***EXCLUSIVE*** New GraSS poem: Not Peeling the Onion in Iran

Petra Marquadt-Bigman..
The Warped Mirror..
30 September '12..

The news out of Germany is that Nobel Laureate Günter Grass continues to crave the kind of attention he got a few years ago when he revealed in his autobiography Peeling the Onion that he had served in the SS. Earlier this year, he managed to cause quite a stir when he published an awkward “poem” warning the world about the terrible danger posed by a belligerent Israel that was unduly worried by Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Now he’s trying to do it again: Grass has reportedly published a new volume of “poetry” that includes not only a slightly revised version of his anguished warning from spring, but also an ode to Mordechai Vanunu, a former Israeli nuclear technician who served a long prison sentence for revealing details of Israel’s nuclear program to the British media in the mid-1980s.

There is no doubt in my mind that future editions of this poetry volume will include a poem that Grass must be working on right now – after all, how could he ignore the onion-themed bonds between himself and Iran???

In case you haven’t heard that Iran’s FARS news agency recently failed to realize that an exciting poll from the satirical news magazine The Onion was too good to be true, here’s Walter Russell Mead’s take on this incident:

Fresnozionism - Paul Krugman’s “what must be said”

Fresnozionism.org..
25 April '12..





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.

– Günter Grass, explaining how he will be punished for his ‘courage’ in saying “what must be said.”

This could be the stupidest conceit of today’s Israel-haters: that they are breaking the silence, speaking out in a fresh and original way, daring to say things that others may be thinking but fear to put into words because of the terrible retribution of the Zionist conspiracy, which will destroy them by branding them as antisemites.

The latest expression of this idiotic meme comes from the economist Paul Krugman, someone I have always admired despite his left-of-center politics. I will quote in full his remark, published today in the NY Times:

Farer - From Sderot, an Open Letter to Gunter Grass

David Farer..
PJ Media..
21 April '12..




Dear Mr. Grass,

In reaction to your recent poem, Israeli Minister of the Interior Eli Yishai has declared you persona non grata in Israel. While I can empathize with the feeling Yishai expressed by his action, he might also have considered it good for your education if you would visit Israel, and specifically the little town of Sderot, where I live and write. I will be delighted to show you around Sderot for some educational sightseeing. It might do you good. You worry about what Israel might do to Iran, but I will show you what Iran has done to Israel through her ally Hamas.

Our first stop will be a pleasant square in the middle of Sderot. A musical statue presides here. Behind the square stands an unusual structure: a huge, curving piece of concrete that stretches over a local school. A thousand years hence, this outlandish architecture will baffle archeologists excavating Sderot. No one will guess what function it might have fulfilled, unless written records of our time survive to explain this mystery. The curvaceous concrete is a huge bomb-shelter whose purpose is to prevent Hamas terrorists from killing the children who study in that school with the rockets they fire from across the border in the Gaza Strip. Iran, the country whose actions you equate to Israel’s, financially and militarily helps those murderers.

Our next stop will be a hole that a kassam rocket made in a Sderot street. Sderot has many holes to choose from. The municipality customarily fills in the central hole the rocket’s nose makes, so that people will be able to drive down that street, but they leave the smaller holes the shrapnel digs in the asphalt. Rockets landing in a public park or an open field generally just disappear after a few months. A home that gets a kassam through its roof is of course repaired. If shrapnel can dig such holes in asphalt, what does it do when it hits the face of a Sderot child?

I will take you, Mr. Grass, to one of the places where Hamas gave your Iranian friends a happy day. One of their rockets killed two Jewish children, immigrants from Ethiopia, who were playing together in a street. I know their family, but I doubt they would want to meet you. Another place we might visit is a courtyard where I spent an evening cleaning up the shards of broken windows that a kassam causes when it lands among buildings. I will show you where a child ran for cover when he heard the alarm, where the rocket detonated, and the shop to which this ten-year-old boy ran to call an ambulance after shrapnel hit him in his shoulder and his chest. He was lucky: he has and will have major problems using that arm. This is in contrast to our next stop, the child-victim struck here will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

D. G. Myers - Poison Pen

D. G. Myers..
jewishideasdaily.com..
16 April '12..

A Nobel Prize-winning German novelist—a former SS soldier, no less—accuses the state of Israel of seeking to exterminate an entire people, and the literary republic yawns. But when Israel bars its accuser from entering the country, because ex-Nazis have no place in the Jewish state, the cries of "bullying" and "censorship" nearly drown out the original accusation.

