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Mr. Grass is clearly not expressing anti-Semitic remarks. No one doubts his stated and demonstrated support of Israel. Rather than criticizing Mr. Grass’s expression of a political and practical way of reducing the risks of a war in the Middle East, readers should be studying and analyzing the piece, as any other literary piece, especially one designated as poetry.

Mr. Grass juxtaposes his guilt and anguish when addressing the German perpetration of the Holocaust, and has been a major force in compelling Germans to acknowledge it. But this does not commit him to be silent when he composes what, to him, is a way to extinguish an imminent catastrophe.

A reader need not agree with the views Mr. Grass expresses on the nuclear weapon issue. But in Israel, more than in any Middle East country, the right and even the obligation to read and debate his poem should be recognized as a democratic right.

This poem presents no clear or present danger to the security or safety of Israel. Rather, I read it as an opportunity to demonstrate the strength of Israel’s democracy.

If Hitler was close to developing an atomic bomb in 1938 would it have been justifiable -- morally -- to undertake a military action against him to stop it?

That's the tenor of the question to the Israelis.

Agree that's how Israelis see it but then that's pretty much how Israelis see everything they believe concerns their country. I personally love how they have elevated criticism of a country policies into antisemitism and potential violence. For a people who started out ethnically cleansing the land they were granted, then unlawfully incorporated occupied territories into it's own land and effectively created the world's largest open air prison, I'm unclear as to how they can claim the higher moral ground or play the victim card day after day.

Oh that's right, its a Jewish theocracy so by definition they must be right and the victim.

This. Is. Spot. On.

This is not how I conceive the question. So far as I am concerned, Israel could be the last surviving outpost of Zoroastrianism, and the issues raised by Grass would still be relevant.

He's right. It needed to be said. It sounds less inflammatory in poesy than prose, thinks I.

After the poem he published to this effect in the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung last week drew extensive criticism, he asked to distinguish between the state and its government. It's not Israel that worries him, he said, but the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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The emotions can be understood, but it's hard to accept the overreaction. When the interior minister says, "If Gunter Grass wants to continue to distribute his false and distorted works, I suggest he do so from Iran, where he'll find an appreciative audience," he doesn't even detect the irony in his words. Because it's precisely his decision not to let Grass enter Israel because of a poem he wrote that is characteristic of dark regimes like those in Iran or North Korea.

The combination of declarations against Israel and a past as a Nazi soldier is an explosive combination that invites sharp reactions. But while Benjamin Netanyahu's remark describing Grass' work as "ignorant and shameful declarations that any fair person in the world must condemn" can be accepted as part of the public debate, Yishai's use of his governmental authority is not legitimate. Any protest should be expressed within the democratic-liberal framework, which allows every person to express his views - provocative though they may be.

Grass, a Nobel laureate for literature, did no more than write a poem. The State of Israel, through its interior minister, reacted with hysteria. It seems that at issue is less an undesirable person than an undesirable policy.

If Hitler was close to developing an atomic bomb in 1938 would it have been justifiable -- morally -- to undertake a military action against him to stop it?

That's the tenor of the question to the Israelis.

There is no question that the tragedy of genocide and persecution that befell the Jews in Europe in the last century should never happen again; not to the Jews, not to any other people, anywhere any time. But Israel insists on maintaining the uniqueness of the holocaust, in the sense that nothing similar had ever happened before and no other tragedy that occurred after should be compared, because if that is the case, that historic calamity will count as one of many and that is absolutely not acceptable as it may compromise the exceptionalism which is used to grant Israel its special status and license.

Over the years, this line of argument has been successful in silencing much worldwide criticism of unceasing Israeli atrocities, occupation and aggression, no more so than in Germany which remains burdened by its past. German leaders have sadly drawn the wrong conclusions from history: aiding and abetting Israel, even when it does wrong, is not a valid atonement for Germany’s historic crimes.

Salman Rushdie today offered his support to the Nobel laureate Gunter Grass, who has been banned from entering Israel for a poem, "What Must Be Said", published in German newspapers last week. Rushdie said, via Twitter, that “the issue ... is a bad poem and Israel’s bad response to it ... to ban him is infantile pique. The answer to words must always be more words.”

I have no idea how bad the poem is. I tried to read "What Must Be Said" but was stymied by poor German. It may be "confused poesie" as Die Welt declared. Grass may even have a "tin ear", as Nick Cohen, that scourge of effete liberals, said.

The subject of the poem is easier to grasp. Grass was commenting on the rush to attack Iran’s nuclear program, an attack the Telegraph’s Con Coughlin predicted would go ahead in September.

And what of Israel's having multiple nuclear weapons outside of any treaty system and under the control of semi-sane religionists?

If Hitler was close to developing an atomic bomb in 1938 would it have been justifiable -- morally -- to undertake a military action against him to stop it?

That's the tenor of the question to the Israelis.

We suspected in 1939, if not earlier, that the Nazis were up to just that. The letter to President Roosevelt from Einstein, Szilard, and others was dated August 2, 1939.

There is, however, a big difference: Roosevelt had to mount a project to develop atomic weapons; by all accounts except official ones, Israel already has atomic weapons.

And granted: I am silent no longer
Because I am tired of the hypocrisy
Of the West; in addition to which it is to be hoped
That this will free many from silence,
That they may prompt the perpetrator of the recognized danger
To renounce violence and
Likewise insist
That an unhindered and permanent control
Of the Israeli nuclear potential
And the Iranian nuclear sites
Be authorized through an international agency
By the governments of both countries.

Only this way are all, the Israelis and Palestinians,
Even more, all people, that in this
Region occupied by mania
Live cheek by jowl among enemies,
And also us, to be helped.

If Hitler was close to developing an atomic bomb in 1938 would it have been justifiable -- morally -- to undertake a military action against him to stop it?

That's the tenor of the question to the Israelis.

LeMay's first war plan, drawn up in 1949, proposed delivering "the entire stockpile of atomic bombs in a single massive attack" -- dropping 133 atomic bombs on 70 cities within 30 days. By the end of his term, the SAC was on constant alert and ready to execute an all-out atomic attack at a moments notice. LeMay was SAC commander until June 1957.

Grass went on to declare bluntly that, “the nuclear power Israel endangers an already fragile world peace.” He addressed the German past, writing of a “country of crime without comparison.” His criticism was directed, he stressed, at the Israeli government and not Israel itself—“a country to which I am bound and will remain bound.”
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The smear campaign against Grass is aimed at covering up the real reasons for the war preparations. They have no more to do with Iran’s alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons than the drive to war against Iraq was motivated by that country’s supposed weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda. Once again, lies are being used to conceal a drive to maintain the military domination of the United States and its main Middle East ally Israel over a strategic region and its vast energy resources.
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It is this campaign for war that poses the real threat to both the Iranian people and the Jewish population in Israel, not Günter Grass.

All those who oppose war in the Middle East and the growing threat of a new world war must defend Günther Grass and oppose the warmongers in Berlin, Washington and Tel-Aviv as well as their lackeys in the media.

Grass's service in the Waffen SS (he was drafted)

...And an enlisted man in the 10th SS Panzer division. There is a incredible difference between line SS units and mass murdering SS groups. The bogieman invocation of Waffen SS as a blanket description is highly suspect.

An awful lot of fine people wound up fighting for the "wrong" side, just as a lot of Assholes wound up fighting for the "right" side. Rommel is considered by historians to be a one of the fine people fighting on the wrong side.