tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7675600882597316438.post907731085320655790..comments2023-10-26T06:29:39.824-07:00Comments on The Magnes Zionist: Goldberg Slipping on GrassJerry Haberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15173892714754718716noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7675600882597316438.post-71407407851213999502012-04-23T17:18:23.949-07:002012-04-23T17:18:23.949-07:00Very good post. Part of the problem is obviously a...Very good post. Part of the problem is obviously a lack of critical thinking, namely literary criticism. This is after all a poem and not a geo-political narrative, so I find the utter hysteria and outrage at Green's utilization of these common literary devices to be at best irrational and at worst contrived for public manipulation.Cricket Blackhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01226638209664843488noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7675600882597316438.post-48152932243913305872012-04-18T13:10:58.825-07:002012-04-18T13:10:58.825-07:00Let me say this: I don't think there is any ev...Let me say this: I don't think there is any evidence that Grass is anti-Jewish, e.g. look at the portrayal of the Jewish Gdans toy seller in THE TIN DRUM, Grass volunteering to join to the Israeli defense during the six day war. Living in the United States, as I do, and watching Netanjahu try to blackmail the US President into immediate support for an immedediate pre-emptive strikem and do so in front of AIPAC, an attack on a nation that exists in an entirely defensive posture, albeit it has a blustering president too, an attack that could easily escalate into a major conflagration, to see Netanjahu is even more frightening than to behold Amindebejad, who also may be blustering more for home consumption than to rouse the rest of the world.<br /><br /><br />http://goaliesanxiety.blogspot.com/2012/04/gunter-grass-what-must-be-said.html contains daily updated links the 100 of different positive and negative positions taken on the Grass anti-war poem controversy. I myself am doing a summary that may be done by the end of the week. However, it looks as though this might get to be a bigger story than just Grass and his poem.<br /><br />http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=nameSUMMA POLITICOhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11214697505465094305noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7675600882597316438.post-71991051149170413322012-04-17T13:53:02.208-07:002012-04-17T13:53:02.208-07:00america dropped two nukes on japan and fire bombed...america dropped two nukes on japan and fire bombed tokyo....the japanese people are still here<br /><br />you know very well that grass was attempting to say that israel attacking iran would only be to annihilate the iranian people...and not for self defense<br /><br />of course, this wont be posted, but the idiocy above, re an israel poem (grass is not iranian...just a former ss soldier) has been<br /><br />so since it wont be...let me say...i will pray harder next pesach that your jew hating as choke on the non shmura matza you will eat<br /><br />you filthyAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7675600882597316438.post-202146601830825682012-04-15T07:46:04.200-07:002012-04-15T07:46:04.200-07:00Well...
... you're probably correct in saying...Well...<br /><br />... you're probably correct in saying that the implied possibility of an Israeli attack "annihilating" the Iranian people is an exaggeration. Then again, this is a poem, if a rather bad one, and hyperbole is part and parcel of the language of poetry.<br /><br />However...<br /><br />http://www.haaretz.com/news/ben-eliezer-if-iran-attacks-israel-we-will-destroy-it-1.243514<br /><br />... Grass isn't just pulling this from thin air either. And this is not just a crazy nationalist writer like Benny Morris or Martin van Creveld, both of which have advanced their fantasies about Israel starting nuclear holocausts in newspaper interviews. Ben-Eliezer was a minister in the Israeli government. If Iran actually had nuclear weapons and an Iranian government minister said "If Israel attacks, we'll destroy" it and an Israeli author wrote a poem about the possibility of Israel being destroyed by an Iranian attack, would we write this poem off as unrealistic and hysterical? Probably not.Tobiashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06499126921801952616noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7675600882597316438.post-48115160391310655922012-04-11T22:07:00.105-07:002012-04-11T22:07:00.105-07:00RE: It [Grass' poem] imputes to the Israeli le...RE: It [Grass' poem] imputes to the Israeli leaders the claim to have a right to a first strike capability that could 'snuff out' or 'annihilate' the Iranian people by using the nuclear submarine sold it by the Germans." ~ Haber<br /><br />SEE "SAMSON OPTION" AT WIKIPEDIA:<br />(excerpt). . . Ron Rosenbaum writes in his 2012 book "How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III" that in the "aftermath of a second Holocaust" Israel's surviving Dophin-class nuclear missile submarines would retaliate not only against Israel's attackers, but "bring down the pillars of the world (attack Moscow and European capitals for instance)" as well as the "holy places of Islam." He writes that "abandonment of proportionality is the essence" of the Samson Option.[23] . . . <br />SOURCE - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option<br /><br />ALSO SEE: “Israeli Nuclear Strike on Iran Turned Back”, By William Thomas (Jan. 11/07)<br />LINK - http://www.willthomasonline.net/Israeli_Nuclear_Strike_On_Iran.htmldickerson3870https://www.blogger.com/profile/04030676287366721017noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7675600882597316438.post-27127638926477294592012-04-11T11:40:37.344-07:002012-04-11T11:40:37.344-07:00Goldberg was talking primarily to Jews who delight...Goldberg was talking primarily to Jews who delight to be told they need not attend to a political view because -- after all -- it is the view of an enemy, an anti-Semite. So it doesn't count and must necessarily be unsound.<br /><br />Grass was talking to Germany and to the world. He was saying in a way what many Jews have said about Mein Kampf, namely, that people who talk this way may later do what they are talking about. Bibi is talking about war which may have some sort of nuclear dimension. He speaks in apocalyptic tones. Grass is asking everyone to take this talk seriously and to think about consequences and to think about their OWN PARTICIPATION (he means Germany's), etc.pabelmonthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02455552052993621134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7675600882597316438.post-56962615545017797152012-04-11T09:22:57.175-07:002012-04-11T09:22:57.175-07:00Former Israeli ambassador to Germany, Avi Primor, ...Former Israeli ambassador to Germany, Avi Primor, while disagreeing on the merits (misreading Grass on the issue of genocidal intent, too), has also very publicly defended Grass from the anti-Semitism charge. Even if I'd thought otherwise in the first place, that would be good enough for me.<br /><br />The scurrilous geschrei from the current ambassador, insinuating blood libel (it's Pesach, after all) is getting the attention it deserves.<br /><br />Primor also called Eli Yishai's decision to make Grass persona non grata in Israel, "populist, hysterical, exaggerated". Quite so. If Grass' poem is anti-Semitic, or foments hatred of Israel, then I suppose half of Israel's population consists of anti-Semites and self-hating Jews. (Meanwhile Yishai has one-upped himself by calling on the Nobel committee to retract Grass' Nobel prize. The committee naturally declined.)<br />The TV interview with Primor (in German) is here: http://tagesthemen.de/ausland/grass128.html<br /><br />The only little problem I have is Grass' subsequent pose of victimisation by the same dreaded pro-Israel consensus he alludes to in the poem itself. He was right to break the taboo, so far as it exists, but he's wrong to complain now about being proven right. Perhaps that's just a matter of the heat of the moment.fiddler0https://www.blogger.com/profile/02209161426624203995noreply@blogger.com