Gunter Grass accuses Israel of plotting to 'wipe out' Iran
BERLIN - Controversy-courting German Nobel literature laureate Gunter Grass published a poem Wednesday in which he accused Israel of plotting Iran's annihilation and threatening global security.
The 84-year-old longtime leftist activist wrote in "What must be said" that he worried Israel "could wipe out the Iranian people" with a "first strike" due to the threat it sees in Tehran's disputed nuclear program.
"Why do I only say now, aged and with my last ink: the atomic power Israel is endangering the already fragile world peace?" reads the poem, which was published in the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
Grass answers that Nazi Germany's "incomparable" crimes against Jews and fears of accusations of anti-Semitism kept him from openly criticizing Israel.
But now, "tomorrow could already be too late" and Germany could become a "supplier to a crime," referring to a deal sealed last month for Berlin to sell Israel a sixth nuclear-capable Dolphin-class submarine.
"I admit: I will be silent no longer, because I am sick of the hypocrisy of the West".
Israel slammed the poem.
"What must be said is that it belongs to European tradition to accuse the Jews of ritual murder before the Passover celebration," said Emmanuel Nahshon, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Israeli embassy in Berlin, in a statement.
"It used to be Christian children whose blood the Jews used to make matza (unleavened bread), today it is the Iranian people that the Jewish state purportedly wants to wipe out."
Nahshon said Israel was "the only state in the world whose right to exist is publicly doubted".
"We want to live in peace with our neighbours in the region. And we are not prepared to assume the role that Gunter Grass assigns us in the German people's process of coming to terms with its history."
Grass, author of the renowned anti-war novel "The Tin Drum," sparked outrage in 2006 when he revealed, six decades after World War II, that he had been a member of the notorious Waffen SS.
Such is Grass's status in German cultural life that Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert was asked about his criticism of the submarine sales to Israel at a regular government press conference.
"In Germany, the freedom of artistic expression applies, as, fortunately, does the freedom of the government not to comment on every work of art," Seibert said.
Henryk M. Broder, a prominent German Jewish columnist, accused Grass in light of his poem of being "the prototype of the educated anti-Semitist."
"Grass has always had a problem with Jews but he has never articulated it as clearly as with this 'poem,'" Broder wrote in the daily Die Welt.
Israel, the sole if undeclared nuclear power in the Middle East, has said it is keeping all options open for responding to Iran's nuclear program, which it says is aimed at securing nuclear weapons, posing an existential threat to the Jewish state.
Iran, whose president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad frequently questions Israel's right to exist, has consistently denied that its sensitive nuclear work is aimed at making weapons.
© Copyright (c) AFP
BERLIN - Controversy-courting German Nobel literature laureate Gunter Grass published a poem Wednesday in which he accused Israel of plotting Iran's annihilation and threatening global security.
The 84-year-old longtime leftist activist wrote in "What must be said" that he worried Israel "could wipe out the Iranian people" with a "first strike" due to the threat it sees in Tehran's disputed nuclear program.
"Why do I only say now, aged and with my last ink: the atomic power Israel is endangering the already fragile world peace?" reads the poem, which was published in the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
Grass answers that Nazi Germany's "incomparable" crimes against Jews and fears of accusations of anti-Semitism kept him from openly criticizing Israel.
But now, "tomorrow could already be too late" and Germany could become a "supplier to a crime," referring to a deal sealed last month for Berlin to sell Israel a sixth nuclear-capable Dolphin-class submarine.
"I admit: I will be silent no longer, because I am sick of the hypocrisy of the West".
Israel slammed the poem.
"What must be said is that it belongs to European tradition to accuse the Jews of ritual murder before the Passover celebration," said Emmanuel Nahshon, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Israeli embassy in Berlin, in a statement.
"It used to be Christian children whose blood the Jews used to make matza (unleavened bread), today it is the Iranian people that the Jewish state purportedly wants to wipe out."
Nahshon said Israel was "the only state in the world whose right to exist is publicly doubted".
"We want to live in peace with our neighbours in the region. And we are not prepared to assume the role that Gunter Grass assigns us in the German people's process of coming to terms with its history."
Grass, author of the renowned anti-war novel "The Tin Drum," sparked outrage in 2006 when he revealed, six decades after World War II, that he had been a member of the notorious Waffen SS.
Such is Grass's status in German cultural life that Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert was asked about his criticism of the submarine sales to Israel at a regular government press conference.
"In Germany, the freedom of artistic expression applies, as, fortunately, does the freedom of the government not to comment on every work of art," Seibert said.
Henryk M. Broder, a prominent German Jewish columnist, accused Grass in light of his poem of being "the prototype of the educated anti-Semitist."
"Grass has always had a problem with Jews but he has never articulated it as clearly as with this 'poem,'" Broder wrote in the daily Die Welt.
Israel, the sole if undeclared nuclear power in the Middle East, has said it is keeping all options open for responding to Iran's nuclear program, which it says is aimed at securing nuclear weapons, posing an existential threat to the Jewish state.
Iran, whose president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad frequently questions Israel's right to exist, has consistently denied that its sensitive nuclear work is aimed at making weapons.
© Copyright (c) AFP
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