Opinion Editorials, April 2012

Good for Guenter Grass!

Everyone and his Dog Now Knows Israel Is the Problem

By Stuart Littlewood

Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, April 16, 2012

Stuart Littlewood views the “squawks and screeches” emanating from Israel in protest at German poet Guenter Grass’s poem on the threat Israel poses to the world, and reminds us of a couple of pertinent facts: that Israel is the only nuclear state in the Middle East and that it refuses to forgo the options of creating chemical and biological weapons.

I can’t say I’m crazy about the German Nobel laureate’s poetry. Much is lost in translation, of course. But the sentiment expressed in “What must be said” is spot-on.

And now that the dust has settled we can marvel at how the avalanche of outraged squawks and screeches sent the needle clean off the Richter Scale of Zionist paranoia.

Brave Guenter Grass should wear the insults like a badge of honour.

The Jewish Chronicle reported Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, as saying: "His [Guenter's] declarations are ignorant and shameful and every honest person in this world must condemn them."

What constitutes an "honest person" in Netanyahu's eyes? Does he know any?

Would Eli Yishai, Israel's interior minister, be one of them? Yishai lost no time blacklisting Grass and said he could no longer enter Israel. "If Guenter wants to spread his twisted and lying works, I suggest he does this from Iran, where he can find a supportive audience.”

No need, Eli. He already has a huge and appreciative audience here in the West.

Yishai is boss of Israel's Shas party. Shas opposes any freeze in Israel’s illegal settlement activity in the West Bank. In other words, he’s all for land theft and ethnic cleansing. Not surprisingly, Shas is a magnet for freaks and crooks. Several of the party's members of parliament have been convicted of offences such as fraud and forgery. Its former leader was indicted on corruption charges. The party's founder called Palestinians "evil” and said “God should strike them with a plague..."

As for Arabs generally, according to the party’s founder, "it is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable."

Shas has a real down on homosexuals too. One Shas MP accused gays of being “a plague as toxic as bird flu”.

The party is also against dividing Jerusalem and wants the Temple Mount for Jews only, regardless of irrefutable Muslim claims.

As if that weren’t enough, the Zionism and Israel Encyclopedic Dictionary tells of "unscrupulous election practices that include distributing amulets against the evil eye and rabbinical blessings in return for promises to vote for Shas, and apparently, voting by deceased persons. In several Shas districts in 1999, over 100 per cent of those registered participated in the elections.”

And is Yishai any good as a minister? "Yishai is a bad interior minister,” according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “It seems the job simply doesn't interest him. Perhaps even worse, that hasn't hurt his political reputation, because the people of Israel don't realize it." So Guenter Grass needn't lose any sleep over the mouthings of this third-rater.

In any case, Guenter in his poem only expresses what truly honest men have been saying for decades:

Yet why do I forbid myself
To name that other country
In which, for years, even if secretly
There has been a growing nuclear potential at hand
But beyond control, because no inspection is available?

Actually inspection is available but Israel claims exemption, which is dutifully granted by our subservient international élite.

That the nuclear power of Israel endangers
The already fragile world peace?
Because what must be said
Even tomorrow may be too late...

Israel frantically points the finger at Iran, but for what? To distract attention from the fact that Israel itself is the one with the runaway nuclear weapons programme ]]that menaces the region and beyond.

UN Security Council Resolution 487, in 1981, called on Israel “urgently to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] safeguards”. Israel hasn't done so. Its huge arsenal of weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, chemical and biological -- is obviously what’s undermining the "fragile world peace".

In 2009 the IAEA again called on Israel to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, open its nuclear facilities to inspection and place them under comprehensive IAEA safeguards. Again Israel did not comply.

Everyone and his dog now knows that Israel is the problem. It is the only state in the region not party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (Iran is). It has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. As regards biological and chemical weapons, Israel has not signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. It has signed but not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Netanyahu needs to explain all this before getting heavy with other people. As Grass says:

With nimble lips calling it a reparation, declares
A further U-boat should be delivered to Israel
Whose specialty consists of guiding all-destroying warheads to where the existence
Of a single atomic bomb is unproven
But as a fear wishes to be conclusive
I say what must be said.

Two months ago Defence Industry Daily reported how Christian Schmidt, Germany’s secretary of state for defence, had signed a contract with Israel to supply a sixth Dolphin-class submarine with the German taxpayer chipping in a huge subsidy. This latest U-boat will be fitted with a new type of propulsion system. Schmidt reportedly said that Germany was looking to increase its defence cooperation with Israel and "was specifically interested in learning from the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] about training and military doctrine".

Ye gods!

The German government must be mental to have provided any submarines, let alone half a dozen. Dolphins are diesel-electric attack submarines that can fire torpedoes and missiles from their tubes and carry out underwater surveillance. Germany donated two of these killer vessels to the Israeli navy in the early 1990s. Israel then bought a third submarine for 350 million US dollars -- half price -- with the German taxpayer paying the other half. In 2006 a deal was done for two more at a total of 1.27 billion dollars, with the Germans picking up one-third of the tab.

These Dolphins have 10 bow torpedo tubes, four of which have a 650mm diameter for launching the larger cruise missiles. Rumour has it that Israel tested a nuclear-capable version of its medium-range “Popeye Turbo” cruise missile from those tubes.

It’s the stuff of nightmares when you see the lethal idiots whose fingers are all over the buttons. Angela Merkel needs a good spanking for this lunacy. Any volunteers?

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.

Amen, brother Guenter.

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editor@aljazeerah.info & editor@ccun.org