File photo of novelist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Guenter
Grass smoking his pipe before the opening of an exhibition with paintings of
Grass in Hamburg October 18, 2007. (Reuters/Christian Charisius)
Grass smoking his pipe before the opening of an exhibition with paintings of
Grass in Hamburg October 18, 2007. (Reuters/Christian Charisius)
BERLIN (Reuters) — Nobel Prize-winning German writer Guenter Grass has attacked Israel as a threat to world peace and said it must not be allowed to launch military strikes against Iran, in a poem that led one German newspaper to brand him “the eternal anti-Semite.”
Grass, 84, a seasoned campaigner for left-wing causes and a critic of Western military interventions such as Iraq, also condemned German arms sales to Israel in his poem “What must be said”, published in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily on Wednesday.
His words were criticized in Germany, where any strong condemnation of Israel is taboo because of the Nazi-perpetrated Holocaust. Grass’s own moral authority has never fully recovered from his 2006 admission that he once served in Hitler’s Waffen SS.
“Why do I say only now … that the nuclear power Israel endangers an already fragile world peace? Because that must be said which may already be too late to say tomorrow,” Grass wrote in the poem.
“Also because we – as Germans burdened enough – may become a subcontractor to a crime that is foreseeable,” he wrote, adding that Germany’s Nazi past and the Holocaust were no excuse for remaining silent now about Israel’s nuclear capability.
“I will not remain silent because I am weary of the West’s hypocrisy,” wrote Grass, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999 for novels such as “The Tin Drum” chronicling the horrors of 20th century German history.
Israel is widely assumed to have the Middle East’s only nuclear weapons, which it neither confirms nor denies. These could be carried by Dolphin submarines it has bought from Germany.
Israel has threatened to take military action, with or without US support, to halt what it sees as a nuclear threat from Iran. Tehran says it is developing nuclear technology for purely peaceful purposes.
Germany said recently it would sell Israel a sixth Dolphin submarine and shoulder part of the cost – but also warned its ally that any military escalation with Iran could bring incalculable risks.
‘Eternal anti-Semite’
The poem called for an international ‘agency’ to take permanent control of both Israel’s nuclear weapons and Iran’s atomic plant.
The Welt newspaper called Grass “the eternal anti-Semite” in a front page article commenting on the poem, which was widely circulated in advance of its publication.
“Grass is the prototype of the educated anti-Semite who means well with the Jews. He is hounded by guilt and feelings of shame and at the same time is driven by the wish to weigh up history,” the newspaper wrote on Wednesday.
The American Jewish Committee in Berlin said Grass’s poem was an attempt to delegitimize Israel’s security policy.
“Guenter Grass has turned the situation on its head by defending a brutal regime (in Iran) that has not only for many years systematically disregarded international agreements but also trodden them underfoot,” said its director Deidre Berger.
“Grass does terrible harm to German-Israeli friendship when he describes Israel’s necessary security policies as a crime…”
Asked about Grass’s poem at a news conference on Wednesday, a German government spokesman declined to comment but said that artists in Germany enjoyed freedom of expression.
Grass is for many the voice of a German generation that came of age during Adolf Hitler’s war and bore the burden of their parents’ guilt.
But Grass, who for decades urged Germans to come to terms with their Nazi past, lost much of his moral authority after his belated admission in 2006 that he had once served in Hitler’s Waffen SS.
One of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany, the SS was first an elite force of volunteers that played a key role in the Holocaust, operating the death camps in which millions died. But by the war’s end, most were drafted and many under 18.
Grass said he was called up to join the SS as a teenager and insisted that he never fired a shot. But some critics inside and outside Germany said this explanation had come too late.
Grass made the confession shortly before publishing his autobiography “Peeling Onions” which details his war service.
