{"id":8124,"date":"2012-04-12T11:55:04","date_gmt":"2012-04-12T15:55:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=8124"},"modified":"2012-04-12T11:56:35","modified_gmt":"2012-04-12T15:56:35","slug":"uri-avnery-on-gunther-grass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/uri-avnery-on-gunther-grass\/","title":{"rendered":"Uri Avnery on G\u00fcnther Grass"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>As far as poems go, “Was gesagt werden muss<\/a> \/ What needs to be said”\u00a0is a pretty second-rate exercise, & its political analysis is to a good extent inaccurate, but the mass of hysterical & inane responses in Europe (cf. the hundreds of the knee-jerk reactions in the German press) & here (see, for example Bernard Henri Levy’s idiotically pavlovian & totally besides the point response in the Huff Post, here<\/a>) to G\u00fcnther Grass’ piece is way, way beyond what the poem merits \u2014 even in terms of\u00a0criticizing\u00a0its lacks. The only level-headed response I’ve come across so far is Uri Avnery’s column. Here it is:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

April 14, 2012<\/em><\/p>\n

G\u00fcnter the Terrible<\/strong><\/p>\n

STOP ME if I have told you this joke before:<\/p>\n

\u00a0Somewhere in the US, a demonstration takes place. The police arrive and beat the protesters mercilessly.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cDon\u2019t hit me,\u201d someone shouts, \u201cI am an anti-communist!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI couldn’t give a damn what kind of a communist you are!\u201d a policeman answers as he raises his baton.<\/p>\n

\u00a0THE FIRST time I told this joke was when a German group visited the Knesset and met with German-born members, including me.<\/p>\n

\u00a0They went out of their way to praise Israel, lauding everything we had been doing, condemning every bit of criticism, however harmless it might be. It became downright embarrassing, since some of us in the Knesset were very critical of our government\u2019s policy in the occupied territories.<\/p>\n

\u00a0For me, this extreme kind of pro-Semitism is just disguised anti-Semitism. Both have a basic belief in common: that Jews \u2013 and therefore Israel \u2013 are something apart, not to be measured by the standards applied to everybody else.<\/p>\n

\u00a0What is an anti-Semite? Somebody who hates a Jew because he is a Jew. He does not hate him for what he is as a human being, but for his origin. A Hebrew or a Shebrew (to quote a joke from Ambrose Bierce) may be good or bad, nice or nasty, rich or poor \u2013 for being Jewish, they must be hated.<\/p>\n

\u00a0This is of course true for any kind of prejudice, including sexism, Islamophobia, chauvinism and whatever.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Germans, as is their wont, are a bit more thorough here than others. The term \u201cAntisemitismus\u201d was invented by a German (a few years before the terms Zionism and Feminism), and anti-Semitism was the official ideology of Germany during the Nazi years. Now the official German ideology is pro-Semitism, again going to extremes.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Another Nazi word was \u201cSonderbehandlung\u201d, meaning \u2018\u201dspecial treatment\u201d. It was an euphemism for something abhorrent: the killing of prisoners. But special treatment can also mean the opposite: according people and countries especially nice treatment, not because of what they do, but because of what they are – Jewish, say.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Well, I don\u2019t like it, even when I am on the receiving end. I like to be praised when I have done something good, I am ready to be blamed when I have done something bad. I don\u2019t like to be praised (or blamed, for that matter) because I happen to have been born a Jew.<\/p>\n

\u00a0THIS BRINGS us, of course, to G\u00fcnter Grass.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Disclosure: I met him only once, when we were both invited to a conference of the German PEN Club in Berlin. During an interval I met him in a very good restaurant. I told him, quite truthfully, that I like his books very much, especial the anti-Nazi novel \u201cThe Tin Drum\u201d, and that I like his later political activity. That was all.<\/p>\n

I did not meet him during his many visits to Israel. On at least one of them he acquired a girl-friend, a well-known writer.<\/p>\n

Now Grass has done the unthinkable: he has openly criticized the State of Israel! And he a German!!!<\/p>\n

\u00a0The reaction was automatic. He was at once branded as an anti-Semite. Not just a run-of-the-mill anti-Semite, but as a crypto-Nazi, who could easily have served as a henchman of Adolf Eichmann! This was shown by the fact that at age 17, near the end of World War II, he was recruited to the Waffen-SS like tens of thousands of others and then \u2013 oddly enough \u2013 kept the fact hidden for many years. So there you are.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Israeli and German politicians and commentators vied with each other in cursing the writer, with the Germans easily trumping the Israelis. Though our Interior Minister, Eli Yishai, may have garnered the individual championship by declaring Grass persona non grata and banning him from entering Israel for all eternity (at least).<\/p>\n

\u00a0Yishai is a political hack, who has never written a line worth remembering. He is the leader of the Orthodox Shas party, not by virtue of being elected, but as a sidekick of the party\u2019s strongman, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. The powerful State Comptroller is accusing him of gross incompetence in connection with a giant fire on Mount Carmel and so his career is in danger. Grass came just at the right time to save his skin.<\/p>\n

