German Nobel literature laureate Günter Grass labeled Israel a threat to “already fragile world peace” in a poem published April 4 that drew sharp rebukes at home and from Israel.
In the poem “What must be said,” published in the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and Italy’s La Repubblica, among others, Grass criticized what he described as Western hypocrisy over Israel’s own suspected nuclear program amid speculation it might engage in military action against Iran to stop it from building an atomic bomb.
Grass, 84, said he had been prompted by Berlin’s recent decision to sell Israel a submarine able to “send all-destroying warheads where the existence of a single nuclear bomb is unproven.”
“The nuclear power Israel is endangering the already fragile world peace,” he wrote. His poem specifically criticized Israel’s “claim to the right of a first strike” against Iran.
Israel views Iran as a threat to its existence, citing among other things Iranian calls for its destruction and fears that Iran aims to produce nuclear weapons.
Israel currently has three Dolphin submarines from Germany — one half-funded and two entirely funded by Berlin — with two more under construction and the contract for a sixth signed last month.
Dolphin-class submarines can carry nuclear-tipped missiles, but there’s no evidence Israel has armed them with such weapons.
The left-leaning Grass established himself with “The Tin Drum,” published in 1959, and won the Nobel Prize in 1999. He urged fellow Germans to confront their painful Nazi history in the decades after World War II.
However, his image suffered a bruising when he admitted in his 2006 autobiography that he was drafted into the Waffen SS, the combat arm of the Nazis’ paramilitary organization, in the final months of World War II.
The head of the German Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, Ruprecht Polenz, told the daily Mitteldeutsche Zeitung that Grass is a great author “but he always has difficulties when he speak about politics and mostly gets it wrong.”
“The country that worries us is Iran,” Polenz was quoted as saying, adding that “his poem distracts attention from that.” — ap