A strong voice against occupation
Grass has struck at the stark reality of Israel and its brutal actions
As long as human intellect maintains its humane message as a torch light, it increases the worth of its owner and the pertinent questions searching for the true purpose of one’s life and its ability to bring about a positive change. Great intellects develop deep concerns to champion causes of the oppressed and help them attain justice. Germany’s great playwright and poet Gunter Grass is one of those intellectuals — who also won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999. Earlier this year, he published a poem with a political tone, portraying Israel as a dire threat to international peace and security. The poem urged all to closely examine Israel’s nuclear weapons programme before acting on its threats to attack Iran. Consequently, Grass was denied entry to Israel and was denounced by its Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel even wanted the international committee that had awarded Grass the Nobel Prize to take it back, but the committee unanimously rejected the Israeli demand.
A few weeks later, Grass published another poem calling to honour Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear expert who uncovered the covert Israeli nuclear weapons programme in the British media in 1986. He described Vanunu in his poem as “the hero of our time and the ideal example who should be emulated”. In a recent interview on the German NDR radio, Grass called Israel “an occupying power, committing continuous aggression against other people [the Palestinians], including stealing their lands while completely ignoring and/or refusing to abide by international law and UN resolutions by driving the Palestinians out of their lands and homes and treating them as second-class citizens”. “It pains me to point out these facts” he went on to say “as surly it pains every friend of Israel around the world and as much it pains many Israelis as well.”
His strong comments generated vicious attacks against him in Israel. The Hebrew Book Society severely criticised Grass and issued a statement calling upon all intellectuals around the world “to condemn and boycott him because his DNA was completely saturated with a Nazi Strain”. It added that Grass “served the Nazi regime and is still serving it by denying Israel’s right to defend itself while falsely claiming to be a friend of Israel, at the same time”. Grass responded by saying he believed that refraining from criticising Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories, is to him like “committing an anti- Semitic act”.
Grass’ words found many voices of support. The famous Spanish writer, Juan Goytisolo, said what Grass wrote and expressed were essentially “the facts that are known by conscientious observers around the world”. He noted that the Israeli prime minster in his campaign against Iran is using the Iranian nuclear programme as ‘a scare crow’, considering it a prelude to another Holocaust and painting Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as another Hitler, while ignoring completely Israel’s nuclear weapons that could wipe Iran from the face of this earth”. Goytisolo said he made many trips to Israel over the past 20 years, wherein he met many Israeli professors and educators who ardently “oppose the Israeli settlements [colonies] programme in the West Bank”. Many of these Israelis, he added, agreed with John Daniel, the chief editor of the French Le Nouvel Observateur, who pointed out the fact that the Zionists aimed to establish a political state that is for Jews like all the states around the world, but they only managed to establish a state unlike any state in our world, a state that ignores human rights and does not abide by international law or United Nations resolutions”.
While the Israeli colonial occupation managed to mobilise and hire pens and writers advocating the right of Israel to defend itself in order to justify the brutality of its occupation and apartheid policy, Grass stood tall with confidence, revealing the inhuman nature of Israel’s policy of ethnic cleansing in the Occupied Territories, calling all people of conscience to stop and end this brutality against unarmed Palestinian civilians squeezed into a very large prison.
We are indeed looking at a great German intellectual in the person of Grass, who chose to champion the highest human values based on justice, equality, the rule of law and liberty for all regardless of race, gender, colour, creed or ethnicity. Israel stands naked as an apartheid state before such values and as the last colonial occupying power in the world.
Grass has pointed out the stark reality of Israel. Its brutal actions are causing pain to every conscientious Jewish individual in Israel itself. The voice of Grass is one of the many voices of people of conscience around the world seeking peace and security for all, including Israelis. These people of conscience lost many who fell martyr in their peaceful struggle to foster justice. The examples of Rachel Kouri, Tom Hurndall and Vittorio Arrigoni are just a few. Their souls still shine like giant beams of light reaching high and revealing Israeli apartheid and colonial practices that can never be hidden any more.
Professor As’ad Abdul Rahman is the chairman of the Palestinian Encyclopaedia.
