Günter Grass barred from Israel over poem

gimmesometruth27

MotoDC wrote:

Byrnzie wrote:

This may come as a shock to you, but not all Nazis were bad people. Most were, but some were just misguided and had no idea of what was happening to the Jews.

Were they not listening to Hitler's rhetoric? You didn't have to visit the camps to know where the Nazis stood on racism. And I'll tell you what does not come as a shock to me -- that you're more willing to defend Nazis than Republicans. Hilariously sad. Sadly hilarious? Not sure.

B wrote:

Did you vote for George W Bush? If so, is your conscience clear today considering that you supported a President with the blood of millions on his hands?

I agree, B, why bother with facts when you've got really strong opinions and assumptions?

what makes you think all nazis supported the war and what was going on? did none of them stop and think "wait a minute...this is FUCKED UP!!" how many vietnam and gulf war and iraq vets have spoken out about the wars and their disillusion towards it? i am sure that some of these nazis were just going along with things to save their own lives. social pressure can make people make poor decisions do bad things.

remember how everyone came together after 9/11 and you were considered "unpatriotic" and told to get the fuck out of the country if you did not support the wars in afghanistan and iraq? the same thing happened in germany, only you were forced to comply by the barrel of a luger...if not they murdered you or put you in a camp for treason...

yosi

You're right that speaking out against the government in Nazi Germany was dangerous, but no one was forced to actually join the Nazi party. Being an actual Nazi (not just a German) was pretty significant. Schindler and Rabe are the exceptions that prove the rule.

The idea that Germans didn't know about the holocaust (and the other atrocities committed by the Nazis) is also not true. I was in Berlin a few years ago and distinctly remember a very good museum exhibition that dealt with the fact that the holocaust was essentially common knowledge within Germany. The exact scope and horror of it may not have sunk in, but the fact that Jews (and other undesirables) were being systematically killed was no secret.

I don't think Grass is an antisemite. I don't entirely agree with his position, but it's certainly a legitimate position to take.

The "Israeli" response is, as the article notes, not uniform. What many of you are presenting as the monolithic "Israeli" reaction is the response of a bunch of the rightwing nutbags and idiots who are in the current governing coalition. Eli Yishai and Avigdor Lieberman are bat-shit crazy. They certainly do not represent the Israeli mainstream.

usamamasan1

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-0 ... -poem.html

....Perhaps it reads better in the German, or perhaps Grass is simply T.S. Eliot’s inferior in anti-Semitic poetry, but put aside the poem’s aesthetic shortcomings and consider the idea advanced in the first two lines: That Israel, which in reality is contemplating targeting six to eight nuclear sites in Iran for conventional aerial bombardment, in fact wants to annihilate the Iranian people in a “first strike.”

This is, of course, delusional. Not even the Iranian regime seems to believe this. To make yourself believe that Israel is seeking to murder the 74 million people of Iran, you must make yourself believe that the leaders of the Jewish state outstrip Adolf Hitler in genocidal intent.


.....
Grass isn’t the only prominent European to perform a complete inversion of cause-and-effect in his attempt to demonize Israel.So let’s be clear: Israel is contemplating an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities because the Iranian regime openly labels Israel a cancer that must be eradicated and because Iran is the prime sponsor of Muslim terrorists who seek Israel’s physical elimination. The goal of an Israeli attack would be to deny the Ayatollahs the means of bringing that about. (Whether this is a wise course of action, for Israel or for the U.S., which is also contemplating an attack, is another matter.)


That's why I'm here. To help.

Byrnzie

MotoDC wrote:

Byrnzie wrote:

This may come as a shock to you, but not all Nazis were bad people. Most were, but some were just misguided and had no idea of what was happening to the Jews.

Were they not listening to Hitler's rhetoric? You didn't have to visit the camps to know where the Nazis stood on racism. And I'll tell you what does not come as a shock to me -- that you're more willing to defend Nazis than Republicans. Hilariously sad. Sadly hilarious? Not sure.

I see you chose to edit my post and pick out just one sentence while ignoring the rest. Oscar Schindler was a Nazi. Was he also a supporter of the camps then in your opinion?

