The Gunter Grass case:
On Sunday, Israel’s interior minister Eli Yishai used a law permitting a bar on entry to former Nazis to declare Grass persona non grata for his “attempt to fan the flames of hatred against the state of Israel and its people, and thus to advance the idea to which he publicly affiliated in his past donning of the SS uniform”.
Grass was conscripted into the Waffen SS.
Pope Benedict XVI was born in Bavaria, with the name Joseph Ratzinger. Young Ratzinger, according to Wikipedia:
Following his 14th birthday in 1941, Ratzinger was conscripted into the Hitler Youth—as membership was required by law for all 14-year-old German boys after December 1939[9]—but was an unenthusiastic member who refused to attend meetings, according to his brother.[10] In 1941, one of Ratzinger’s cousins, a 14-year-old boy with Down syndrome, was taken away by the Nazi regime and killed during the Action T4 campaign of Nazi eugenics.[11] In 1943, while still in seminary, he was drafted into the German anti-aircraft corps as Luftwaffenhelfer (air force child soldier).[10] Ratzinger then trained in the German infantry.[12] As the Allied front drew closer to his post in 1945, he deserted back to his family’s home in Traunstein after his unit had ceased to exist, just as American troops established their headquarters in the Ratzinger household.[13] As a German soldier, he was put in a POW camp but was released a few months later at the end of the war in the summer of 1945.[13] He reentered the seminary, along with his brother Georg, in November of that year. —
While I saw nothing wrong with Grass’s poem, and think it is ridiculous to ban him from visiting Israel, there is a substantial difference between his case and that of the Pope. The Waffen-SS was – unlike the regular divisions in which the Pope served – an elite force which was broadly implicated in war crimes. The fact that Grass was conscripted of course makes a big difference to his personal responsibility, since he did not (as far as anyone knows) commit war-crimes himself; but it still looks rather different from the Pope’s case, especially since Grass, by his own account – and unlike the Pope – did actively volunteer for military service even while still below military age, albeit not for the SS in particular (see http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/guenter-grass-im-interview-warum-ich-nach-sechzig-jahren-mein-schweigen-breche-1357691.html ).
Why does Mondoweiss follow this red herring (2nd time even)? Cannot one find or write a good analysis, not even in English?
Try this one ei: Poem sparks debate about whether Germany should absolve Israel’s crimes
caroline, this morning the LAtimes had an article saying israel’s barring of grass was the kind of thing iran would do. it’s not worth digging up the link but i thought it was interesting/weird. the amount of attention the press is giving to this barring is kind of bizarre. sometimes i wonder how it is they choose their stories. and the chances it would make even one iota of difference, because what are the chances grass, in his later years, will want to visit israel anyway? i think they (whoever they is)just like repeating nazi over and over.
WWII made two German sentences into permanency:
– Ich habe nicht gewusst I did not know (about the deathcamps, at the time)
– Nie wieder Never again (such a horror).
With the poem, Günter Grass warns for the war Israel is mongering. This time, he says to the Germans, I’ll make sure to say it in time. So You will have known beforehand and Germans are complicit in the Once again.
So if we are to be consistent, should all countries bar members of the IDF? According to those Israeli ethical scholars, there is no excuse for being conscripted into an army which continually carries out war crimes, harassment, humiliation and attacks on civilians, child kidnapping and arrests, even if and individual doesn’t participate directly in the brutality. Are the teenage thugs in the IDF now barred from re-entering Israel since they are apparently in the same boat as Grass (a lot worse actually, since their crimes are documented)?