Time and again we have seen that Nobel Prize laureates may have skill, talent, extraordinary knowledge, brilliance and even genius in specific areas of endeavours. But none of these qualities, singly or cumulatively, guarantees in them wisdom, common sense or even good taste.
Thus, we saw the octogenarian German Nobel laureate for Literature and former Waffen SS member, Gunter Grass, last week pose politics (and prejudice and polemics) as art in an utterly offensive poem called What Must Be Said. The poem was published in several European newspapers last week.
Grass’ key message to the world, what he considered so urgent for all of us to hear, what he ordained so imperiously must be said, was an indictment of Israel. It was the Jewish state’s putative nuclear capability and not that of Iran that presents a threat to world peace. As a result, he urged his government to refuse to further sell any submarines to Israel that might add to Israel’s arsenal.
The poem appropriately evoked wide criticism at home in Germany and abroad in Israel. German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said of Grass’s views that “putting Israel and Iran on the same moral level is not ingenious but absurd.” Marcel Reich-Ranicki, one of Germany’s leading literature critics, said Grass’ poem was “disgusting.”
Israel’s prime minister offered his own literary criticism of the Grass poem. “His declarations are ignorant and shameful and every honest person in this world must condemn them,” Benjamin Netanyahu said.
“In Iran there is a regime that denies the Holocaust and calls for the destruction of Israel,” Netanyahu added. “It is Iran, not Israel, which poses a threat to world peace. It is Iran, not Israel, which threatens to destroy other countries. It is Iran, not Israel, which supports terror organizations that fire missiles on innocent civilians. It is Iran, not Israel, which supports the massacre that the Syrian regime is carrying out on its civilians. It is Iran, not Israel, which stones women, hangs gay people, and ruthlessly suppresses the tens of millions of citizens in its country.”
Israel’s interior minister, Eli Yishai, declared Grass to be persona non grata, offically unwelcome in Israel. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said of the poem and of its writer that it was the “egoism of so-called western intellectuals, who are willing to sacrifice the Jewish people once again.” Nor did it go unnoticed by the Israeli embassy in Berlin that the poem was published on the eve of Passover, suggesting it carried on the odious “tradition of blood libel ahead of Passover.”
The simple truth of the poem of course and its publication is that it pulls away the very thin veneer from Grass’ foul-smelling pedantry and transparent posturing. Grass has a high reputation as a writer. But what he peddles is unembellished and very low anti-Israel politics. This is what really must be said.