Byrnzie

usamamasan1 wrote:

the Iranian regime openly labels Israel a cancer that must be eradicated

No it doesn't, as has been proven here again and again, and as you must be fully aware by now.

usamamasan1 wrote:

That's why I'm here. To help.

It's not called helping, it's called trolling.

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

I don't think Grass is an antisemite. I don't entirely agree with his position, but it's certainly a legitimate position to take.

The "Israeli" response is, as the article notes, not uniform. What many of you are presenting as the monolithic "Israeli" reaction is the response of a bunch of the rightwing nutbags and idiots who are in the current governing coalition. Eli Yishai and Avigdor Lieberman are bat-shit crazy. They certainly do not represent the Israeli mainstream.

Good. I hope so.

yosi

From "The Atlantic" blog:

Questions periodically arise about whether or not Iranian President Ahmadinejad's statement that he wants to see Israel "wiped off the map" really means, in the original Farsi, that he seeks the elimination of the Jewish state. I republish here, then, a handy list of Ahmadinejad's statements on the subject. Judge for yourself what he hopes to see happen to Israel:

October, 2005: "Our dear Imam said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement. We cannot compromise over the issue of Palestine... I have no doubt that the new wave that has started in Palestine, and we witness it in the Islamic world too, will eliminate this disgraceful stain from the Islamic world. But we must be aware of tricks."

July, 2006: "Nations in the region will be more furious every day. It won't take long before the wrath of the people turns into a terrible explosion that will wipe the Zionist entity off the map...The basic problem in the Islamic world is the existence of the Zionist regime, and the Islamic world and the region must mobilize to remove this problem. It is a usurper that our enemies made and imposed on the Muslim world, a regime that prevented the progress of the region's nations, a regime that all Muslims must join hands in isolating worldwide."

August, 2006: "Our position on the Middle East is clear. We want the root of tensions to be removed. During these sixty years what was the root of massacres, crimes and conflicts?...The solution is clear and nothing has changed."

October, 2006: "This regime (Israel) will be gone, definitely..."You (the Western powers) should know that any government that stands by the Zionist regime from now on will not see any result but the hatred of the people...The wrath of the region's people is boiling... You should not complain that we did not give a warning. We are saying this explicitly now..."

November, 2006: "The great powers created the Zionist regime to extend their domination in the region. Every day this regime is massacring Palestinians...As this regime goes against the path of life, we will soon see its disappearance and its destruction."

December, 2006: "The Zionist regime is on the slope of disappearance and the freedom movement and the struggles of the Palestinian people have more success every day...It is the religious duty of all Muslims to stand by the Palestines...The continued crimes of the Zionist regime will only accelerate the downfall of this fake regime."

December, 2006: "I want to tell [Western counties] that just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and does not exist anymore, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out and humanity will be free."

June, 2007: ''God willing, in the near future we will witness the destruction of the corrupt occupier regime..."

June, 2007: ''In Lebanon, the corrupt, arrogant powers and the Zionist regime did all they could in an unfair 33-day war. But after 60 years [Israel's] greatness fell apart...The countdown to this regime's destruction started through the hands of Hezbollah's children...We will witness the destruction of this regime in the near future thanks to the endeavours of all Palestinian and Lebanese fighters.''

August, 2007: "Our support (for the Palestinian people) is unconditional. As for the Israelis, let them go find somewhere else."

August, 2007: "The Zionist regime is the standard bearer of invasion, occupation and Satan...When the philosophy behind the establishment of a regime is in question, it is not unlikely that it will find itself on a course of decline and dissolution."

October 5, 2007: "Canada and Alaska have vast lands, why don't you relocate them over there and keep helping them over there with (aid of) 30 to 40 billion dollars per year for building a new existence over there?"

November, 2007: "It is impossible that the Zionist regime will survive. Collapse is in the nature of this regime because it has been created on aggression, lying, oppression and crime..."

January, 2008: "I advise you to abandon the filthy Zionist entity which has reached the end of the line... It has lost its reason to be and will sooner or later fall. The ones who still support the criminal Zionists should know that the occupiers' days are numbered."

