Gunter Grass

Not an anti-Semite, just a critic. Gunter Grass (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

A further defense of Gunter Grass

The only way you can think of the poem ‘What must be said’ as anti-Semitic is if you think of Grass as an anti-Semite. His history as well as the poem itself point in the exact opposite direction. If Gunter Grass had ever said or done anything that showed hatred of Jews or of Israel, then I, too, might take a very uncharitable view…

By Larry Derfner April 10, 2012

Günter Grass, persona non grata in Israel

Now Interior Minister Eli Yishai has declared Grass to be persona non grata while Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has accused the German author of being “willing to sacrifice the Jewish people on the altar of crazy anti-Semites for a second time, just to sell a few more books or gain recognition.” Yishai and Lieberman are the two most outspoken racists in the…

By Larry Derfner April 8, 2012

More power to Gunter Grass for ‘What must be said’

His poem was especially brave because he’s German and because he’s vulnerable over his past. If I take Gunter Grass’s supposedly anti-Israel, anti-Semitic poem “What must be said” literally, I guess I could quibble with a couple of phrases. He says an Israeli attack on Iran “could erase the Iranian people.” An unknowing reader might think Israel is planning to nuke Iran, which…

By Larry Derfner April 5, 2012

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Not an anti-Semite, just a critic. Gunter Grass (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Despite Israeli charges, Gunter Grass is not an anti-Semite

German author Gunter Grass has been accused by Israel of spreading blood libel and being an anti-Semite. That is not true; he simply opposes the Netanyahu government Gunter Grass, the famed German author, got himself into hot water recently. He wrote a controversial poem (unfortunately, I failed to find an adequate English translation, though I…

By Yossi Gurvitz April 5, 2012