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Scoundrels Assail Gunter Grass Truths
Scoundrels Attack Gunter Grass Truths
by Stephen Lendman
Touching the most sensitive nerves has risks. Nearly always hostile responses follow.
Criticizing Israel is the third rail of US politics. It's also largely off limits in scoundrel media managed news, op-eds, and editorials.
Gunter Grass took the risks. He acted forthrightly. His new poem "What Must Be Said" explained that he'll no longer be silent on what's long been known but virtually never discussed publicly.
Israel's nuclear armed and dangerous. A previous article discussed it. Portions are repeated below to explain what's vital to know.
In his 1991 book, "The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and America Foreign Policy," Seymour Hersh discussed its strategy to launch a massive nuclear counterattack if it felt its existence threatened.
In his 1997 book, "Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies," Israel Shahak said that, helped by the Israeli Lobby (and Christian Zionists), "Israel (is) clearly prepar(ing) itself to seek overtly a hegemony over the entire Middle East (with no) hesitati(on) to use for the purpose all means available, including nuclear ones."
According to Hebrew University's Professor of Military History Martin Van Creveld, "We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you (it) will happen before Israel goes under."
Israel hypocritically maintains double standard duplicity. It wants other regional states denied what it reserves the right to have and use preemptively.
In 1948, David Ben-Gurion began Israeli efforts to develop nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons technology.
Ernst David Bergmann, became the father of Israel's bomb. He ran the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission.(IAEC).
In his farewell address, Ben-Gurion told the Israeli Armaments Development Authority (RAFAEL):
"I am confident, based not only on what I heard today, that our science can provide us with the weapons that are needed to deter our enemies from waging war against us."
He and Shimon Peres became Israel's leading figures for nuclear and CBW programs. They wanted technology developed to use these and other weapons preemptively against perceived or manufactured threats.
Since 1973, Israel had none. Its belligerence belies it. It roguishly acts as a regional menace. With a powerful nuclear arsenal and sophisticated delivery systems, its threat extends globally.
In 1952, the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) was established. In 1964, the Dimona Nuclear Research Center/reactor was secretly completed near Bersheeba in the Negev as a heavy water moderated, natural uranium reactor/plutonium reprocessing plant to make nuclear weapons.
After the 1967 Six Day War, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan ordered full-scale production. It averaged 4 - 12 bombs per year. US presidents since Lyndon Johnson supported the program.
By the early 1970s, Israel had advanced nuclear technology, world class scientists, and several dozen bombs ready to launch. Today it has hundreds and delivery systems able to hit distant targets accurately.
Development was possible through elaborate deception and America's active complicity. US universities trained Israeli scientists. They had access to domestic weapons labs.
Since the early 1970s, advanced technology transfers were made. They included supercomputers able to design sophisticated nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Mordechai Vanunu's mid-1980s documented revelations provided proof.
A longtime nuclear technician, he smuggled out dozens of confirming photos and scientific documents. On October 5, 1986, the London Times said:
"THE SECRETS of a subterranean factory engaged in the manufacture of Israeli nuclear weapons have been uncovered by the Sunday Times Insight team."
"Hidden beneath the Negev desert, the factory has been producing nuclear atomic warheads for the last 20 years. Now it has almost certainly begun manufacturing thermo-nuclear weapons." Their yields can destroy entire cities.
Vanunu was named the source. Nuclear experts examined his documents. They called them genuine, and concluded that Israel's sophisticated technology enabled it "to build up a formidable nuclear arsenal."
His revelations cost him dearly. On October 12, 1986, Mossad agents lured him to Rome. They beat, drugged, and kidnapped him. In 1986/87, he was secretly tried and sentenced to 18 years incarceration for espionage and treason.
In America and Israel, whisleblowers take great risks. Vanunu's still harassed, mistreated, forbidden from talking with journalists, and can't leave the country.
On July 2, 2007, he again was imprisoned for six months for speaking to foreign journalists. Israel's District Court later reduced it to three "in light of (his) ailing health and the absence of claims that his actions put the country's security in jeopardy."
In January 2008, he was sentenced to six months community service.
Daniel Ellsberg called him "the preeminent hero of the nuclear era." In July 2007, Amnesty International (AI) named him "a prisoner of conscience."
Vanunu says "I am neither a traitor nor a spy. I only wanted the world to know what was happening." They had every right to know and still do.
On December 28, 2009, he was again arrested following an alleged meeting with his girlfriend, a Norwegian national. House arrest followed.
Years after his initial imprisonment, he's still effectively in one. In May 2010, he began serving another three-month prison term, reportedly in isolation. He's vulnerable to rearrest anytime for any reason or none at all. That's how police states operate. Israel's one of the worst. So is America. Both threaten humanity.
Israel is one of three known nuclear outlaws. Besides India and Pakistan, it never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) nor allows inspections. North Korea is a declared but unverified nuclear power.
