No matter how you look at it, when a German is critical of
Israel, you know some shit is going to hit a fan. There are a lot of trigger happy people willing to slap the
anti-Semite label on any critic of anything Jewish or Israeli, and that would
appear to be what’s going on here.
A serious piling on by Israeli government spokespeople and a number of
German politicians as well. And
even a large number of Western media sources. I think it’s time Günter Grass got a break.
First, some background.
For me, the context for this story is Condoleeza Rice’s
argument, still fresh in most people’s memory, for going into Iraq. “We don't want the smoking gun to be a
mushroom cloud,” she said.
Remember that? Well,
Israel, under the direction of Superhawk Benyamin Nethanyahu, is following
suit. Only this time it’s
different, they say. While Bush
and Tony Blair lied about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, this time, we are being told,
Ahmadinejad really is actively working on developing nuclear weapons and his
rhetoric suggests he’s perfectly capable of using them.
And there’s another difference that would seem to justify
upping the fear level this time.
When the U.S. attacked Iraq and turned it over to Teheran to control,
killing and displacing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the process, most of
the rest of the world was not that badly affected. This time, people are saying, there’s no way others
can help be being drawn in.
Washington, for one, is taking the possibility of a preemptive attack
seriously. They’re playing
war games about it. That’s
OK. That’s what they do with our
tax money. It’s called military
preparedness.
What’s unsettling, though, is that after they played the
game and came up with the most likely outcome, the results ain’t pretty. I won’t go into it here, because
I want to get to the Günter Grass
kerfluffle, but if you want details, here’s a New York Times article on
the games. And if you want more evidence that
there is consensus among American military leaders, at least, that an attack on
Iran would be pure folly, follow this link. Or this one.
One putative Middle East expert, Michael Lüders, argues
there is a “likelihood bordering on certainty” that such an attack is
coming. Granted, Lüders' background in political science comes with a
focus on Arabic literature which he studied in Damascus, so you may want to
think his views are biased against Israel, but that's your call. And he's part of the discourse, in any
case. And if you want a clearly leftist view,
you'll find one here.
So much for background. The story was quietly cooking on a back burner, at
least as far as I was concerned, until suddenly I see the face of Günter Grass
all over the German media. Still
probably Germany’s most famous literary figure, author of The Tin Drum and recipient of the Nobel Prize for
Literature, Grass is now getting
on in years - he’s 84. But he’s
still writing and last Wednesday he
published a poem in the Süddeutsche Zeitung taking Israel to task for threatening Iran with a
first strike.
Have a look at some of the commentary. It runs the full range from “How dare
this fucking Nazi open his big mouth and try to tell Israel what to do?” to
“It’s always so refreshing when somebody finds the courage to break a taboo and
say what should have been said a long time ago.”
Nothing new there, right? Anybody with even a casual familiarity with Israel knows
that practically everything affecting Israel leads to the full range of reactions. Here, though, a surprising number of
Jewish voices are playing the anti-Semitism card. Unfairly, it seems to me. This is beginning to look to me like a classic example
of the misuse of the term, in fact, where the difference between Jewishness and
the State of Israel, and the debate over the whether Israel has a right to
exist gets tied up with any bad Israeli policy.
As of this writing, I have been unable to find an English translation of his poem, so I made one myself, if you’d like to read the whole
thing. It’s not long. And I’m not going to add to the petty
criticism that it’s not good poetry.
I don’t think it is, to be truthful, but as he has said in a TV interview, he wrote it
in the tradition of a long line of German poets speaking out on political issues,
not as poetry to delight the senses.
Grass says he was motivated to speak out about two things
bothering him – the fact that Israel is talking out loud about a possible first
strike against Iran to eliminate their atomic facilities, and the fact that
Germany has just sent Israel a sixth submarine which could transport enough
missiles close enough to Iran to cause massive loss of life. Call it a “literary first strike.” You wouldn’t be the first.
He also makes a point of saying that Germans have been intimidated into
silence by their history and that it’s time to break this taboo.
So here are the two issues. The real elephant-in-the-room issue is the threat of war,
and the painful political philosophical dilemma of whether any nation is
entitled to a first-strike defense or whether one must first take a hit before
going to war. And whether this is
even a reasonable question any more now that we’re dealing with nuclear
weapons.
