What must be said? Well, many of us have been busy for years to prevent another war in the Middle East, after a decade of failure in Afghanistan and two decades of the Iraqi war debacle.
Literature Nobel laureate of 1999 Günter Grass has done a terrible disservice to our consistent work. Did he raise his voice before? As an eminent German writer, had he ever something to say on the Kunduz airstrike when a German Colonel ordered a massacre among civilians? Now, Israel allegedly threatens Iran with annihilation. Wasn’t it Hillary Clinton in the 2008 presidential election campaign who threatened Iran first (actually, she used “totally obliterate”)? What did he say then? Has Grass ever visited Iran? Its nuclear sites? Did he follow IAEA reports by ElBaradei, Amano?
Sickening hypocritical Günter Grass, a former member of Waffen-SS (we only got to know about that since he confessed in 2006 in one of his latest publications, Vom Häuten der Zwiebel, or Pealing the Onion; he explained this later in an article in The New Yorker) has now proved that he is nothing else than a petty anti-Semite. Warmongers in Israel and its government may in fact jubilee. They read, Was gesagt werden muss: The Jews are our calamity.
In particular disgusting is Grass’ publication of his poem just before the Jewish Passover festival, a common occasion for anti-Semitic denouncing Jewish life and rites.
To be just a bit instructive, what Netanjahu, Barak and Lieberman do and always did is a game. Virtuoso, they play the influence of the American Israel lobby in preparation of the November elections, no more. There will be no preemptive airstrike since its effectiveness and efficiency are highly questionable. There will be no nuclear attack on already heavily fortified enrichment facilities since these politicians are shrewd but not nuts.
Was gesagt werden muss
Warum schweige ich, verschweige zu lange,
was offensichtlich ist und in Planspielen
geübt wurde, an deren Ende als Überlebende
wir allenfalls Fußnoten sind.Es ist das behauptete Recht auf den Erstschlag,
der das von einem Maulhelden unterjochte
und zum organisierten Jubel gelenkte
iranische Volk auslöschen könnte,
weil in dessen Machtbereich der Bau
einer Atombombe vermutet wird.Doch warum untersage ich mir,
jenes andere Land beim Namen zu nennen,
in dem seit Jahren – wenn auch geheimgehalten –
ein wachsend nukleares Potential verfügbar
aber außer Kontrolle, weil keiner Prüfung
zugänglich ist?Das allgemeine Verschweigen dieses Tatbestandes,
dem sich mein Schweigen untergeordnet hat,
empfinde ich als belastende Lüge
und Zwang, der Strafe in Aussicht stellt,
sobald er mißachtet wird;
das Verdikt „Antisemitismus“ ist geläufig.Jetzt aber, weil aus meinem Land,
das von ureigenen Verbrechen,
die ohne Vergleich sind,
Mal um Mal eingeholt und zur Rede gestellt wird,
wiederum und rein geschäftsmäßig, wenn auch
mit flinker Lippe als Wiedergutmachung deklariert,
ein weiteres U-Boot nach Israel
geliefert werden soll, dessen Spezialität
darin besteht, allesvernichtende Sprengköpfe
dorthin lenken zu können, wo die Existenz
einer einzigen Atombombe unbewiesen ist,
doch als Befürchtung von Beweiskraft sein will,
sage ich, was gesagt werden muss.Warum aber schwieg ich bislang?
Weil ich meinte, meine Herkunft,
die von nie zu tilgendem Makel behaftet ist,
verbiete, diese Tatsache als ausgesprochene Wahrheit
dem Land Israel, dem ich verbunden bin
und bleiben will, zuzumuten.Warum sage ich jetzt erst,
gealtert und mit letzter Tinte:
Die Atommacht Israel gefährdet
den ohnehin brüchigen Weltfrieden?
Weil gesagt werden muss,
was schon morgen zu spät sein könnte;
auch weil wir – als Deutsche belastet genug –
Zulieferer eines Verbrechens werden könnten,
das voraussehbar ist, weshalb unsere Mitschuld
durch keine der üblichen Ausreden
zu tilgen wäre.Und zugegeben: ich schweige nicht mehr,
weil ich der Heuchelei des Westens
überdrüssig bin; zudem ist zu hoffen,
es mögen sich viele vom Schweigen befreien,
den Verursacher der erkennbaren Gefahr
zum Verzicht auf Gewalt auffordern und
gleichfalls darauf bestehen,
daß eine unbehinderte und permanente Kontrolle
des israelischen atomaren Potentials
und der iranischen Atomanlagen
durch eine internationale Instanz
von den Regierungen beider Länder zugelassen wird.Nur so ist allen, den Israelis und Palästinensern,
mehr noch, allen Menschen, die in dieser
vom Wahn okkupierten Region
dicht bei dicht verfeindet leben
und letztlich auch uns zu helfen.
(All orthographic, linguistic and stylistic errors as such.)
See a not scrutinized translation here.
Last update April 5, 2012
Freelance 
With all due respect to your previous works, your conclusion is a feeble, hasty prejudice.
You have either no idea about Günter Grass and his lifetime achievement or you are – it would be a great surprise – blinded through the full side volley of all phalanxes of the brought into line main stream media, ready at all times in the service of the warmongers of the Israel lobby and their backers from the military-industrial-financial-complex.
But now, once smoke has almost cleared, they may have shot their bolt.
I’m absolutely astonished about Grass’ sense of time. Most of his proponents are -morally- heaviest weight public figures.
The public discussion, which has now been set in motion, will change lasting the media land-scape. It will be impossible to swing the anti-Semitism club against these luminaries.
All of a sudden meticulously staged victimhood of decades has got sensitive cracks. Irrefutable arguments drowned out under a leaden veil of silence ever since, gain now massively attention in primetime TV and the most important papers.
The nervous fidgeting and mudslinging of Die Welt and Co. makes it even worse. And there is this sorry figure of Home Secretary of Mr. Netanyahu, lacks even a trace of any IQ.
It was a wise ascertainment a couple of days ago; Grass has probably made his most important contribution.
P.S.: To all friends trying to brand me from now on as an Anti-Semite; let it better be. Those days are over, it will backfire.
Well Ali, Grass has conceiled for decades that he had been a member of Waffen SS when 17. As such, that is not a big issue but the fact that he had concealed it for so long is. He had stylized himself for decades as merciless moralist in post war Germany when accusing members of his own generation of having never come clear with their Nazi background. I haven’t heard anything, in particular no poem, when Israel attacked Gaza in 2009, when the Gaza flotilla was intercepted and attacked in international waters in 2010, with nine activists killed. (Many of these activists were anti-Semites as well, by the way. I have written about them on this blog, see here.) Or when Palestine is simply wiped off the map.
Grass is a very poor op-ed writer who has written a bad poem in disguise. And he had intentionally published it a couple of days before the Passover festival, traditionally the time for anti-Semites to accuse Jews for ritual murder. Rather disgusting.