SO WHAT did Grass actually say? In a poem of 69 lines \u2013 actually a polemic in the guise of a poem \u2013 under the headline \u201cWhat Has To Be Said\u201d, Grass attacks Israeli policy concerning the atom bomb.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The ferocious counter-attack was focused almost completely on the axiom that a German has no right to criticize Israel, under any circumstances.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Let\u2019s ignore this \u201cargument\u201d and look at the poem itself, not necessarily as a literary masterpiece.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Grass\u2019 basic theme is that Israel already has a \u201cnuclear potential\u201d, and that it is therefore hypocrisy to blame Iran for perhaps wanting to acquire one, too. In particular he denounced the German government for supplying another submarine to Israel.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Looked at rationally, do his arguments make sense?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Grass assumes that Israel is planning a \u201cfirst strike\u201d preventive war against Iran, in which the Iranian people could be \u201cwiped out\u201d. This possibility only makes sense if Grass assumes that the Israeli \u201cfirst strike\u201d would be an attack with nuclear bombs. Indeed, the term \u201cfirst strike\u201d belongs solely to the lexicon of nuclear war.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It is in this context that he condemns the German government for giving Israel another (sixth) submarine with the capability of launching nuclear bombs. Such submarines are designed for delivering a \u201csecond strike\u201d by a nation hit in the \u201cfirst strike\u201d. It is basically a weapon of deterrence.<\/p>\n

\u00a0He deplores the fact that nobody in Germany (and in the Western world) dares even to mention Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons, and that it is practically forbidden to \u201ccall that particular country by name\u201d in this context.<\/p>\n

\u00a0He then asserts that \u201cthe Atomic Power Israel endangers the fragile peace of the world\u201d.<\/p>\n

To avert this danger, he proposes that \u201cIsrael\u2019s atomic potential and Iran\u2019s atomic installations\u201d be put under an unfettered and permanent international inspection regime with the agreement of both governments.<\/p>\n

At the end, he also mentions the Palestinians. Only this way, he says, can the Israelis and the Palestinians, and all the other inhabitants of this \u201cregion occupied by madness\u201d, be helped.<\/p>\n

WELL, I did not fall off my chair when I read this. The text can and must be criticized, but there is nothing there that demands stern condemnation.<\/p>\n

As I said before, I see no reason for Germans to abstain from criticizing Israel. There is nothing in this text that de-legitimizes the State of Israel, On the contrary, he declares his solidarity with Israel. He explicitly mentions the Holocaust as an indelible crime. He also calls the Iranians \u201ca people enslaved by a \u201cbigmouth\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u00a0That said, Grass\u2019 idea that Israel might \u201cwipe out\u201d the Iranian people in a preventive \u201cfirst strike\u201d is wildly exaggerated.<\/p>\n

I have already stated several times that all the Israeli and American blabbering about an Israeli attack on Iran is a part of the US-led psychological warfare to press the Iranian leaders to give up their (presumed) nuclear ambitions. It is totally impossible for Israel to attack Iran without express prior American agreement, and it is totally impossible for America to attack – or let Israel attack – because of the catastrophic consequences \u2013 a collapse of the world economy and a long and costly war.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s assume, for argument\u2019s sake, that the Israeli government indeed decides to attack Iran\u2019s nuclear installations. This would not \u201cwipe out\u201d the Iranian people, or even a part of it. Only madmen would use nuclear bombs for this purpose. Israeli leaders, whatever one may think of them, are not mad.<\/p>\n

Even if Israel had (or obtained from the US) tactical nuclear bombs with limited power and radius, the world reaction to their use would be catastrophic.<\/p>\n

By the way, it is not by their own choice that Israeli governments have a policy of nuclear non-transparency. If they could, our leaders would brag about our nuclear might from the rooftops. It\u2019s the US that insists on opaqueness, so as not to be obliged to do something about it.<\/p>\n

Grass\u2019 contention that Israel endangers \u201cworld peace\u201d is, therefore, a bit of an overstatement.<\/p>\n

As for Glass\u2019 practical proposal to subject both Israeli and Iranian nuclear installations to international inspection \u2013 I think this merits serious consideration. If both our countries freeze the nuclear status quo, it may not be a bad idea at all.<\/p>\n

In the end, though, we need a nuclear-free region as part of a general regional peace that will include Israel, Palestine, the Arab League, Turkey and Iran.<\/p>\n

AS FOR G\u00fcnter Grass, I shall be happy to meet him again, this time for a good meal in Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As far as poems go, “Was gesagt werden muss \/ What needs to be said”\u00a0is a pretty second-rate exercise, & its political analysis is to a good extent inaccurate, but the mass of hysterical...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,61,1117],"tags":[1200,1077],"class_list":["post-8124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-israel","category-journalism","category-poem","tag-gunther-grass","tag-uri-avnery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8124"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8135,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8124\/revisions\/8135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}