As always, there is a question behind the question – who is
in a position to call the shots on this threat, and why should we believe
them? Who has the technical
knowledge, the arms intelligence, a familiarity with the way the chief players
in the game think?
Whether Iran is a real threat to Israel is the real
question. The anti-Israel rhetoric
coming from Iran has been nasty, no doubt, although there is controversy over
whether Ahmadinejad actually urged the destruction of Israel, or simply the
removal of its control over Jerusalem.
The current Israeli administration appear to believe the
rhetoric constitutes the potential of a smoking mushroom cloud , and in this
existential struggle, even to doubt that threat is treason. And for a German to commit treason
against Israel is unforgiveable.
To Israeli hawks, anti-Semitism on his part is a given.
It would be a wonderful idea if all these kids scruffing it
up on the playground would go to their rooms for some down time. Günter Grass has apologized for saying
“Israel” when he should have said “the current Israeli administration.” Ahmadinejad apparently meant to say he
wanted the Israeli occupiers to stop being occupiers – not that he wanted the
death of anyone Jewish. Come on,
guys. Let’s quiet down and then
start this discussion over.
And then, when we do that, we can ask some questions which
we really do have a right to ask.
Why is it that Israel, the nuclear power, is threatening Iran, the not-yet
nuclear power, with war? That’s
pretty much the way Grass is phrasing the question. And why is the German taxpayer paying for the military
equipment that could carry out a preemptive attack?
What one individual German has to say about anything shouldn’t give rise to such resistance, unless, of course, a case can
be made that all Germans speak with one voice and it’s old Günter’s. Or that this is official Germany talking, as many seem to
think it is, and which it clearly isn’t. Grass
asserts his whole point in speaking out is that Germany is unable to express
any criticism of Israel, and the folk looking for neo-Nazis or unreconstructed Nazis under every rock would seem to be making his point for him. And pardon the endless drumbeat, but keep in mind
we’re talking about Israeli military and foreign policy, not the right to be
excused from working on the Sabbath in Australia.
Then there is all this character assassination of Grass
because of his membership in the Waffen SS. We’re told he was drafted at the age of 17 into the SS. Actually, The New Yorker carried his account of his time in the military from
Day One just a month before his 17th birthday to the death of
Hitler. Day One was four months
after D-Day, and Germany was crumbling.
You can focus on the bitter fact that he was in the Waffen SS and the
perhaps even more bitter fact that he kept this secret until he wrote his
autobiography, Peeling the Onion
(Amazon has fifteen used copies from $2.18.) Or you can read the New Yorker
story and see it through the 17-year-old Grass’s eyes.
Whatever you think of the man who wrote this
recollection, using his time in
the SS to make a case he is an anti-Semite seventy years later, given his rich
body of work, is unworthy and uninformed.
Stupid, actually. If he is
an anti-Semite, the evidence has to come from elsewhere.
And there are, in fact, better informed people trying to make that case. The most insidious
criticism of Grass I’ve found is by one of Germany’s leading and most
interesting intellectuals, Henryk M. Broder. I’m a great fan of Broder's, actually. Have been listening to his view on things for some time. Mostly he’s a shit-kicker. Takes unpopular sides, like defending
Thilo Sarrazin for his views there is something wrong with being Muslim. Curiously his “freedom
of expression” support for Sarrazin's trashing of Muslims isn't matched by support for Grass's freedom of expression.
Broder and a secular Muslim friend of his made a trip to look at the immigrant population around Germany and called it a Deutschland-Safari. It is a treasure, in my view. But when speaking out on the Grass issue he loses his balance and states his view with a pseudo intellectual twist. Grass, he says, represents the new modern form of Anti-Semitism, that he is the “prototype of the new Antisemitism.” Look closely at what Broder is talking about and you see him saying anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.
Broder and a secular Muslim friend of his made a trip to look at the immigrant population around Germany and called it a Deutschland-Safari. It is a treasure, in my view. But when speaking out on the Grass issue he loses his balance and states his view with a pseudo intellectual twist. Grass, he says, represents the new modern form of Anti-Semitism, that he is the “prototype of the new Antisemitism.” Look closely at what Broder is talking about and you see him saying anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.
Other highly placed respected Israelis have said similar
things.
