What Must Be Said

I haven’t read much Günter Grass; I admit that the little I read, a long time ago, was hard going and more likely than not suffered from translator problems. My German isn’t anything like good enough to wade through literature.

However, anyone who doesn’t have a problem calling Calcutta a “pile of shit that God dropped”, as Grass did, has my complete and absolute approbation.

It’s always seemed to me amazing how “mainstream” authors and commentators tiptoe delicately around the crimes of the Zionazi pseudostate; if they left politics completely alone I wouldn’t wonder, but I’m talking about people who won’t hesitate a moment before trashing, say, China or Russia (without, often, having too much knowledge about those countries), or Iran, or even their own nations. But there’s one holy cow they won’t dare to criticise even by implication; and that’s the so-called state of Israel.

It’s as though, I don’t know, criticism of the Zionist entity is radioactive or something; you voice adverse comments at your peril. Unless one happens to live in one of the “rogue” states which "are a threat to the world”, it seems that the only people who are permitted to criticise the Chosen People’s Homeland are unofficial, small-time bloggers and commentators like myself.

This is why I was so glad to come across Günter Grass’ criticism of the pseudostate; forthrightly, he doesn’t mince his words. And, being from Germany, which seems to be compensating for the Holocaust by mindless pandering to the Nazi vermin in Occupied Palestine, he was risking even more than someone from another nation might. All they’d have to do is accuse him of Holocaust Denial – interesting, isn’t it, that you can draw Muhammad-as-a-terrorist cartoons and have it called “free speech” but you can’t call for rational discussion on the Holocaust? – and he’d be in a legal soup.

Of course, they have their own weapons: the personal history of Grass himself, an 84-year old man who had – as a teenager – been a member of the Waffen SS. All these years that didn’t matter, because of course he hadn’t been a concentration camp guard or something of the sort (the Waffen SS, as the name suggests – from Waffen, Weapons – was the armed wing of the SS, separate from the Allgemeine or General SS which staffed the camps). Now, suddenly, that past (he was then all of fifteen years old; how many people today are willing to take responsibility for what they did at fifteen?) is being made a reason to scourge him as an anti-Semite and worse.

Ah, that wonderful word, anti-Semite; that wonderful, misused word, which if applied properly would be directed at those precise elements who back the Zionazi pseudostate in its war crimes against the Palestinian people. The Arabs are as Semitic in origin as the Jews, and having been on the whole rather more insular than the latter, and without wholesale conversions to the fold from alternate ethnicities, are today far more so. 

Apparently, Grass has been “barred” from entering “Israel”; that would be the moral equivalent, to most people with a conscience, of being barred entry to Auschwitz by the Nazis. I wish the scum would bar me too, but I’m probably too low on the scale to register.

Here’s what the self-styled “Prime Minister” of “Israel” had to say:

“Günter Grass’s shameful moral equivalence between Israel and Iran says little about Israel and much about Mr Grass.”

True. Grass shouldn’t have made any moral equivalence between the two. He should have condemned the pseudostate unreservedly and completely. What more could the bastards have done to him than they are doing now?

Answer: Nothing.

So here’s the poem itself. I agree that in literary terms it isn’t all that great, but truly heartfelt material seldom is. When one pours out raw emotion one does not polish it.

What must be said


Why have I kept silent, held back so long,

on something openly practiced in

war games, at the end of which those of us

who survive will at best be footnotes?


It's the alleged right to a first strike

that could destroy an Iranian people

subjugated by a loudmouth

and gathered in organized rallies,

because an atom bomb may be being

developed within his arc of power.


Yet why do I hesitate to name

that other land in which

for years—although kept secret—

a growing nuclear power has existed

beyond supervision or verification,

subject to no inspection of any kind?


This general silence on the facts,

before which my own silence has bowed,

seems to me a troubling lie, and compels

me toward a likely punishment

the moment it's flouted:

the verdict "Anti-semitism" falls easily.


But now that my own country,

brought in time after time

for questioning about its own crimes,

profound and beyond compare,

is said to be the departure point,

(on what is merely business,

though easily declared an act of reparation)

for yet another submarine equipped

to transport nuclear warheads

to Israel, where not a single atom bomb

has yet been proved to exist, with fear alone

the only evidence, I'll say what must be said.


But why have I kept silent till now?

Because I thought my own origins,

Tarnished by a stain that can never be removed,

meant I could not expect Israel, a land

to which I am, and always will be, attached,

to accept this open declaration of the truth.


Why only now, grown old,

and with what ink remains, do I say:

Israel's atomic power endangers

an already fragile world peace?

Because what must be said

may be too late tomorrow;

and because—burdened enough as Germans—

we may be providing material for a crime

that is foreseeable, so that our complicity

will not be expunged by any

of the usual excuses.


And granted: I've broken my silence

because I'm sick of the West's hypocrisy;

and I hope too that many may be freed

from their silence, may demand

that those responsible for the open danger

we face renounce the use of force,

may insist that the governments of

both Iran and Israel allow an international authority

free and open inspection of

the nuclear potential and capability of both.


No other course offers help

to Israelis and Palestinians alike,

to all those living side by side in enmity

in this region occupied by illusions,

and ultimately, to all of us.


                                                                   - Günter Grass


                                            Translated by Breon Mitchell

Yes, it had to be said, and, Herr Grass, thank you for saying it.