World Jewish News

Gunter Grass no more welcome at German Social-Democrat party rallies

Leading members of Germany's main opposition party said Tuesday they no longer want Nobel laureate Gunter Grass to campaign for them due to uproar over his recent poem lambasting Israel.
The 84-year-old Grass, who has been appearing at rallies for the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) since the 1960s, is no longer welcome, the party's chief whip, Christian Lange, told Die Welt newspaper.
After last week's publication of the hotly controversial prose-poem branding Israel as the Middle East's biggest threat to peace, "his making appearances to back the SPD at campaign events is out of the question," Lange said.
"I no longer want to see Grass in an SPD campaign," another party official, Reinhold Robbe, told the daily ahead of two state polls in the next five weeks.
"Many Social Democrats would see campaign events with Grass as a provocation," he said. "His time is over".
And the deputy head of the SPD's parliamentary group, Gernot Erler, told NDR public radio that he did not expect to see Grass at another party rally, adding that the writer had "lost touch with reality".
However a former SPD parliamentary speaker, Wolfgang Thierse, told public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk that the party could criticize Grass's views but "should not discredit him as a person".
Grass, one of Germany's most influential writers, had been an outspoken SPD backer since Willy Brandt stood for chancellor of West Germany in 1969 and he actively campaigned for Gerhard Schroeder before his election in 1998.
But he sparked a firestorm of condemnation at home and abroad last week for the poem "What must be said", in which he voiced fears that a nuclear-armed Israel would mount a "first strike" against Iran and wipe out its people, plunging the world into a new war.
Outraged commentators said that while German criticism of Israeli government policies was legitimate, even in the aftermath of the Holocaust, Grass had offered up a one-sided portrayal of Israel as a bloodthirsty aggressor against Iran that dredged up familiar anti-Jewish tropes.
Israel's Interior inister, Eli Yishai, citing the poem, on Sunday barred Grass from entering the Jewish state, while the Iranian government hailed the poem.

EJP