In his controversial new poem, “What Must Be Said,” Günter Grass felt obliged to anticipate the utterly predictable reaction: “the verdict ‘Anti-semitism’ falls easily.”
Jacob Heilbrunn describes Grass’s language as “wild and fevered and calumniatory,” though this is a more accurate description of his own commentary. Under a headline posing the question, Is Günter Grass An Antisemite?, Heilbrunn proceeds with passion and no reason to a foregone conclusion:
Now, anti-Semitism is a charge that is flung about too frequently against critics of Israel. Unfortunately, in this instance it is fully deserved. Here is what must be said: Grass has achieved the impossible. He has further besmirched his reputation.
The theatrical and logical contours of the performances of Israel’s mindless and rabid defenders should by now be perfectly familiar.
First comes the shock and outrage. When anyone in proximity to the trauma of the Holocaust gets upset they tend to solicit a human response. We don’t try and reason with them — we offer them sympathy and try and soothe their distraught emotions. But when the shock and outrage is contrived, it serves a purpose: it is designed to distract and pacify those who might otherwise pose awkward or challenging questions.
Then comes the defamation. Why must Grass be condemned and his words ignored? Because as a seventeen year-old he served for five months in the Waffen-SS. “[A] former member of the SS has no moral standing, to put it mildly, to criticize Israel.” Heilbrunn whips the SS line so hard and fast, he’s forced to drag up from his thesaurus the awkward phrase “quondam SS member.”
Then comes the logical sleight-of-hand: a criticism is rebuffed by being restated in a distorted form. And the distortion always involves the same shift: actions are treated as matters of identity.
Israel is attacked not because of what it does but because of what it is: a Jewish state. Actions demand accountability, but if the assault is treated as striking at the state’s very identity, then the victim can bask in its innocence.
This is how it works in Grass’s case. Grass has written that Israel poses the greatest threat to world peace. Read the headlines, listen to the politicians and commentators. How outrageous! Except there’s one small problem: that’s not what he wrote. He wrote this:
Why only now, grown old,
and with what ink remains, do I say:
Israel’s atomic power endangers
an already fragile world peace?
When there is a rush to war because of the mere fear that Iran might develop nuclear weapons, how can the world remain silent about the fact that Israel already possesses hundreds of these tools of genocide?
What is being described as an attack on Israel is no such thing. It is a demand that Israel’s own nuclear arsenal be recognized and acknowledged as a decisive element in the rising tension in the Middle East.
Perhaps there are those who believe that Israel’s existence utterly depends on its possession of nuclear weapons. If that’s the case then maybe we should no longer refer to it as a Jewish and democratic state, but as a nuclear-armed Jewish and democratic state, since retaining the ability to incinerate its neighbors is apparently an essential attribute of such a state.
If however the existence of a Jewish state and its possession of a nuclear arsenal are not inextricably intertwined, then it is perfectly legitimate for Günter Grass or anyone else to say that in the shadow of war, the world can no longer remain silent about Israel’s weapons of mass destruction.
This is cross-posted from Woodward’s site, War in Context.
Imagine if anyone were to seek to excuse (or absolve) Nazi Germany for its actions (attacking most of Europe without provocation, the killing of its own citizens including Jews without sufficient reason [Holocaust]) by saying — “Germany was blamed not for what it did but for what it was”, arguing that Germany’s self-image was of a powerful state needing lebensraum and the cleansing of people other than healthy aryan supporters of its national identity!.
Such a claim would be laughed off the stage, and first of all by Jews.
Israelis may hold in their hearts the idea that the State could not have been formed without war and ethnic cleansing, but they did not say that even during the terrorism that led to UNGA-181, and the Jewish Agency professed to accept UNGA-181 with its provisions for peaceful multi-ethnic states which respected the rights of all citizens.
No, Virginia, Israel’s violence was not intrinsic, not what “Jews are”, not even what “Israel needed to be”, but deliberately chosen acts subject to moral inspection.
Sorry, the core quote of this article is rubbish. The problem is bad translations.
Grass wrote – as published in the Süddeutsche Zeitung:
“Warum sage ich jetzt erst,
gealtert und mit letzter Tinte:
Die Atommacht Israel gefährdet
den ohnehin brüchigen Weltfrieden?”
“”Die Atommacht Israel” shall be correctly translated as “The nuclear power Israel” – just like it was done here at Mondo Weiss in the translation provided by Norbert Jost. It is very clear – the meaning is: Israel – a nuclear power – endagers the already fragile world peace. The interpretation “Israel’s atomic power” is not possible to be derived from the German words.
For the rest of the poem, the Guardian translation may be usable, but the phrase to make the point here in this article – and Grass’ core sentence – “Israel’s atomic power” – the Guardian published a plain wrong translation.
So I would translate Grass core sentance:
Why only now, grown old,
and with what ink remains, do I say:
The nuclear power Israel endangers
the already fragile world peace?
And in interviews after publishing the poem – especially the long one on aspekte – Grass made also very clear that he wants to say: The Israeli government – with it’s intention to start a war of aggression against Iran, be it a nuclear war of aggression or a conventional – is a danger to world peace.
RE: “Under a headline posing the question, Is Günter Grass An Antisemite?, Heilbrunn proceeds with passion and no reason to a foregone conclusion” ~ Woodward
FROM SOURCEWATCH.ORG (Hasbara):
SOURCE – http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Hasbara
* “HASBARA HANDBOOK: Promoting Israel on Campus”, published by the World Union of Jewish Students (March 2002) – http://www.scribd.com/doc/53789685/Hasbara-Handbook-
RE: “Then comes the defamation. Why must Grass be condemned and his words ignored? Because as a seventeen year-old he served for five months in the Waffen-SS. ‘[A] former member of the SS has no moral standing, to put it mildly, to criticize Israel.’ Heilbrunn whips the SS line so hard and fast…” ~ Woodward
FROM THE “Hasbara Handbook”, pages 22-23:
SOURCE, “HASBARA HANDBOOK: Promoting Israel on Campus” (March 2002) –
http://www.scribd.com/doc/53789685/Hasbara-Handbook-Promoting-Israel-on-Campus
Unnecessary hemming and hawing. If a “Jewish state” were Kosher, an “Aryan state” would be too.