Günter Grass, the 84-year-old German writer best known for his 1959 novel The Tin Drum, published a poem earlier this month in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (a Munich daily), which was generally described as critical of Israel. "What Must Be Said," a 69-line poem written as a first-person confession in Grass's own voice, "breaks a long standing German taboo and publicly criticizes Israel," Al-Jazeera cheered.

In Germany, outrage. Elsewhere, not so much. Or not until Eli Yishai, the state's interior minister, barred Grass from entering Israel. Then, as Ruthie Blum observed, the "minor brouhaha" over Grass's poem erupted into a "major attack on Israel." The Guardian sneered that the Jewish state was engaging in "state censorship"—as if the Israeli government can suppress what is published in Munich. "To ban him is infantile pique," Salman Rushdie, Grass's fellow novelist, tweeted. "Nobody can seriously believe Günter Grass is anti-Semitic. The issue today is a bad poem and Israel's bad response to it."

Is Grass anti-Semitic? Is his poem bad? A writer in the Telegraph professed ignorance, claiming poor German, although no such hesitation prevented him from characterizing the "Israeli response," delivered in Hebrew, as "bullying." At least one German publication dismissed Grass's text as wirre Poesie ("muddled poetry"). Grass himself was heard complaining on the radio that his critics were ignoring "the contents of the poem."

Honig - The German robbed Cossack

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack..
12 April '12..

This week in 1903 Shalom Aleichem, the giant of Yiddish literature, wrote a letter to Leo Tolstoy, the giant of Russian literature. It was shortly after the gruesome Kishinev pogrom. Shalom Aleichem planned to publish a modest compilation about the atrocity, to which he asked Tolstoy to contribute a short message to “Russia’s millions of distraught and disoriented Jews, who more than anything need a word of comfort.” Tolstoy never so much as bothered to reply.

The famed novelist, feted as the conscience of Russia, received dozens such letters urging him to speak out against the slaughters – then a seminal trauma in Jewish annals. The Holocaust was decades away. Nobody 109 years ago could imagine anything more bloodcurdling than the horrors of Kishinev.

But not everyone was moved – not even a renowned humanitarian like Tolstoy.

Not only did he not speak out, but he resented the entreaties.

He replied to one Jewish correspondent only, Emanuel Grigorievich Linietzky, to whom he caustically complained about being pestered. Tolstoy then blamed the Czar’s government, absolving the masses who bashed the skulls of babies, gouged children’s eyes, raped their mothers and sisters, eviscerated them, beheaded men and boys, quartered and mutilated them and looted all they could carry.

We hear much the same throughout Europe at each memorial to the Holocaust.

The upgraded, systemized, gargantuan-scale German sequel to Kishinev was by all accounts committed by unidentified extraterrestrials called Nazis. All the others, Germans included, were their victims.

But Tolstoy foreshadowed an even more sinister inclination that would fully and hideously burst upon our scene a century and more after the Kishinev devastation. The great author and icon of compassion exhorted Russia’s shaken Jews to behave better.

The implication was that the Jews were somehow guilty, needed to improve themselves and achieve higher virtue in order to merit better treatment.

And so wrote Tolstoy to Emanuel Grigorievich: “The Jews must, for their own good, conduct themselves by the universal principle of ‘do onto others as you would have them do to you.’ They must resist the government nonviolently…by living lives of grace, which precludes not only violence against others, but also the partaking in acts of violence.”

Given the background of Eastern Europe’s downtrodden Jewry, such ’turn-the-other-cheek’ sermons appear chillingly pitiless (to say the least) because all the Jews had been doing was turning the other cheek. Taken in a broader context, Tolstoy argued against Jewish self-defense before any self-defense was actually attempted. Jews, Tolstoy in effect said, share culpability for their tribulations, must suffer quietly and cannot rise to protect themselves.

Sound familiar? It ought to. It’s exactly what we keep hearing today from current preachers of goodwill, literary or otherwise. The more things change the more they sickeningly stay the same.

