 |
| Grass visits Israeli poet and Nobel Laureate Samuel Yosef Agnon in the 1960s. |
The debate about Grass makes one think that it has to do with the threat to the “already endangered world peace” by “the nuclear-armed Israel,” as the writer says. Or to do with Grass’s “anti-Semitism”, as his critics think. In fact, more is at stake: human dignity and truthfulness. Both are inseparable.
Iran’s President Ahmadinejad openly proclaims that he wants to destroy Israel; the religious leader of the country insults the Jewish state as a cancer to be eradicated. Instead of protesting, Grass describes them as ‘big-mouths’. The ageing writer should know better; he experienced Hitler’s announcement of 1939 that the “Jewish race” had to be destroyed – and knows about the murder of millions.
Instead Grass warns Israel against a first nuclear strike. Grass wants to prevent Berlin from providing Israel with a submarine; he calls that ‘reparations’, blackmailing Germany. The word ‘atonement’ is as mendacious as Grass’s poem. No victim has become an ‘unvictim’.
Is Grass an anti-Semite? We should not limit ourselves to that question. The essential point is that the writer, with his one-sided accusations of Germany and Israel, distorts the truth and robs the people, here in Germany and there in Israel, of their dignity.
Grass himself was too much of a coward to admit to his own past. In his larmoyant way, he now makes complaints about how his statements are being criticized. Günter Grass has lost his credibility because he robs others of their dignity.
Quelle: http://www.bz-berlin.de/aktuell/deutschland/seligmann-analysiert-den-grass-fallarticle1430626.html