Günter Grass No Longer Welcome in Israel

Günter Grass is in trouble. The latest poem of the celebrated German author, “What Must Be Said,” published in Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung on Wednesday, is sharply critical of Israel’s policies toward Iran. His notion that the “nuclear power Israel is endangering a world peace that is already fragile,” unleashed a storm of criticism that shows no signs of dying down.

Israel’s ambassador in Berlin, Emmauel Nahshon, was immediately reminded of the “European tradition to accuse Jews of ritual murder ahead of Passover. Once upon a time it was Christian children whose blood was supposedly used by Jews to make Matzo bread, now it’s the Iranian people the Jewish state supposedly wants to eradicate.”

On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had harsh words for the Nobel laureate: “Günter Grass’ 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,” a statement released by Netanyahu’s office read.

Germany’s most famous literary critic, Holocaust survivor Marcel Reich-Ranicki, thought about it for a few days before condemning the poem as “disgusting” and “horrendous nonsense to boot: Of course, Israel is very interested in world peace,” Reich-Ranicki writes in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told a German Sunday paper that putting Iran and Israel on the same moral level was “absurd,” and Swiss historian Raphael Gross called the poem a “ballad of hate (Hassgesang).”

Leftist writer and songwriter Wolf Biermann describes the poem as a “deadly sin of literature” (literarische Todsünde), and warns that German Neo Nazis will take Grass into their hearts now.

Ouch! That’s gotta hurt when you’re a writer who had been known for many decades as an outspoken left-leaning critic of Germany’s treatment of its Nazi past.

That reputation had already been tarnished when it emerged in 2006 that Grass had been a member of the Waffen SS in the final days of World War II – an embarrassment Grass had conveniently kept to himself for 60 years.

On Sunday, the State of Israel made clear that Grass is persona non grata and no longer welcome in the Jewish state.

The funny thing is, many in Israel, too, oppose an attack on Iran but almost nobody – in the western world anyway – shares the opinion that Israel wants “to annihilate the Iranian people”.

So, what on earth was Grass thinking and is this really something that “must be said”?

Grass himself says he now feels hounded by the “journalist horde” and I don’t suppose it helps that Iran has started to praise the poem.

In a letter addressed to the “distinguished author,” Iran’s deputy culture minister Javad Shamaqdari was quoted as saying: “Telling the truth in this way may awake the silent and dormant conscience of the West.”

A “truth” not many are likely to share.