Since the 1970s, Israel's official position is that it chose "an option to produce electricity using nuclear reactors. (This) requires promoting nuclear knowledge and research, preparing sites suitable for building nuclear power plants," and weighing the economic benefits.
Independent experts know Dimona has no civilian nuclear program. Technology development is entirely weapons-related. They include boosted fission ones and small neutron bombs. They're designed to maximize gamma radiation while minimizing blast effects and long-term radiation. They're designed to kill while leaving structures intact.
Israel also has long range ballistic missiles; sophisticated aircraft, surface ships, and submarines able to launch nuclear strikes; cruise missiles, artillery shells, and land mines with the same capability; greater ability than needed for defensive deterrence; and propensity to strike first rather than first assess whether or not serious threats exist.
Israel faces none. In contrast, it imperils the region and beyond.
Unjustifiable Criticisms
"What Must Be Said" explains the risks. Grass courageously did what few others dare. He did it his way. His poem won't be remembered for its style or grace. It will for his important message.
He discussed an open secret. He kicked open a hornet's nest doing it. Unjustifiable invectives assail him. That's the price paid for explaining important truths. He won't back off. Neither should we. The issue's on the table. Discussing and spreading it's essential.
Grass can handle criticism. He knew the risks and took them. He's assailed now from all sides. Netanyahu, an unindicted war criminal, attacked him, saying:
"His declarations are ignorant and shameful and every honest person in this world must condemn them." His motives are anti-Semitic, he claimed.
"For six decades he hid his past as a member in the Waffen SS, so it is no surprise that he defines the only Jewish state as the greatest threat to world peace and opposes it equipping itself with means of self defense."
On the one hand, Netanyahu didn't deny Grass' accusations. On the other, he omitted saying he himself revealed his SS past. He was 16, young and foolish at a time his nation was being destroyed.
Maturity transformed him. He became Germany's moral voice and conscience. He sides with history's forgotten victims. He calls his native country psychologically damaged. It's ugly past won't be forgotten, nor should it.
Netanyahu called comparing Israel with Iran shameful, saying:
"In Iran there is a regime that denies the Holocaust and calls for the destruction of Israel." It does neither and Netanyahu knows it. Nonetheless, his bluster added:
"It is Iran, not Israel, which poses a threat to world peace. It is Iran, not Israel, which threatens to destroy other countries. It is Iran, not Israel, which supports terror organizations that fire missiles on innocent civilians. It is Iran, not Israel, which supports the massacre that the Syrian regime is carrying out on its civilians. It is Iran, not Israel, which stones women, hangs gay people, and ruthlessly suppresses the tens of millions of citizens in its country."
Fact check
Israel threatens world peace. Iran threatens no one. Israel reigns terror regionally and beyond. Iran peacefully coexists with neighbors. Israel commits crimes of war and against humanity. Iran hasn't attacked another country in over two centuries. Israel marginalizes, discriminates against, and persecutes non-Jews. Iran grants non-Muslims equal rights.
Israel is a nuclear menace. Iran's program is entirely peaceful. Even Mossad, US intelligence, and IAEA inspectors agree. Israel won't let anyone examine its nuclear facilities for good reason.
It's got plenty to hide. It's secret long ago became open. Grass discussed what Vanunu exposed decades earlier. The difference is Israel can't imprison him or destroy his distinction as Germany's most celebrated author and 1999 Literature Nobel laureate.
Nonetheless, Haaretz writer Anshel Pfeffer headlined, "The moral blindness of Gunter Grass," saying:
His polemic "baseless(ly alleges) that Israel is threatening to annihilate the entire Iranian people."
"(T)here is something so obviously wrong about him saying this, something so morally blind that all arguments are superfluous."
Fact check
Israel, not Grass, threatens war on Iran. If nuclear weapons are used, millions of lives are risked. Saying so is important, not baseless. He deserves praise, not condemnation.
Pfeffer also assailed his SS past. Like Netanyahu and others, hitting below the belt substitutes for confronting hard facts honestly and accepting what needs to be said. Not Netanyahu. Not Pfeffer. Not many other truth- ducking scoundrels. That's moral blindness and cowardice.
Pfeffer also attacked Grass for lacking "basic human decency." Unlike himself and other critics, Grass acted honorably and courageously. He stuck his neck out because it's important. The only justifiable criticism is he should have done it much earlier. But it's never too late to do the right thing.
Der Spiegel's literary editor Sebastian Hammelehle headlined, "Gunter Grass's Lyrical First Strike," saying:
Grass "implie(d) an unpleasant flippancy: the flippancy of breaking taboos. (He's) such a vain man that, when asked to write for the German weekly Die Zeit on the occasion of prominent German writer Heinrich Boll's death, he wrote almost exclusively about himself."
