NYT: Israel Bars German Laureate Grass Over Poem

[bigi]

Win Nobel Prize, write a poem, no trip to Izrael for you

 

[Texashiker]

Israel seem to have and issue with respecting differing opinions.

~edit~

It also seems israel is quick to play the "anti-semitism" card.

We can criticize nation, except israel? When someone criticizes israel, then its hate talk?

 

[SandEagle]

this belongs in L&R

 

[ichy]

I like their pathetic cheap shot about Grass having been in the Waffen SS. He was conscripted as a teenager, that hardly makes him the moral equivalent of Adolf Eichmann. Oh well, trust the Israelis to milk decades old events for everything they're worth.

 

[Braznor]

Gunter Grass has no business in telling other people what to do.

 

[iGas]

Gunter Grass has no business in telling other people what to do.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, be it Jew, German, Iranian, or Nauruan.

 

[KeithP]

Guy sounds like a douche bag. good for Israel.

-KeithP

 

[AstroManLuca]

So when a Muslim nation or terrorist group puts a hit on someone who criticizes Islam, that's barbaric, but Israel is fine with banning people from their country for criticizing them?

They're so hypocritical. No one denies that the Jewish people have been through some terrible times (well okay, some people do, but no REASONABLE person does), but they're just being dicks now.

 

[jpeyton]

Grass should thank them for the free publicity.

Who here would have even known about Gunter Grass or his poem if Israel was mature enough to stop micro-managing free speech in their country?

Now Gunter and his poem are in the NYT. Good for him.

 

[WelshBloke]

Pome

What Must Be Said

Why do I stay silent, conceal for too long
What clearly is and has been
Practiced in war games, at the end of which we as survivors
Are at best footnotes.

It is the alleged right to first strike
That could annihilate the Iranian people--
Enslaved by a loud-mouth
And guided to organized jubilation--
Because in their territory,
It is suspected, a bomb is being built.

Yet why do I forbid myself
To name that other country
In which, for years, even if secretly,
There has been a growing nuclear potential at hand
But beyond control, because no inspection is available?

The universal concealment of these facts,
To which my silence subordinated itself,
I sense as incriminating lies
And force--the punishment is promised
As soon as it is ignored;
The verdict of "anti-Semitism" is familiar.

Now, though, because in my country
Which from time to time has sought and confronted
Its very own crime
That is without compare
In turn on a purely commercial basis, if also
With nimble lips calling it a reparation, declares
A further U-boat should be delivered to Israel,
Whose specialty consists of guiding all-destroying warheads to where the existence
Of a single atomic bomb is unproven,
But as a fear wishes to be conclusive,
I say what must be said.

Why though have I stayed silent until now?
Because I thought my origin,
Afflicted by a stain never to be expunged
Kept the state of Israel, to which I am bound
And wish to stay bound,
From accepting this fact as pronounced truth.

Why do I say only now,
Aged and with my last ink,
That the nuclear power of Israel endangers
The already fragile world peace?
Because it must be said
What even tomorrow may be too late to say;
Also because we--as Germans burdened enough--
Could be the suppliers to a crime
That is foreseeable, wherefore our complicity
Could not be redeemed through any of the usual excuses.

And granted: I am silent no longer
Because I am tired of the hypocrisy
Of the West; in addition to which it is to be hoped
That this will free many from silence,
That they may prompt the perpetrator of the recognized danger
To renounce violence and
Likewise insist
That an unhindered and permanent control
Of the Israeli nuclear potential
And the Iranian nuclear sites
Be authorized through an international agency
By the governments of both countries.

Only this way are all, the Israelis and Palestinians,
Even more, all people, that in this
Region occupied by mania
Live cheek by jowl among enemies,
And also us, to be helped.

I'm guessing it loses something in the translation.

 

[Murloc]

what?
Israelian nutjobs being hypocrites?
no way.

He's only exposing the truth, and he's denied entry just because he's famous.
Lots of people say what he wrote in that poem.

Who is responsible for denying entry to intellectuals based on opinion anyway?
is it a democratically chosen entity?

 

[Blackjack200]

Pome



I'm guessing it loses something in the translation.

"That was the jOke."

This stuff is pretty common, The United States bans people all the time based on what they write or say. (At least that's what I've heard; I think it's common)

But it does seem a little sensative on Israel's part, assuming the translation is reasonably accurate.

 

[SandEagle]

Pome



I'm guessing it loses something in the translation.

gah. our resident pome expert can do better than that. and he aint no nobel prize winner either!

 

[WelshBloke]

"That was the jOke."

This stuff is pretty common, The United States bans people all the time based on what they write or say. (At least that's what I've heard; I think it's common)

But it does seem a little sensative on Israel's part, assuming the translation is reasonably accurate.

Yeah its up to them who they let in, theyd have been better off just ignoring the crappy pome anyway.

 

[Broheim]

So when a Muslim nation or terrorist group puts a hit on someone who criticizes Islam, that's barbaric, but Israel is fine with banning people from their country for criticizing them?

They're so hypocritical. No one denies that the Jewish people have been through some terrible times (well okay, some people do, but no REASONABLE person does), but they're just being dicks now.

...you seriously can't see the difference?

 

[SandEagle]

...you seriously can't see the difference?

right on schedule. The P&N tards pop up like groundhogs whenever Israel gets mentioned.

