Once Taboo, Germans’ Anti-Israel Whispers Grow Louder

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/wo...ow-louder.html

BERLIN — To judge by the outpouring of comments from politicians and writers and from the newspaper and magazine articles in response to the Nobel laureate Günter Grass’s poem criticizing Israel’s aggressive posture toward Iran, it would appear that the public had resoundingly rejected his work.

But even a quick dip into the comments left by readers on various Web sites reveals quite another reality.

Mr. Grass has struck a nerve with the broader public, articulating frustrations with Israel here in Germany that are frequently expressed in private but rarely in public, where the discourse is checked by the lingering presence of the past. What might have remained at the family dinner table or the local bar a generation ago is today on full display, not only in Mr. Grass’s poem, but on Web forums and in Facebook groups.

One word has surfaced consistently in such discussions: “keule,” which means club or cudgel. The charge of anti-Semitism aimed at Israel’s critics — and in the case of Mr. Grass, by bringing up his past as a member of the Waffen-SS — is widely viewed as a blunt instrument that silences debate, and in the process prevents Mr. Grass from making a point about the dangers of a first strike by Israel against Iran over its disputed nuclear program.

“Every time you speak out and say something that isn’t superpolitically correct, there is a 99 percent chance that you are regarded as right wing,” said Moritz Eggert, a composer based in Munich. Mr. Eggert posted his own musical interpretation of Mr. Grass’s poem with simplified lyrics on YouTube. “Israel, I love you, but don’t attack Iran,” he sings.

Mr. Eggert said he was trying to skewer both sides in the debate. While he said he did not like Mr. Grass’s poem, “it’s embarrassing the way the intellectuals try to paint him in the worst light possible.”

Mr. Grass’s critics hail mostly from the cultural and political elite, while his support appears to be far more broadly based — even if Mr. Grass is not himself seen as the best spokesman for that view, given his own Nazi past.

“The published opinions are all coming from the usual suspects,” said Claus Stephan Schlangen, one of the people behind a Facebook group formed in support of Mr. Grass’s poem. “People just don’t believe what the media is selling anymore.”

Mr. Schlangen is helping run a Facebook page called “Support Günter Grass — What Must Be Said.” The name is based on the title of the 69-line poem, which was published in the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung last week. In the poem, Mr. Grass, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999 and the author of the famous World War II novel “The Tin Drum,” said that Israel was a threat to world peace because of its warnings that it might attack Iran over its nuclear program.

The group’s page, which had more than 3,500 Facebook “likes” as of Thursday evening, shows a dove and Mr. Grass with his trademark pipe superimposed over the colors of the rainbow. “We say no to a war of aggression against Iran,” the text reads. Mr. Schlangen said that he and the site’s other manager policed the comments for anti-Semitic remarks, but that they just as often removed threatening language from Israel’s supporters.

Mr. Schlangen said he understood that the condemnation of Mr. Grass was about “German sensitivities and German history,” but he argued that “our mandate is not to support Israel whatever it does, but instead to fight injustice wherever it appears, which can also be in Israel.”

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, personally rebuked Mr. Grass over the poem, and the interior minister declared Mr. Grass to be unwelcome in Israel and barred him from entering the country. On Thursday, Mr. Grass, who seems to be reveling in the attention, waded back into the fray, this time in prose instead of verse, writing an article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung that compared Israel to Myanmar and the former East Germany, the only other countries that have forbidden him entry.

Sharp criticism of Israel, particularly from the left, has long been a tradition among European intellectuals, and Mr. Grass’s poem caused little stir on the Continent outside of Germany. But political and scholarly elites here have more often resisted that trend, tending to see basic support for Israel as a German responsibility, if not a necessity, after the Holocaust.

But the public response to the furor over Mr. Grass’s poem suggests that that attitude is breaking down as World War II recedes into history. “In the populism you see surfacing on a large scale, the public is all behind Grass,” said Georg Diez, an author and journalist at the magazine Der Spiegel who has written critically of the poem.

More than a week after the publication of “What Must Be Said,” it was still the subject of significant discussion. In the Thursday issue of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, another critical commentary appeared, this time with the headline “He Is the Preacher With the Wooden Mallet.” And on Thursday night, the talk show host Maybrit Illner held yet another televised discussion, “Grass in the Pillory: Is Criticizing Israel Really Taboo?”

Germany has come a long way since World War II in its struggle to become an ordinary country. The Berlin Wall is gone, and east and west are unified. The country recently ended conscription, which was intended to force a break with the country’s militaristic past and provide a direct link between the military and society as a whole.

But the subject of Jews and the Holocaust remain fraught topics even today

What the Germans did is not exactly charming and what they did to Jews,Roma and Russians is horrible

LOL Russians. They are the most immoral of all WW2 powers. Tens of millions of dead russians killed by the Kremlin itself, the systematic starvation of Ukrainians which led to 5 million deaths, of 8 million German POWs captured only 2 million survived. Over 2.5 million women were raped by the soviets in Berlin alone. Women sniper units... no principle whatsoever.

Holodomor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

^ That happened before Hitler even came to power.

the red army saved the world !
you [edited] do the crimes of soviet union
redeem the Nazi Satan from its own crimes ???!!!!!

may god forgive you moral relativist scum that you are

BTW : ---- self righteous Europeans that have more blood on there hands then every one else combined
who gave them the right to preach Israel that was created to escape there irrational religious and racial hate

Saved the world? More like saved the [edited] of two imperial super-powers that raped the world.

If you had any sense of decency you would see the horrible things Stalin did to Asia and Europe, instead of revering him for saving your own people.

I'll take Hitler and a Nazi Europe over a Bolshevised world any day.

the Russians killed all that disobeyed or had the potential to disobey
the Germans killed on mass all that did not fit into there racist dream
both were evil but the germen expansionists were by far more sinister

Caution: No abusive language is allowed.

Germans do think they are super race.

They may not show it publicly,

No you just choose to see the Nazi death toll as greater because it's closer to home for you. Apparently a Jewish life is just worth more huh?

In terms of actual suffering and death inflicted the Soviet Union beats Germany over 10-fold. Even worse most of it was against ethnic Russians and Slavs.

Germans don't. You should actually live in Germany before passing judgements. Bringing up racial theories and Nazi doctrines is completely verboten even in private German life.

You think you would have survived Nazi Germany any more than a Jewish chap?

You would hold a chance surviving in Stalin's Russia, but not so in Hitler's Germany.

"In saying this, I promise you I am quite free of all racial hatred: It is, in any case, undesirable that one race should mix with other races. Except for a few gratuitous successes, which I am prepared to admit, systematic cross-breeding has never produced good results. Its desire to remain racially pure is a proof of the vitality and good health of a race. Pride in one's own race - and that does not imply contempt for other races - is also a normal and healthy sentiment. I have never regarded the Chinese or the Japanese as being inferior to ourselves. They belong to ancient civilizations, and I admit freely that their past history is superior to our own. They have the right to be proud of their past, just as we have the right to be proud of the civilization to which we belong. Indeed, I believe the more steadfast the Chinese and the Japanese remain in their pride of race, the easier I shall find it to get on with them." - Adolf Hitler

The idea that Hitler was a crazy racist genocidal maniac is nothing more than a Jewish myth. It's not like systematic opposition to the Jews is something unique to Hitler in history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indische_Legion

That quote itself is racist, and he's actually incorrect. Mixed races are genetically superior.

Anyhow, my point still stands, had you been in Hitler's Germany, you most likely would be dead.