Israelis can be angry with Gunter Grass, but they must listen to him

[TomClash]

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/israelis-can-be-angry-with-gunter-grass-but-they-must-listen-to-him-1.423194

Israelis can be angry with Gunter Grass, but they must listen to him
After we denounce the exaggeration, after we shake off the unjustified part of the charge, we must listen to the condemnation of these great people.

By Gideon Levy

The harsh, and in some parts infuriating, poem by Gunter Grass of course immediately sparked a wave of vilifications against it and mainly against its author. Grass indeed went a few steps too far (and too mendaciously ) - Israel will not destroy the Iranian people - and for that he will be punished, in his own country and in Israel. But in precisely the same way the poem's nine stanzas lost a sense of proportion in terms of their judgment of Israel, so too the angry responses to it suffer from exaggeration. Tom Segev wrote in Haaretz: "Unless Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently confided in him, his opinion is vacuous." ("More pathetic than anti-Semitic," April 5 ). Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mentioned Grass' Nazi past, and Israeli embassies in Germany went so far as to state, ridiculously, that the poem signified "anti-Semitism in the best European tradition of blood libels before Passover."

It is doubtful that Grass intended his poem to be published on the eve of Passover. It contains no blood libel. In fact, it is the branding of it as anti-Semitic that is a matter of tradition - all criticism of Israel is immediately thus labeled. Grass' Nazi past, his joining the Waffen SS as a youth, does not warrant shutting him up some 70 years later, and his opinion is far from vacuous. According to Segev, anyone who is not a nuclear scientist, an Israeli prime minister or an Iranian president must keep silent on the stormiest issue in Israel and the world today. That is a flawed approach.

Grass' "What Must Be Said" does contain things that must be said. It can and should be said that Israel's policy is endangering world peace. His position against Israeli nuclear power is also legitimate. He can also oppose supplying submarines to Israel without his past immediately being pulled out as a counterclaim. But Grass exaggerated, unnecessarily and in a way that damaged his own position. Perhaps it is his advanced age and his ambition to attract a last round of attention, and perhaps the words came forth all at once like a cascade, after decades during which it was almost impossible to criticize Israel in Germany.

That's the way it is when all criticism of Israel is considered illegitimate and improper and is stopped up inside for years. In the end it erupts in an extreme form. Grass' poem was published only a few weeks after another prominent German, the chairman of the Social Democratic Party, Sigmar Gabriel, wrote that there is an apartheid regime in Hebron. He also aroused angry responses. Therefore it is better to listen to the statements and, especially, finally, to lift the prohibition against criticizing Israel in Germany.

[Ruby the Liberal]

1. Is something wrong with the one 5 threads below this one?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/11347689

[shira]

2. When Gideon Levy talks, everyone listens. Well, except in Israel...

...where he's considered an idiot by almost the entire population.

Obviously to non-Israelis, he's so good that his articles need to be posted twice on forums.

[TomClash]

7. Sorry I don't monitor DU religiously

Perhaps you have plenty of time for that.

[Ruby the Liberal]

8. It isn't an issue of monitoring.

If the exact same thread with the exact same title is currently #4 on the forum list when you go to add a new one, its kinda hard to miss.

[TomClash]

9. Uh, that is monitoring

Sorry Bengie.

[Ruby the Liberal]

10. Maybe if you are on a phone.

My laptop shows the top 10 or so threads in a given forum without scrolling.



Edit - top 13, that is.

[oberliner]

3. So important it needed to be posted twice!

Thank goodness I get to read another lengthy excerpt from Gideon's wonderful article.

[King_David]

4. You forgot the sarcasm thingy,

I hope.

[Riftaxe]

5. Cannot it be taken for granted that NAZI party members

would by nature be a bit put off by a strongly armed Jewish state?

It seems like common sense that his membership in the NAZI party is part of the core reason he would like to see the State of Israel disarmed.

[aranthus]

6. Grass was in the SS. Was he also a party member? n/t

[azurnoir]

13. Grass was in the Waffen SS and was drafted into it in 1944 near the end of the war

your claims that all members of the SS may have been true when the majority of the SS were Gestapo especially in the 1930's, however Glass was in the Waffen SS which were frontline combat units and not the Gestapo

[aranthus]

14. That was my point. Maybe you intended to repond to someone else.

Last edited Wed Apr 11, 2012, 12:14 PM - Edit history (1)

I'm not claiming that he was a Nazi because he was in the SS. It was my understanding that he was drafted into the SS, which does not make him a Nazi. But he could have been a Nazi party member who was drafted into the SS (though he has denied that, and I have seen no evidence of it).

[azurnoir]

15. apologies if I misunderstood your comment

however I took it as what could be called a 'leading' question.

[aranthus]

16. It was a leading question, but in the opposite direction than you thought.

At least that was the intent. Sorry if it was a badly drafted question.

[Bodhi BloodWave]

11. I'm curious, exactly what do you know about Grass? n/t

[azurnoir]

12. Is Günter Glass a Nazi party member? Do you have proof or were you just 'talking' so to speak? n/t