 

[epidemis]

Israel seem to have and issue with respecting differing opinions.

A lot of countries do as well, check out UK's "not-wanted list". USA's recently barred two students from entering because of something they wrote on twitter. Why are you people playing the big bad Israel car when their own country is doing the same?

 

[unokitty]

Gunter Grass is entitled to write whatever he wants... Obviously, he is a very skilled writer. Winner of the Nobel Prize ...

However, it is not clear that he would have won his Nobel if he hadn't concealed for 60 years his membership in the Waffen SS a criminal organization Here is a partial list of their war crimes.

Unlike the Wehrmacht, the Waffen SS was not part of the German Army. The SS was part of the Nazi party. And at the Nuremberg trials, the SS was declared a criminal organization.

In a similar manner, the government of Israel is entitled to bar anyone they want from visiting. That they bar a former SS volunteer from visiting doesn't seem surprising to me...

I can see some symmetry here... Don't feel like defending either side ... Don't think that either side needs to be defended. Status quo works for me...

Uno

 

[Broheim]

right on schedule. The P&N tards pop up like groundhogs whenever Israel gets mentioned.

you hang out more in P&N than I do, so I wouldn't know.

but of course you can't see the difference between killing someone and telling them they're not welcome in this case, you hate jews... jews and cops, isn't right SandEagle.

 

[SandEagle]

you hang out more in P&N than I do, so I wouldn't know.

but of course you can't see the difference between killing someone and telling them they're not welcome in this case, you hate jews... jews and cops, isn't right SandEagle.

critcizing Israeli policies is not antisemitic and does not mean one hates jews. the whole world knows this. show proof of your allegations. i call out bad cops and bad foreign policy tactics.

 

[ichy]

Gunter Grass is entitled to write whatever he wants... Obviously, he is a very skilled writer. Winner of the Nobel Prize ...

However, it is not clear that he would have won his Nobel if he hadn't concealed for 60 years his membership in the Waffen SS a criminal organization

I admit I'm not familiar with all the details but I believe that Grass's service wasn't entirely voluntary, and he joined right after he turned 17. Concealing his service for over 60 years wasn't the most honorable thing to do but I can sort of understand that he wouldn't want to see his life ruined by a dumb thing he did when he was a teenager.

 

[unokitty]

Gunter Grass' concealment of his involvement with the Waffen SS for 60 years is a complicated issue.

My perception of his recent poem and Israel's reaction is that it seems to be the diplomatic equivalent of "I'm not going to invite you to my birthday party."

I just don't think that that is a big deal.

But I do have an aversion to war crimes, the organizations, like the Waffen SS, that facilitate them, and the people that commit them.

Uno

 

[AstroManLuca]

...you seriously can't see the difference?

There's a difference, obviously, but it's still hypocritical. Israel may not be as extremist as some wacko Muslim states, but they're still messed up.

 

[SandEagle]

check out the response back to Gunter's poem, from a holocaust survivor:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/154608#.T4XpENUQX_i

Danger,
I want to be a danger,
I want to be a danger to the world,
so that after my destruction, not a single blade of grass will remain on the face of the Earth,
or a single blade of grass for Gunther Grass's pipe,
upon the Earth where, since I was born, I pose a danger to the world.
Because it is my right!
It is my right to live or die while annihilating my annihilators, without riding again as a crying-boy in a transport train,
Into the world-vacuum, while placing my head in the lap of a mother who is disappearing into the fresh air of the Land of Wotan,
and the urine tin darts dark-yellow specks onto the walls of the cabin – like gunshots that spray
a yellowish-reddish liquid from besides the train guards, and among them – maybe – the soldier G.G., also, wearing a steel helmet.
Later in the poem, Yaoz-Kest issues what appears to be a statement of intent along the lines of "the Samson Option":
And so, as the strong light of the Land of Israel enters my home, I turn on the radio and cannot help listening to the sermons of the ayatollahs of Iran and to the words of the respected Iranian minister, who shows the map of the Land of Israel with his two hands, to say: "It is so small… Within six or seven days it can be erased from the map", or in your language: "ausradieren". And here I am listening to the sermons of the imams in the mosques of the Land of Israel and the Arab lands as they declare "ausradieren!", but they are always referring to me and not to you, Gunther Grass.
And yet, there is a right reserved only to us Jews (if indeed any human on Earth has this right): to be destroyed and to take the weary and sated world with us to the non-existence, along with its wondrous libraries and heart-stirring tunes – just so, after we descend to the grave, while the ground emits radioactive rays to all four winds.
Indeed – we have the right! It is mine, too!
For it is the right of the Nation of Israel to finally shut the gates to the world after it leaves this place (not of its free will!), and we have the right to say, at the price of the 3,000 year old fear: "If you force us yet again to descend from the face of the Earth to the depths of the Earth – let the Earth roll toward the Nothingness."

stay classy, guy.

 

[0roo0roo]

Israel seem to have and issue with respecting differing opinions.

~edit~

It also seems israel is quick to play the "anti-semitism" card.

We can criticize nation, except israel? When someone criticizes israel, then its hate talk?

are you shitting me?

israel is the only place you can even imagine a gay pride parade in the middle east.
palestinian sympathisers exist in israel, standard far lefties who march with the palestinians, there are no counterparts in arab/muslim countries who would even dare speak up for the jews/israel.