In his recently released poem, German writer Günter Grass ascribed his previous reluctance to speak out (about Israel’s threat to world peace) to guilt over Germany’s past—whereas in reality it was motivated by his justified fear of retribution by Jewish extremists.
For no matter what Grass said, or how he phrased it, he has learned that any criticism of Zionism or Jewish Supremacism and hypocrisy, is instantly labelled as “anti-Semitic.”
The response to Grass’s poem has been predictable. Israel’s Interior Minister Eli Yishai said that “If Gunter Grass wants to continue to distribute his false and distorted works, I suggest he do so from Iran, where he’ll find an appreciative audience.”
Yishai also declared Grass persona non grata and banned him from ever entering Israel.
“Grass’s poems are an attempt to guide the fire of hate toward the state of Israel and the Israeli people, and to advance the ideas of which he was a public partner in the past, when he wore the uniform of the SS,” Yishai added, ignoring the fact that Grass has been one of Germany’s leading anti-Nazis for decades.
In an interview last week, Grass said that he wanted to “make it clearer that I am primarily talking about the [Netanyahu] government”, whose policies “are creating ever more enemies of Israel, and are ever more increasing the country’s isolation.
“I have often supported Israel, I have often been in the country and want the country to exist and at last find peace with its neighbours,” he told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.
This is not good enough for the Jewish supremacists, for whom nothing but complete obeisance towards Israel is good enough.
Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, also attacked Grass’s poem as an “expression of the cynicism of some of the west’s intellectuals, who, for publicity purposes and the desire to sell a few more books, are willing to sacrifice the Jewish nation a second time on the altar of crazy anti-Semites.”
Thanks to the power of the Internet, readers can now decide for themselves as to who are the real extremists: Grass or International Zionism. Here is the full English text of Grass’s poem—which reveals much about the writer and his Jewish extremist critics:
What Must Be Said by Günter Grass
Why do I stay silent, conceal for too long
What clearly is and has been
Practiced in war games, at the end of which we as survivors
Are at best footnotes.
It is the alleged right to first strike
That could annihilate the Iranian people–
Enslaved by a loud-mouth
And guided to organized jubilation–
Because in their territory,
It is suspected, a bomb is being built.
Yet why do I forbid myself
To name that other country
In which, for years, even if secretly,
There has been a growing nuclear potential at hand
But beyond control, because no inspection is available?
The universal concealment of these facts,
To which my silence subordinated itself,
I sense as incriminating lies
And force–the punishment is promised
As soon as it is ignored;
The verdict of “anti-Semitism” is familiar.
Now, though, because in my country
Which from time to time has sought and confronted
Its very own crime
That is without compare
In turn on a purely commercial basis, if also
With nimble lips calling it a reparation, declares
A further U-boat should be delivered to Israel,
Whose specialty consists of guiding all-destroying warheads to where the existence
Of a single atomic bomb is unproven,
But as a fear wishes to be conclusive,
I say what must be said.
Why though have I stayed silent until now?
Because I thought my origin,
Afflicted by a stain never to be expunged
Kept the state of Israel, to which I am bound
And wish to stay bound,
From accepting this fact as pronounced truth.
Why do I say only now,
Aged and with my last ink,
That the nuclear power of Israel endangers
The already fragile world peace?
Because it must be said
What even tomorrow may be too late to say;
Also because we–as Germans burdened enough–
Could be the suppliers to a crime
That is foreseeable, wherefore our complicity
Could not be redeemed through any of the usual excuses.
And granted: I am silent no longer
Because I am tired of the hypocrisy
Of the West; in addition to which it is to be hoped
That this will free many from silence,
That they may prompt the perpetrator of the recognized danger
To renounce violence and
Likewise insist
That an unhindered and permanent control
Of the Israeli nuclear potential
And the Iranian nuclear sites
Be authorized through an international agency
By the governments of both countries.
Only this way are all, the Israelis and Palestinians,
Even more, all people, that in this
Region occupied by mania
Live cheek by jowl among enemies,
And also us, to be helped.
