What Must Be Said

 A Nobel laureate, even one whose moral authority has been somewhat dimmed in the last six years or so, does have a lot of clout.  Someone whose reputation has been made on his masterful use of language, and his ability to express thoughts and values that are fairly universal in nature in a manner that elicits sympathy and acclaim from a wide, universal reading public in any event, knows that what he pronounces will be soberly assessed and given weight.

Ideology too is a singularly strange element in human discourse.  German fascists were 'national socialists'.  The Nazi ideology under Adolf Hitler adored the very thought of the perfect human being; men who were physically attractive, well-built, of high moral suasion.  Clean living was vital, avoidance of alcohol and tobacco, eating nutritious foods, women knowing their place in the kitchen, and men in the ranks of the military.

People who were elderly, infirm, handicapped, of the wrong ethnic group, gender-confused, inclined to move about incessantly, hostile to the ruling regime, were by their very nature suspect, and by that standard they also represented a sub-branch of humanity, hardly worthwhile bothering with.  In fact, their very presence cluttered up the vision of a superior society, so it was better to dispense with them.

Those who adapt themselves to ideologies in a fanatical manner are pathological in their outlook.  And there is not too much distance between fundamentals of extreme socialism and extreme fascism.  Communism, in fact, and Nazism had much in common with their fixed ideas of ideal societies and how to fashion them by calculation and by firm autocratic rule.

Israel is basically a nation of Jews, with a sprinkling of other ethnic and religious groups thrown in for good measure, although its enemies delight in naming it an apartheid state.  Jews are not known for their visceral war-mongering.  Rather, it has been their passive willingness to live among others not like themselves, and their resistance to forced attempts at estrangement from Judaism that distinguished them.  Along with their intellectual and commercial and artistic proficiency.

Jews, singly or en masse have rarely constituted a violent threat to anyone.  They wish to live and let live.  The world, however, has been unwilling to allow Jews to simply 'live', not without living through one series after another of oppression, degrading humiliation, continued instances of pogroms and slanderous accusations of blood libel.  And, of course, the Holocaust, the very thought of which makes a lot of people squirm uncomfortably.


And here, then, is a man who carefully nurtured a vision of himself as a liberal socialist, a sensitive writer of books extolling peace and humanity, writing anti-war polemics, claiming a deep distaste for what his country Germany executed against European Jewry in its fairly successfully-prosecuted attempt at mass extermination, now claiming to feel free in his old age to speak the truth.

And that truth, it would appear, is his insightful fears that Israel is on the brink of destroying Iran through the use of nuclear weapons.  "What must be said", he claims is that Israel "could wipe out the Iranian people" with a "first strike", as a result of an entirely unreasonable threat it detects for some unimaginable reason, from Tehran's own nuclear program that has sent the UN into a tizzy.

The only thing that restrained him from speaking out forcefully on any earlier occasion was his desperate wish not to be named an anti-Semite.  The inference being that anyone who criticizes Israel in any degree for any reason, would be classified in this manner.  Nice cover indeed for those who profess to love Jews but fear and loath Israel's 'intentions'.

"...tomorrow could already be too late", since it was simply quite obvious that once again Germany is involved in a world-shattering potential to become involved in a tragedy of unheralded proportions.  A "supplier to a crime", since Germany is guilty of having signed an agreement to sell Israel a sixth nuclear-capable Dolphin-class submarine.  Which, of course, Israel plans, according to Gunter Grass, to arm with nuclear missiles.

"I admit: I will be silent no longer, because I am sick of the hypocrisy of the West", he declared passionately.  "Why do I only say now, aged and with my last ink: the atomic power Israel is endangering the already fragile world peace?" questions his poem appearing in the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung apparently entertain and respond to.

"What must be said is that it belongs to European tradition to accuse the Jews of ritual murder before the Passover celebration.  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."  Emmanuel Nahshon, Deputy Chief of Mission, Israeli embassy, Berlin.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, speaking for official Germany, warns against "making light of the dangers of the Iranian nuclear programme."  Making no reference whatever, in his delicacy of intervention, to Mr. Grass's past membership in the Waffen SS, as a young man.

He had volunteered for submarine service with the Kriegsmarine, but was turned down. Instead, he was drafted into the 10th SS Panzer division Frundsberg, where he saw active combat from February 1945 until April 1945, when he was wounded, captured and sent along to an American prisoner-of-war camp.

Where his world vision was born.