Farzan - Gunter Grass and his words have caused damage but they will not accomplish the triumph of evil

Saba Farzan..
The Commentator..
11 April '12..

Someone very wisely once told me we don’t need to compare the Iranian regime to Nazi Germany to shed light on how evil the Iranian dictatorship is; the evilness of Iran’s despotism speaks for itself.

I entirely agreed, but added that my reason for comparing these terrible regimes is a very particular one: remembering our responsibility. The world failed bitterly in preventing the Holocaust as it failed to take the threat Nazi Germany posed seriously. Iran’s nuclear weapons program is again such a threat.

In this crisis, I never thought that I would wake up to the day when a German writer would compose the kind of trash recently produced by Gunter Grass. The Nobel-winning author has excelled himself in maintaining his attack on Israel by criticising the democratic state, in a recently penned poem, for its nuclear programme, calling the country a threat to world peace and stating that it must not be allowed to launch military strikes on Iran.

Very sadly, Grass has found a willing partner in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung for getting this kind of nonsense printed.

Marquadt-Bigman - Defending Günter Grass at +972

Petra Marquadt-Bigman..
The Warped Mirror..
11 April '12..



The hope that “Grass’s poem could be the gift that keeps on giving” – expressed by Mondoweiss contributor Annie Robbins – has so far been fulfilled in the sense that the controversy that erupted immediately after the publication of the “poem” is still raging on. And while there has been much withering criticism, Mondoweissers were right to hope that the aging Nobel laureate would find defenders for his unpoetic promulgation of old antisemitic tropes.

As Yaacov Lozowick wrote in a recent post on Mondoweiss:

“they fit comfortably into ancient traditions of Jew-hatred, and thus their potential significance shouldn’t be shrugged off. It’s important to keep in mind that the free and pluralistic society of the West also harbors such ugly forms of thought.”

But while the enthusiasm of the Mondoweiss crowd for Grass’s pathetic “poem” was entirely expected, it is arguably revealing that the supposedly more high-brow +972 magazine has turned out to be no less enthusiastic.

First +972 contributor Yossi Gurvitz set out to “pick apart” the charges of Israeli Embassy in Berlin that Grass’s “poem” echoed European traditions of antisemitism. Gurvitz proceeds to list Grass’s claims about Israel and asserts that they are entirely accurate – to get a taste of his ignorance and his utterly pathetic modus operandi, consider this point [emphasis original]:

Fresnozionism - Gunter Grass: nothing to see here, folks

Gunter Grass. Senile dementia
and 'celebrity disease'.

Fresnozionism.org..
09 April '12..



I wasn’t going to write about Gunter Grass and his ugly poem. Googling “Gunter Grass poem Israel Iran” gets 789,000 hits. It has been covered from almost every imaginable angle. But I was asked my opinion, so I’ll make it short: what I think is that there isn’t much of a story here. A well-known personality enters his dotage. So what?

Grass doesn’t know who is doing what to whom. The proposition that Israel threatens Iran with a nuclear first strike is so impossible that only an idiot could believe it. Grass’ assertion of it tells us that he is completely disconnected from reality. Time to retire from public life and feed the pigeons in the Unter den Linden.

It’s a combination of senile dementia plus the “celebrity disease”: people tell them how intelligent and perceptive they are for so long that their inner editor shuts down, and popular prejudices and clichés bubble up and are emitted as if they were brilliant insights.

So Grass bravely stands up and says “what must be said” despite his certainty that he will be ‘punished’ with accusations of antisemitism. How courageous to join the anti-Israel chorus in a Europe already full to bursting with Israel-haters! Adding nobility to courage, he’s ready to accept the punishment if it will ‘free others from silence’. Pass the barf bag.

More interesting would be to study why younger people, who presumably still have some functioning brain cells, believe similar nonsense.

Just another ex-Nazi closing in on his reward. Nothing to see here folks, move on.

Link: http://fresnozionism.org/2012/04/gunter-grass-nothing-to-see-here-folks/

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Sobol - Gunter Grass' delusions

Yehoshua Sobol..
Israel Hayom..
09 April '12..