February, 2008: "World powers have created a black and dirty microbe named the Zionist regime and have unleashed it like a savage animal on the nations of the region."

March, 2008: "Gaza is the beginning, the real issue is elsewhere. They should know that both in the prelude and in the real thing they face a defeat and this time they will be uprooted."

April, 2008: "The time has come to see the weakness and collapse of the Zionist regime and its supporters. They are doing everything in order to save it, but they will not succeed."

May, 2008: "Those who think they can revive the stinking corpse of the usurping and fake Israeli regime by throwing a birthday party are seriously mistaken... Today the reason for the Zionist regime's existence is questioned and this regime is on its way to annihilation...has reached the end like a dead rat after being slapped by the Lebanese."

June, 2008: "(Israel) has reached the end of its function and will soon disappear off the geographical domain."

yosi

Byrnzie wrote:

yosi wrote:

I don't think Grass is an antisemite. I don't entirely agree with his position, but it's certainly a legitimate position to take.

The "Israeli" response is, as the article notes, not uniform. What many of you are presenting as the monolithic "Israeli" reaction is the response of a bunch of the rightwing nutbags and idiots who are in the current governing coalition. Eli Yishai and Avigdor Lieberman are bat-shit crazy. They certainly do not represent the Israeli mainstream.

Good. I hope so.

B, I'm surprised you didn't already know that, given how "knowledgeable" you are on this particular subject.

In all seriousness, I'm impressed by how widely read you are on Israel-Palestine, but it strikes me that all your sources are of the same ideological slant. I think you are reading sources that largely conform to your preconceived notions, which has left something of a gap in your knowledge.

yosi

From the late Christopher Hitchens on Ahmadinejad's statements:

In some ways, the continuing row over his call for the complete destruction of Israel must baffle Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. All he did, after all, was to turn up at a routine anti-Zionist event and repeat the standard line—laid down by the Ayatollah Khomeini and thus considered by some to be beyond repeal—that the state of Israel is illegitimate and must be obliterated. There's nothing new in that. In the early '90s, I can remember seeing, in the areas around Baalbek in Lebanon that were dominated by Hezbollah and Amal, large posters of the by-then-late Khomeini embellished (in English) with the slogan, "Israel Must Be Completely Destroyed!" And I have twice been to Friday prayers in Tehran itself, addressed by leading mullahs and by former President Rafsanjani, where the more terse version (Marg bar Esrail—"Death to Israel") is chanted as a matter of routine; sometimes as an applause line to an especially deft clerical thrust.
No, what worries me more about Ahmadinejad is his devout belief in the return of the "occulted" or 12th imam and his related belief that, when he himself spoke recently at the United Nations, the whole scene was suffused with a sublime green light that held all his audience in a state of suspended animation. This uncultured jerk is, of course, only a puppet figure with no real power, but this choice of puppet by the theocracy is unsettling in itself. So is Iran's complete lack of embarrassment at being caught, time and again, with nuclear enrichment facilities that have never been declared to the inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
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However, words and details and nuances do matter in all this, so I was not surprised to see professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan denying that Ahmadinejad, or indeed Khomeini, had ever made this call for the removal of Israel from the map. Cole is a minor nuisance on the fringes of the academic Muslim apologist community. At one point, there was a danger that he would become a go-to person for quotes in New York Times articles (a sort of Shiite fellow-traveling version of Norman Ornstein, if such an alarming phenomenon can be imagined), but this crisis appears to have passed.
Cole continues to present himself as an expert on Shiism and on the Persian, Arabic, and Urdu tongues. Let us see how his claim vindicates itself in practice. Here is what he wrote on the "Gulf 2000" e-mail chat-list on April 22:
It bears repeating as long as the accusation is made. Ahmadinejad did not "threaten" to "wipe Israel off the map." I'm not sure there is even such an idiom in Persian. He quoted Khomeini to the effect that "the Occupation regime must end" (ehtelal bayad az bayn berad). And, no, it is not the same thing. It is about what sort of regime people live under, not whether they exist at all. Ariel Sharon, after all, made the Occupation regime in Gaza end.
There are two separate but related matters here. For a start, let us look at the now-famous speech that Ahmadinejad actually gave at the Interior Ministry on Oct. 26, 2005. (I am using the translation made by Nazila Fathi of the New York Times Tehran bureau, whose Persian is probably the equal of Professor Cole's.) The relevant portions read:
Our dear Imam [Khomeini] said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement. We cannot compromise over the issue of Palestine. … Our dear Imam targeted the heart of the world oppressor in his struggle, meaning the occupying regime. … For over fifty years the world oppressor tried to give legitimacy to the occupying regime, and it has taken measures in this direction to stabilize it.
Ahmadinejad then denounced the recent Israeli-Palestinian negotiations over Gaza as a sellout and added, "If we get through this brief period successfully, the path of eliminating the occupying regime will be easy and down-hill."
Not even Professor Cole will dispute that, in the above passages, the term "occupying regime" means Israel and the term "world oppressor" stands for the United States. (The title of the conference, incidentally, was The World Without Zionism.) In fact, Khomeini's injunctions are referred to twice. Quite possibly, "wiped off the map" is slightly too free a translation of what he originally said, and what it is mandatory for his followers to repeat. So, I give it below, in Persian and in English, and let you be the judge:
Esrail ghiyam-e mossalahaane bar zed-e mamaalek-e eslami nemoodeh ast va bar doval va mamaalek-eeslami ghal-o-gham aan lazem ast.
My source here is none other than a volume published by the Institute for Imam Khomeini. Here is the translation:
Israel has declared armed struggle against Islamic countries and its destruction is a must for all governments and nations of Islam.
This is especially important, and is also the reason for the wide currency given to the statement: It is making something into a matter of religious duty. The term "ghal-o-gham" is an extremely strong and unambivalent one, of which a close equivalent rendering would be "annihilate."
Professor Cole has completely missed or omitted the first reference in last October's speech, skipped to the second one, and flatly misunderstood the third. (The fourth one, about "eliminating the occupying regime," I would say speaks for itself.) He evidently thinks that by "occupation," Khomeini and Ahmadinejad were referring to the Israeli seizure of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. But if this were true, it would not have been going on for "more than fifty years" now, would it? The 50th anniversary of 1967 falls in 2017, which is a while off. What could be clearer than that "occupation regime" is a direct reference to Israel itself?
One might have thought that, if the map-wiping charge were to have been inaccurate or unfair, Ahmadinejad would have denied it. But he presumably knew what he had said and had meant to say. In any case, he has an apologist to do what he does not choose to do for himself. But this apologist, who affects such expertise in Persian, cannot decipher the plain meaning of a celebrated statement and is, furthermore, in need of a remedial course in English.

usamamasan1

Byrnzie wrote:

usamamasan1 wrote:

the Iranian regime openly labels Israel a cancer that must be eradicated

No it doesn't, as has been proven here again and again, and as you must be fully aware by now.

usamamasan1 wrote:

That's why I'm here. To help.

It's not called helping, it's called trolling.

Not trolling, educating.

It is impossible not to hear echoes of Hitler's Final Solution in such threats. After Auschwitz, the Jews cannot afford not to take them seriously. It cannot gamble with its very existence.

MotoDC

Byrnzie wrote:

MotoDC wrote:

Byrnzie wrote:

This may come as a shock to you, but not all Nazis were bad people. Most were, but some were just misguided and had no idea of what was happening to the Jews.

Were they not listening to Hitler's rhetoric? You didn't have to visit the camps to know where the Nazis stood on racism. And I'll tell you what does not come as a shock to me -- that you're more willing to defend Nazis than Republicans. Hilariously sad. Sadly hilarious? Not sure.

I see you chose to edit my post and pick out just one sentence while ignoring the rest. Oscar Schindler was a Nazi. Was he also a supporter of the camps then in your opinion?

In fact I picked two sentences, but nevermind. Yosi already responded to much of the rest, in particular your couple of examples of exemplary men doing exemplary things in the face of what can only be described as a national epidemic madness. The exceptions that prove the rule.

