows, because no one has mentioned "nuking iran" in all the discussions of an attack on irans nuclear facilities. Typical israel bashing BS. Make something up and claim that it's true.
Just watch, within 24 hours, other posters will be making the same claim and citing jrhc as a legitimate source.
where did you get that from?