Below the original poem, translations in English & Arabic
“Was gesagt werden muss”
Warum schweige ich, verschweige zu lange,
was offensichtlich ist und in Planspielen
geübt wurde, an deren Ende als Überlebende
wir allenfalls Fußnoten sind.Es ist das behauptete Recht auf den Erstschlag,
der das von einem Maulhelden unterjochte
und zum organisierten Jubel gelenkte
iranische Volk auslöschen könnte,
weil in dessen Machtbereich der Bau
einer Atombombe vermutet wird.Doch warum untersage ich mir,
jenes andere Land beim Namen zu nennen,
in dem seit Jahren – wenn auch geheimgehalten -
ein wachsend nukleares Potential verfügbar
aber außer Kontrolle, weil keiner Prüfung
zugänglich ist?Das allgemeine Verschweigen dieses Tatbestandes,
dem sich mein Schweigen untergeordnet hat,
empfinde ich als belastende Lüge
und Zwang, der Strafe in Aussicht stellt,
sobald er mißachtet wird;
das Verdikt “Antisemitismus” ist geläufig.Jetzt aber, weil aus meinem Land,
das von ureigenen Verbrechen,
die ohne Vergleich sind,
Mal um Mal eingeholt und zur Rede gestellt wird,
wiederum und rein geschäftsmäßig, wenn auch
mit flinker Lippe als Wiedergutmachung deklariert,
ein weiteres U-Boot nach Israel
geliefert werden soll, dessen Spezialität
darin besteht, allesvernichtende Sprengköpfe
dorthin lenken zu können, wo die Existenz
einer einzigen Atombombe unbewiesen ist,
doch als Befürchtung von Beweiskraft sein will,
sage ich, was gesagt werden muß.Warum aber schwieg ich bislang?
Weil ich meinte, meine Herkunft,
die von nie zu tilgendem Makel behaftet ist,
verbiete, diese Tatsache als ausgesprochene Wahrheit
dem Land Israel, dem ich verbunden bin
und bleiben will, zuzumuten.Warum sage ich jetzt erst,
gealtert und mit letzter Tinte:
Die Atommacht Israel gefährdet
den ohnehin brüchigen Weltfrieden?
Weil gesagt werden muß,
was schon morgen zu spät sein könnte;
auch weil wir – als Deutsche belastet genug -
Zulieferer eines Verbrechens werden könnten,
das voraussehbar ist, weshalb unsere Mitschuld
durch keine der üblichen Ausreden
zu tilgen wäre.Und zugegeben: ich schweige nicht mehr,
weil ich der Heuchelei des Westens
überdrüssig bin; zudem ist zu hoffen,
es mögen sich viele vom Schweigen befreien,
den Verursacher der erkennbaren Gefahr
zum Verzicht auf Gewalt auffordern und
gleichfalls darauf bestehen,
daß eine unbehinderte und permanente Kontrolle
des israelischen atomaren Potentials
und der iranischen Atomanlagen
durch eine internationale Instanz
von den Regierungen beider Länder zugelassen wird.Nur so ist allen, den Israelis und Palästinensern,
mehr noch, allen Menschen, die in dieser
vom Wahn okkupierten Region
dicht bei dicht verfeindet leben
und letztlich auch uns zu helfen.
Gunter GrassSueddeutsche, 04.04.12
The Poem
What must be said
Why I am silent, silent for too much time,how much is clear and we made itin war games, where, as survivors,we are just the footnotes.
That is the claimed right to the formal preventive aggressionwhich could erase the Iranian peopledominated by a bouncer and moved to an organized jubilation,because in the area of his competence there isthe construction of the atomic bomb.
And then why do I avoid myselfto call the other country with its name,where since years – even if secretly covered -there is an increasing nuclear power,without control, because unreachableby every inspection?
I feel the everybody silence on this state of affairs,which my silence is slave to,as an oppressive lie and an inhibition that presents punishmentwe don’t pay attention to;the verdict “anti-Semitism” is common.
