[Debate] Controversial Poem about Israel,Günter Grass's Lyrical First Strike

[Riaz K Tayob]

04/04/2012

Controversial Poem about Israel
Günter Grass's Lyrical First Strike

A Commentary by Sebastian Hammelehle
Grass's poem was published in the Wednesday edition of the Süddeutsche 
Zeitung .
DPA

Grass's poem was published in the Wednesday edition of the Süddeutsche 
Zeitung.

Never in the history of postwar Germany has a prominent intellectual 
attacked Israel in such a cliche-laden way as Günter Grass with his 
controversial new poem, "What Must Be Said." The obel Prize laureate has 
delivered a lyrical first strike against Israel.

"What Must Be Said"is the title that Günter Grass chose for his poem. It 
begins with the words: "Why have I been silent, kept quiet for too long, 
about what is obvious." The poem, which was published in Germany's 
Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper on Wednesday and which has already 
provoked considerable outrage, deals with Grass's silence on Israel and 
the threat of military conflict between Israel and Iran. It's also about 
Germany supplying weapons to Israel, and about the relationship between 
Germans and Israelis. It's about a subject, where the title alone, "What 
Must Be Said", implies an unpleasant flippancy: the flippancy of 
breaking taboos.
"What must be said" is a thinly veiled version of another phrase that 
Germans who don't hold a Nobel Prize for Literature like to use when 
they're sitting around in the pub, setting the world to rights. It can 
be loosely translated as: "There's no law against saying that…"

Yes, there's no law against saying these things -- except that there is 
an unwritten law in Germany against saying certain things, particularly 
given the country's difficult history. And so Grass, a few lines after 
he has posed the rhetorical question about why he has kept quiet, gives 
an explanation for his previous reticence. He felt under a "constraint," 
he writes -- a constraint that "promises punishment if it is flouted."

Under a 'Constraint'

Günter Grass has fought many political battles in his life. He was 
pelted with eggs when he campaigned for Willy Brandt, who went on to 
become German chancellor. With his best-known novel "The Tin Drum," he 
was accused of writing obscenities that were allegedly harmful to minors.

So what constraint did he feel under, and what punishment deterred him, 
to the degree that he forbade himself, as he writes in his poem, from 
"mentioning that country by name where a growing nuclear capability has 
existed for years but is out of control because it is not subject to any 
inspection?" It is the punishment, he writes, of receiving the "verdict 
of 'anti-Semitism'".

Grass takes four meandering verses to finally get to what he had 
foreshadowed with his title. Because if you hear someone in Germany 
beginning a statement with the words "There's no law against saying 
that…," you know what is coming next. It's either going to be about 
foreigners living in Germany -- or about Israel.

Grass makes a remarkable comparison, which is supposed to sound logical, 
but which is actually not. He implies that criticism of Israel is 
anti-Semitic. But shouldn't one call such statements "anti-Israeli" or 
perhaps "anti-Zionist"?

Stereotypes of a Global Conspiracy

And does one actually get punished in Germany for criticizing Israel? 
Just recently, Sigmar Gabriel, the leader of the center-left Social 
Democratic Party, wrote on Facebook that he had witnessed "apartheid" in 
the West Bank city of Hebron. Did he get punished for saying that? No.

When he was chairman of Germany's Central Council of Jews, Ignatz Bubis 
once complained that people referred to Israel as "his" country when 
they were talking to him. Bubis was a German citizen. Günter Grass has 
still not understood that "the Jews" are not the same as "the Israelis."

But in his case, even this realization wouldn't help very much. It 
doesn't really matter whether one calls the supposed sinister puppet 
masters who punish any criticism of themselves with social ostracism 
Jews or Israelis. It's the same stereotype that lurks behind it: the 
global conspiracy. And yes, at this point one unfortunately has to admit 
that Grass is right -- it is indeed anti-Semitic.

'Weary of the Hypocrisy'

Grass is such a vain man that, when asked to write for the German weekly 
Die Zeit on the occasion of prominent German writer Heinrich Böll's 
death, he wrote almost exclusively about himself. Now he has packed his 
political opinions into a poem that is almost as simple. What pathos! It 
might have been better if he hadn't begun his verses with the word "I" 
at the beginning of each sentence, and instead debated the situation in 
Israel more thoroughly. Then he very quickly would have gotten an idea 
about how the people of Israeli must feel in psychological terms, being 
surrounded by enemies. It will take a crisis before we can really 
determine whether Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is really just a 
"loudmouth" -- as Grass apparently believes him to be -- who has 
"subjugated" his people and forced them to take part in "organized 
exultation." And at that point, the State of Israel will probably be 
able to make good use of submarines. Even ones from Germany.
But no, Grass doesn't even have to trouble himself with considerations 
like that. After all, he is, as he writes, "aligned with Israel". 
Somebody grab the gong: The cliché is now complete. After all, in 
society, it is no longer acceptable to use the phrase, "There's no law 
against saying that…" without also adding a line like, "Some of my best 
friends are foreigners." Does Israel even need to have friends like 
this? Grass spent his early years in the Waffen-SS and, now, as he 
writes, he is at an "advanced age" and, writing with the "last bit of 
ink," is "weary of the hypocrisy."

It is in poor taste when the Germans, of all people, start telling the 
Israelis what to do. Never in the history of postwar Germany has an 
intellectual as prominent as Grass presented such hollow clichés about 
Israel in such a vain manner. It completely overshadows his reasonable 
call for both the Israeli and Iranian nuclear capabilities to be 
monitored by "an international entity."

It is in no way certain that the nuclear attack implied in the poem with 
which Israel "could annihilate the Iranian people" will even happen in 
the foreseeable future. But one thing is certain: The lyrical first 
strike has already been launched -- from German soil.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,825818,00.html#ref=rss