Gimme -- I never said all Nazis supported the war and "what was going on" as you put it (nice euphemism btw). Odds are, they did. Regardless, the simple fact that Grass didn't join the SS voluntarily isn't enough to cinch his entry into the "good Nazis" club. (side note: only on AMT would I be forced to create such a category)

yosi

So true about AMT. I love playing devils advocate as much as the next guy, but the rush to demand the strictest objectivity in discussing the nazis lest we mistakenly cast them in a negative light is hysterical (dumbfounding, infuriating, astounding...), especially in light of the usual rhetorical tone that's used around here for discussing Bush, Cheney, Republicans, etc.

I have no idea where Grass stands in this regard. I certainly don't think he's a nazi, and I'm willing to believe that even back then he wasn't a true believer, although 17 year olds are apt to believe a lot of crazy shit that they later grow out of. In the end it really shouldn't matter.

This whole thing is a non-issue. A poet writes a poem that no one would have paid any attention to except that some Israeli nutbacks completely overreacted to it, and then their overreaction is siezed on by a bunch of equally nutty anti-zionists trolling the news for anything useful in indicting Israel as a whole. This whole "controversy" is dumb.

gimmesometruth27

MotoDC wrote:

Gimme -- I never said all Nazis supported the war and "what was going on" as you put it (nice euphemism btw). Odds are, they did. Regardless, the simple fact that Grass didn't join the SS voluntarily isn't enough to cinch his entry into the "good Nazis" club. (side note: only on AMT would I be forced to create such a category)

no you didn't say it in this thread, but it is kind of like how liberals portray conservatives and vice versa, that they are ALL bad people and history will remember them as such. i was not dismising anything with my "euphemism", but for the sake of brevity i was not going to go into a long winded speech recalling the nazi atrocities, because those are well documented. but at the same time in at the end of the war EVERYONE was committing atrocities. the nazis, the japanese, the russians, the americans, all of them were committing atrocities, hence the "what was going on" at that time part of the statement. i was not saying there were good nazis and i am not saying that they were all 100% evil. there are many shades of gray when you talk about an entire country, army, and ideology...


the hardcore of the nazis were evil yes, and on the whole that ideology and movement was one of the most terrible in human history. but those forced to join at the barrel of a luger, maybe not so much. self preservation is an instinct that all of us possess, and i doubt that any one of us would take a slug to the head over the other options.

usamamasan1

self preservation is exactly why Israel should thwart Irans nuclear ambitions...

Kathi

peacefrompaul wrote:

MotoDC wrote:

Assuming wiki is right, it does seem as though his affiliation with the SS is not in the form of an evil stormtrooper of hate and genocide that most of us think of when we think SS. Not really clear from that excerpt where he stood on the whole Nazi movement, however.

And that is entirely possible. The Waffen were your soldiers, fighters. They fought like an army.

The Allgemeine SS were the ones that ran the camps and acted more as guards than actual soldiers.

Exactly. The Waffen SS were drafted like normal soldiers & carried out similar duties.

If you know anything about Grass and his work, you know he's not an anti-semitist in the slightest. This discussion is ridiculous. He expressed his own view on a political matter, like it or not, but this has been blown way out of proportion.

Smellyman

usamamasan1 wrote:

self preservation is exactly why Israel should thwart Irans nuclear ambitions...

Agreed, killing other innocents is the way to go, just in case.....

Meanwhile Israel should be able to grow in their manifest destiny....no matter who gets in the way....

same as it ever was.

yosi

You are so right. Israelis all think that their state operates under manifest destiny and therefore is entitled to grow and grow at the expence of its neighbors...which is why Israel has, throughout its history, given back land to its neighbors in exchange for peace...That's really weird, since they're trying to expand and are a garrison nation that doesn't give a shit about peace with its neighbors. :roll: Maybe you can explain how this works to me.

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

You are so right. Israelis all think that their state operates under manifest destiny and therefore is entitled to grow and grow at the expence of its neighbors...which is why Israel has, throughout its history, given back land to its neighbors in exchange for peace...That's really weird, since they're trying to expand and are a garrison nation that doesn't give a shit about peace with its neighbors. :roll: Maybe you can explain how this works to me.