Now, since my country,from time to time touched by unique and exclusive crimes,obliged to justify itself,again for pure business aims – even ifwith fast tongue we call it “reparation” -should deliver another submarine to Israel,
with the specialty of addressingannihilating warheads where theexistence of one atomic bomb is not provedbut it wants evidence as a scarecrow,I say what must be said.
Why did I stay silent until now?Because the thought about my origin,burdened by an unclearing stain,had avoiding to wait this factlike a truth declared by the State of Israelthat I want to be connected to.
Why did I say it only now,old and with the last ink:the nuclear power of Israelthreat the world peace?Because it must be saidwhat tomorrow will be too late;Because – as Germans and withenough faults on the back –we might also become deliverers of a predictablecrime, and no excuse would erase our complicity.
And I admit: I won’t be silentbecause I had enough of the Western hypocrisy;Because I wish that many will wantto get rid of the silence,exhorting the cause of a recognizablerisk to the abdication, asking that a free and permanent controlof the Israel atomic powerand the Iran nuclear baseswill be made by both the governmentswith an international supervision.
Only in this way, Israelis, Palestinians, and everybody,
all people living hostile face to face in thatcountry occupied by the craziness,will have a way out,so us too.
بعد الضجة الإعلامية وردود الفعل الكثيرة التي أثارتها القصيدة المثيرة للجدل للكاتب الألماني غونتر غراس عن إسرائيل. نعرض لقرائنا بعض مقاطع من هذه القصيدة بترجمة عربية.
(…)
لماذا أمنع نفسي من تسمية ذلك البلد الآخر
الذي يمتلك ومنذ سنوات -رغم السرية المفروضة- قدرات نووية متنامية،
لكن خارج نطاق السيطرة،
لأنه لا توجد إمكانية لإجراء مراقبة.
السكوت العام عن هذا الواقع
الذي أنطوى تحته صمتي،
أحسه الآن كذبة تثقلني وإلزاماً،
في الأفق تلوح عقوبة لمن يتجاهلهما؛
الحكم المألوف: “معاداة السامية”.
لكن اليوم، لأن من بلدي،
وهو الملاحق مرة إثر أخرى
بجرائم لا نظير لها،
من جديد ومن أجل تجارة محضة
توصف بكلمة عجلى: تعويض فحسب
من بلدي هذا ينبغي أن تسلم غواصة أخرى
إلى إسرائيل
تكمن قدرتها في توجيه رؤوس شاملة الدمار
إلى هناك، حيث لا دليل على وجود
قنبلة نووية واحدة
لكن الخشية تريد أخذ مكان قوة الدليل،
ولهذا أقول ما ينبغي أن يُقال.
لكن لماذا صمتُ حتى الآن؟
لأني اعتقدت أن أصلي
المدان بجرائم لا يمكن أبداً التسامح فيها
منع من مواجهة دولة إسرائيل،
بهذا الواقع كحقيقة واضحة،
إسرائيل التي أتضامن معها وأريد أن أبقى كذلك.
لماذا أقول الآن فقط
كبيراً في السن، وبآخر قطرة حبر:
إن القوة النووية إسرائيل خطر على السلام العالمي
الهش بطبيعته؟
لأنه ينبغي أن يُقال،
قبل أن يفوت أوان قوله غداً:
وكذلك لأننا نحن – الألمان مثقلون بما يكفي-
يمكن أن نصبح مزوديِن بجريمة
يمكن توقعها، ولهذا قد لا يمكن التكفير
عن اشتراكنا في الذنب ساعتها
بكل الأعذار المعتادة (…).
ترجمة: ريم نجمي
مراجعة: راينر زوليش/ عماد غانم
ملاحظة: ترجمتنا لهذه القصيدة لا تطمح أن ترقى إلى مستوى الترجمة الأدبية من الناحية الجمالية، وهي ليست ترجمة رسمية معتمدة من قبل دار نشر القصيدة، وإنما أردنا أن ننشرها بناء على طلب قراء موقعنا.
~ reposted by Sofia Smith
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