Israel Blacklists German Nobel Laureate Gunter Grass
By Ria Novosti
Israeli authorities declared writer Gunter Grass, a winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize in literature, persona non grata over his poem criticizing Israel’s military plans, Jerusalem Post said on Sunday.
Grass, 84, published earlier this week a poem titled “What must be said” where he wrote that nuclear arms allegedly possessed by Israel “threaten the fragile world peace.”
The poem, which appeared in German Süddeutsche Zeitung and several other prominent Western newspapers, lambasts the German government for its plans to sell to Israel six Dolphin-class submarines capable of carrying nuclear warheads, which may be used for a much-discussed Israeli preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“If Grass wants to continue to spread his twisted, lying creations, he should do so in Iran, where he’ll find a receptive audience,” Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai said, Jerusalem Post reported.
The ban is formally based on Grass’ time in Waffen-SS military force during the last years of the Nazi Germany, when he was still a teenager. Grass, a famous peace activist of moderately leftist views, publicly confessed to serving in Waffen-SS in 2006.
If everone said that the land they claim was a gift from God than all land should be returned. I think its rather ridicilous to make such claims in the 21st century. US cant give land back to Mexicans, the indigenous Americans or the Russians-they learn to live in peace!
Israel may have indeed over reacted.
Until you recall she is surrounded by entire populations who have made the ‘Promise to finish what Hitler started’.
Repeatedly.
Günter Grass was and is absolutely right. Indeed he showed very big guts to expressing what he thinks.
Herr Grass only stated the obvious truth..