Broder argues that Grass has a record of years of
anti-Semitism. He once claimed,
falsely, that there were six million German captives of the Russians. Given the significance of the six
million number applied to Jewish deaths in concentration camps, this is an inexcusable example of bad taste and factual
irresponsibility on Grass’s part. Broder's got that right, if it’s true. I haven’t checked it out. It does not, however, constitute evidence of
anti-Semitism. Nor is it
anti-Semitism for any victims of war – Germans included – to tell their
story. The suggestion that in
doing so they are deliberately trivializing the suffering of Jews is not
valid. One hurts. One says ouch.
You would expect more of Broder, of all people, than to find
him apparently unable to distinguish criticism of institutions from criticisms
of individuals. And it is
sad to hear the head of the Wiesenthal Center speak out in the same vein. You’d think that he, too, could tell a
Nazi from a modern-day leftie.
The next charge against him is that, whether anti-Semite or
not, he has his head on crooked for letting Israel have it when Iran is so much
worthy of criticism. Israel is a
democracy, Iran a theocratic tyranny.
And not just any tyranny – it actively supports Hamas, the organization
most clearly identifiable as anti-Israel and most actively engaged in working against
Israel’s interests. Israel,
on the other hand, has no interest in taking on Iran. Suggesting the two are parallel is a morally corrupt
suggestion. Shame on anybody who
would cast Israel in the same light.
Many have taken this stance on the issue.
There may well be something to this. Maybe Israel is the nicer guy. Nobody’s going to make the case for or against that notion in a few words. But
however you come down on this issue, you’re left with the fact that you’re
making a “he hit me first” kind of argument. Billy’s worse than Johnny, so Billy gets spanked and Johnny doesn't.
“You’re worse than me” arguments distract from the issue at
hand. Grass’s focus is on the fact
that there is a nuclear power making war noises, that the Germans are helping
make the wheels go round, and that there appears to be nobody seriously
speaking to the consequences.
It doesn’t matter that Israelis come out a cut above the Iranians (or
several cuts above) in the eyes of most Westerners. This doesn’t argue that they have earned the right to be
free from criticism. The charge
that the sabre rattling could actually provoke a violent response should be
debated. In Germany, in the U.N.,
in Israel, everywhere.
I won’t list all the sources of criticism I’ve been collecting, because they are readily accessible, in any number of languages, and because the story is still evolving, now that Israel has announced Grass will not be allowed to set foot on Israeli soil any longer. But, leaving out the comments by morons portraying Grass as one of the Führer’s favorites, here’s just a couple, to give you a sense of just how steamed up some of Grass’s critics have gotten.
Anshel Pfeffer in Haaretz says he saw red when first getting his thoughts down. “(T)the screen is turning red and the tips of my fingers are demanding the satisfaction of smashing into the keyboard over and over again to say just what I think about the poet.” (Curiously, that link seems to have been taken down.)
The Hebrew Writers' Association wants to pillory him because he "claimed Israel was preparing a first strike to 'wipe out the Iranian people'." That's a bad twisting of Grass's words. What Grass actually said was that "das behauptete Recht auf den Erstschlag (the claim of a right to a first strike) der das von einem Maulhelden unterjochte und zum organisierten Jubel gelenkte iranische Volk auslöschen könnte. (could wipe out a people under the yoke of a bigmouth who rounds them up and makes them celebrate). It would be nice if the spokesperson at the Hebrew Writers Association had actually read the poem before speaking.
One Israeli Embassy spokesman even referred to the affair as "anti-Semitism in the best European tradition of blood libels before Passover."
On the other hand, Haaretz, Israel’s oppositional press, shares my view that criticism of Grass is misplaced and unworthy.
The world needs to give Israel credit. It runs remarkably well as a democracy, in some ways better than most Western democracies. Tel Aviv is, from all reports, an exciting modern sophisticated city. People fly in, people fly out. There are gay pride parades – the only country in the Middle East where such freedom exists. The list of Israeli’s virtues is long.
But getting their knickers twisted over the fact that a German has just said publicly what lots of Israelis say themselves – that all is not right in Israeli politics – takes them down a notch.
Grass ought to be invited to Israel and debated with, not shunned for opposing a right-wing governmental policy.
Günter Grass deserves better. Israel deserves better. We all deserve better.
picture credit
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