This is the second time in the last six years that writer Gunter Grass has broken his silence. Last time, he broke a 60-year silence: It took him that long to publicly admit he had served in the Waffen SS. After Grass' confession, he also started to point out the suffering that the German people endured during World War II, in order to give credence to the claim that Germans were not only the perpetrators – but also the victims – of the war. To nurture a sense of German victimhood, Grass blamed Stalin for murdering 6 million German prisoners of war (POWs).

The journalist who quoted Grass at the time did not examine the credibility of this mystical number, and published Grass' claim verbatim. The truth is that the total number of Germans who were held captive by the Russians is just more than 3 million - 3,127,380, to be exact. Of these 3 million, slightly less than half a million Germans, or 474,967 to be exact, died in Russian captivity. Where did Grass get the 6 million figure? He could only have pulled it from his subconscious, from the same place where he keeps his most secret wishes.

Grass needed the Russians to have exterminated 6 million German POWs to clear his conscience for the murder of 6 million Jews. And thus, with a few words, he turned half a million German soldiers who died in Russian captivity – into 6 million. Twice the total number of Germans who were in captivity, whether they were killed or not!

Grass needed for every German captive to have been killed twice to clear his conscience of the murder of 6 million Jews. When your soul yearns for exoneration, the imagination can invent a delusional reality.

Tobin - Gunter Grass, Iran and Anti-Semitism

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
05 April '12..

One aspect of the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe that is particularly perplexing for onlookers is the way hatred of Israel and Jews has been taken up by leading intellectuals. Perhaps the most egregious example of this trend is that of Gunter Grass. Grass, a Nobel laureate for literature and perhaps one of the leading figures of German letters of the postwar era, is a veteran leftist known for his hatred for the United States as well as his background as a member of the Hitler Youth and the Waffen SS under the Nazi regime. But yesterday, the author of The Tin Drum was back in the news for writing a poem defending Iran and attacking Israel.

Grass not only denied that Iran is working on a nuclear weapon but also denounced German support for Israel and called on the German government to halt the sale of submarines that are key to the Jewish state’s deterrence against aggression. Though Iran’s leaders have repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel as well as denying the Holocaust, Grass promotes a new blood libel when he claims it is Israel that is plotting to wipe out Iran and is the primary threat to world peace.

It is telling that even as hard-core an Israeli leftist as author Tom Segev was willing to denounce Grass’ latest effort in Haaretz. Though he put the poem down as being “more pathetic than anti-Semitic,” Segev made it clear the German’s attempt to paint Israel as the villain and Iran as the victim was absurd:

Marquadt-Bigman - What ‘never again’ means for Günter Grass

Petra Marquadt-Bigman..
The Warped Mirror..
05 April '12..



In an awkward, cliché-laden “poem,” German Nobel laureate Günter Grass has announced to the world that he had to break his silence about an issue that has burdened him for too long: even at the risk of being labeled an antisemite, he simply had to sound the alarm about the terrible threat to world peace posed by Israel…

There is already a huge outcry against Grass’s strange poem, and many of the responses refer to the last time Grass broke a very long silence – and also caused a huge outcry: In August 2006, shortly before the publication of his autobiography, Grass revealed in an interview that he had served in the Waffen SS.

That was a truly sensational revelation given the fact that Grass had carefully cultivated the image of a moral authority who was always ready to admonish Germans that they had to face up to their Nazi past. Unsurprisingly, Grass is now again alluding to Germany’s dark history, but he does so with a twist that has become quite popular: by now, many Germans and Europeans seem to feel that they can claim to have learnt the often invoked “lessons” of the Holocaust so much better than the Jews – and in particular so much better than the Jews in Israel.

Indeed, the idea Grass is hawking now is quite popular: Remember the controversial Eurobarometer poll of fall 2003 that revealed that 59 percent of EU citizens regarded Israel as the greatest threat to world peace? Back then, embarrassed European officials tried to dismiss the poll as some kind of aberration, but that was quite plainly not what it was, because other polls showed similar results. To quote just one example: A BBC poll published in March 2007 revealed that Israel was viewed as the country with the most negative influence in the world, and interestingly, Germany was the European country with the largest percentage of respondents who viewed Israel in these terms: 77 percent of Germans rated Israel’s influence as negative — even in some Muslim countries, Israel actually fared slightly better.