"Now he has packed his political opinions into a poem that is almost as simple. What pathos! It might have been better if he hadn't begun his verses with the word 'I' at the beginning of each sentence, and instead debated the situation in Israel more thoroughly."
"Then he very quickly would have gotten an idea about how the people of Israel must feel in psychological terms, being surrounded by enemies."
"Never in the history of postwar Germany has an intellectual as prominent as Grass presented such hollow clichés about Israel in such a vain manner."
"It is in no way certain that the nuclear attack implied in the poem with which Israel 'could annihilate the Iranian people' will even happen in the foreseeable future. But one thing is certain: The lyrical first strike has already been launched -- from German soil."
Like other morally compromised critics, Hammelehle substituted invectives for well deserved praise, for doing what needs to be done, especially from someone of his distinction. There ought to be a Nobel award for that.
The New York Times also betrayed its readers. It's standard NYT policy. Instead of highlighting Grass' distinguished credentials and courage for doing the right thing, it mostly focused on critics and suggestions of anti-Semitism.
So did other major broadsheets, including the London Guardian. It quoted Henryk Border calling Grass "the prototype of the educated antisemite." He added that he's "completely nuts." It also highlighted some of Netanyahu's above quoted comments.
When facts are too important to ignore and someone courageously addresses them, critics and media scoundrels attack the messenger. Invectives substitute for truth, full disclosure, and for Grass, justifiable praise.
Even Gideon Levy fell short in his commentary headlined, "Israelis can be angry with Gunter Grass, but they must listen to him," saying:
His poem was "harsh, and in some parts infuriating. (He) indeed went a few steps to far (and too mendaciously) - Israel will not destroy the Iranian people - and for that he will be punished, in his own country and in Israel."
Fact check
Levy may not fully realize the destructive power of nuclear weapons, including how radiation kills. If Israel and/or America targets Iran's underground nuclear facilities with these type weapons, millions of lives will be risked.
With or without nuclear weapons, if shock and awe tactics attack military and other targets, all bets are off. Perhaps he's not aware of the Hersh and Israel Shahak books discussed above.
He likely doesn't know or forgot John McCain once wanting to "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran." He hasn't changed his mind nor have other congressional war hawks.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's one of the worst. As a 2008 presidential aspirant, she threatened war on Iran, saying:
"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm president, we will attack Iran. In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."
"Obliterate" suggests killing millions. Downplaying the risk is indefensible. Levy might reconsider his comments in a future op-ed.
At the same time, he called Grass criticism "exaggerat(ed)." He dismissed anti-Semitism suggestions. He said his Nazi past doesn't "warrant shutting him up" now, "and his opinion is far from vacuous."
"It can and should be said that Israel's policy is endangering world peace. His position against Israeli nuclear power is also legitimate. He can also oppose supplying submarines" as launching vehicles.
Grass isn't alone, he said. Indeed not, but anyone daring to criticize Israel publicly draws the usual type responses.
"(W)e must listen to these great people. They are not anti-Semites. They are expressing the opinion of many people. Instead of accusing them we should consider what we did that led them to express it."
Levy left unsaid the importance of confronting it beyond op-eds and the court of public opinion. Laws are made to be obeyed.
UN member states are obligated to punish violators. America and Israel top the list. Both threaten world peace. If that's not just cause to confront them, what is? Writers and others need to say so.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
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Bush's U.N. representative was the Fascist, Bolton, who blackmailed, threatened nations, to reverse their majority vote that stated, Zionism is
Racism. It worked and explains how Western class hierarchies operate, as Wiki Leaks later demonstrated when Obama used inter class,
military, police links to blackmail Spanish judges to drop prosecution of Bush as a War criminal. Not only do all Western class
parties engage in these coercive, blackmailing practices to co opt the U.N. , Security Council, co opt, corrupt, the U.N. nuclear agency head to
make false declarations for the West, they explain, also, how class politicians are deformed themselves by class hierarchies, turning truth, social
principles, morality up side down to deny that Zionism is an apartheid, fascist class state.
Obama and Bolton's shared Fascist outlook and denial that Zionism is Fascist, racist and colonial is proof that all class ideologies, all class
politicians have degenerated, compromised their centers, shifting ever further to the right until political labels have no meaning except where they
all arrived in their cold embrace of totalitarianism, Fascism. Western Fascism is the product of a failed Western Enlightenment which too was
compromised by establishing class parties, class laws and class states as BETRAYAL MECHANISMS that turned up side down, using the
Orwellian, inverted totalitarian class principle to produce parasitical, monopoly, Empire class relations, hence the failure not only of all class
states, but all of class history. Western Fascism is but a collection of failed class states, which puts the Nazi Empire alongside the U.S. Empire
that produced, not only the rogue state of Israel, but put into place all failed post colonial states, all failed Stalinist states, the deformed outcome,
where social forces, like nation states are not truly independent, indivisible, from the NOW GLOBAL links, Matrix of class deforming hierarchies,
producing a second round of Fascism in Israel , in Amerika, through NATO, corrupting everything it touches and using mass murder to keep
such failed class power.