I take it you're referring to the U.S brokered peace treaty with Egypt which was inspired by the shock of the 1973 Yom Kippur War? A war that could have been avoided if Israel hadn't rejected Sadat's earlier peace proposals.
Your claim that Israel's 'giving back' land it stole from certain of it's neighbours who happen to possess formidable militaries is somehow to be considered magmanimous? Sorry, but I don't buy that.
Why doesn't Israel pull the settlers out of the West Bank? Those settlers aren't their for any military or defensive reasons. So if it's not simply a land-grab,then what's the excuse?


'After coming to power in late 1970, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat indicated to the United States that he was willing to negotiate with Israel to resolve the conflict in exchange for Egyptian territory lost in 1967. In February 1971 he offered a full peace treaty to Israel, which it rejected, although international consensus supported the Sadat offer which conformed to the US position (John Kimche, There Could Have Been Peace, Dial, 1973, p. 286).

When these overtures were ignored by Washington and Tel Aviv, Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated action in October 1973 against Israeli forces occupying the Egyptian Sinai and Syrian Golan Heights.

It was clear that the Arab World could not go on indefinitely watching Israel expel Egyptians, Syrians and Palestinians while installing Jewish settlers in their thousands. By 1973 nearly 100 settlements had been established and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had been displaced, expelled, imprisoned or deported.

On 6 October 1973 the Egyptian and Syrian armies attacked Israeli positions in the Sinai and on the Golan Heights in an attempt to liberate their territory occupied by Israel. The Secretary-General of the Arab League explained the Arab action: "In a final analysis, Arab action is justifiable, moral and valid under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations. There is no aggression, no attempt to acquire new territories. But to restore and liberate all the occupied territories is a duty for all able self-respecting peoples" (Sunday Times, 14 October 1973).'

NOAM CHOMSKY: For Israel — it was a fateful decision. That’s the point at which Israel quite explicitly chose expansion over security. They were then expanding into the Sinai, planning to build a city of a million people, Egyptian Sinai, settlements driving farmers out into the desert and so on. Well, that was the background for the 1973 war, which made it clear that Egypt can’t simply be dismissed. Then we move on to the negotiations which led, in 1979, to the U.S. and Israel pretty much accepting Sadat’s offer of 1971: withdrawal from the Sinai in return for a peace treaty. That’s called a great diplomatic triumph. In fact, it was a diplomatic catastrophe. The failure to accept it in 1971 led to a very dangerous war, suffering, brutality and so on. And finally, the U.S. and Israel essentially, more or less, accepted it.


On the relationship between Israel's magnanimous peace treaty with Egypt and it's expansion of illegal settlements in the Occupied Teritories:

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/9/19/n ... l_strongly
Chomsky: There was a peace treaty in 1979, and it was interpreted in Israel right away, and in the United States, as essentially licensing Israel to expand its criminal activities in the Occupied Territories and to attack its northern neighbor, Lebanon, which is exactly what it did. The reasoning, which was pretty clearly expressed, is that with Egypt neutralized—that’s the one major deterrent to Israeli actions—and if they’re neutralized, if there’s a peace treaty they pull out of it, then Israel is free to go ahead to do what it wants in the Occupied Territories and attacking Lebanon. Notice that’s exactly what happened. Now that’s—they’re very—and it’s continued that way. And there’s plenty of bitterness in Egypt about this.

yosi

I'm not saying that they gave back the Sinai out of magnanimity. I'm just saying that the fact that they gave back land undercuts the notion that Israel is animated by some sort of militaristic concept of manifest destiny.

There are some valid defensive/security reasons for Israel to want to hold on to parts of the West Bank, but I agree with you that Israel should end the occupation and withdraw. The fact that they have not yet done so, however, is also not proof of militaristic expansionism as the primary motivating force behind Israeli decision-making.

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

Israel should end the occupation and withdraw.

Out of curiosity, is this opinion widely shared amongst your circle of friends and acquaintances? If so, what, if any, steps are people that you know doing about it?