Obama embraces Fascism at home, embraces Fascism in Israel and shares the same totalitarian outcome of all class ideologies that
have drifted from crippled class republics into class tyrants and class Empires, just as the city states of Ancient Greece did when Plato's
social reforms, attempts at democracy, to return to an independent social mechanism was co opted, corrupted by Patriarchy and failure when he
tried to graft democracy , republics into a deforming class mechanism, PATRIARCHY, only to get deformed class democracies and
the historical degenerating class cycles where crippled democracies slipped into totalitarianism and class Empires, this time by a
BI PARTISAN US. FASCISM, and a Global Fascist Matrix that has produced many dictators, rogue states, failed class states as it did
in Plato's time. You would think these massive, long term histocial failures of class states linked to class hierarchies producing psychopathic
warmongering politicians like Obama, Bush, Bolton and other fascists would finally signal to the world, that ONLY A REJECTION, DISMANTLING
OF ALL CLASS PARTIES LINKED AS CLASS HIERARCHIES will accomplish the INDEPENDENT, INDIVISIBLE SOCIAL FORCES TO DEFEAT
CLASS HISTORY. But that would mean the end of the democratic, republican, and all class parties and their Scoundrels, not to mention
the corrupt CORPORATE MEDIA which too embraces Fascism, like the Liberal press.
Had the Western Enlightenment followed through on their SOCIAL THEORIES, the establishment of an independent , indivisible middle class,
as the social agency for universal rights and social wealth which implies at the same time the dismantling , dissolving of class hierarchies and
its Patriarchal class mechanism, Western Fascism, the expression of a compromised, corrupted Western Enlightenment would not have happened.
This social principle was the basis of Social Patriotism against class history, against Feudal Absolutism, before it too was inverted, turned up
side down, through existing class hierarchies, co opting, corrupting Social Patriotism into class nationalism and finally Fascism. Still the concept
and social principle of an indivisible , independent social force, free from class deforming hierarchies hides within the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE,
mouthed by many yahoos, rednecks, fascists, MINDLESSLY, clueless to what the words, principles mean: "And to the Republic (social
republic).....INDIVISIBLE WITH JUSTICE FOR ALL was the social principle, social patriotism that emanated from a SOCIAL ENLIGHTENMENT who
actually came up with a roadmap how to end class history, totalitarianism, Empires and Fascism itself.
You will note that this is also the same starting point for socialists, social libertarians, when revolutionary Liberals were all on the same
page to end Feudalism and class history through a social, indivisible, independent, middle class, now being destroyed by Obama's corporatism,
Fascism, which is the same class/empire ideology of Fascist Republicans. The transition, degeneration of revolutionary Liberals into
POST(class deformed) Enlightenment liberals signals their long term degeneration into totalitarians, Fascist themselves.
Hey kidz!!! Doesn't it seem that it is time for MANY things to be said that
need to be said?
"The time has come," the walrus said, "to talk of many things:
Of shoes and ships - and sealing wax - of cabbages and kings”
- Lewis Carroll from Alice In Wonderland
Brother Stephen Lendman writes in the above article:
"Touching the most sensitive nerves has risks. Nearly always hostile
responses follow.
Criticizing Israel is the third rail of US politics. It's also largely off limits
in scoundrel managed news, op-eds, and editorials."
In a society that doesn't bat an eye when a TV network like Disney's ABC
runs not one, but TWO episodes of their latest show, "Good Christian Bitches",
on Easter Sunday, . . .
. . . one must wonder how this widespread cultural Taboo against criticizing
all things "Israel" came to be.
I am reminded of the old comedy routine by George Carlin about the
"7 Words You Can Never Say On Television" for it seems there are
"7 Third Rails of Zionism That Can Never Be Questioned". Just what
are these seven fundamental planks in the Zionist Tribal Identity that
invoke such a quick and ruthless response?
1 - The Book Of Genesis Creation story that dates the Earth to 6000 years,
The Exodus Legend of Moses , the Legend of the Kingdoms of
Saul, David, and Solomon, and the Legend of the First Temple Period.
6 - Israel's Role In The Terrorist Attacks of 9-11 - If you aren't talking about Israel,
you aren't talking about 9-11 TRUTH.
"Truth behind 9/11 will annihilate Israel: Video"
"911 and the cover up by Ryan Dawson"
7 - Israel's Genocide of the Palestinians and Land Theft. From the racist apartheid
origins of the Great Zionist project, to the Terrorist Campaigns of the Irgun and Stern
Gangs, to the 1967 Six Day War which included the Israeli "False Flag" attacks on
the U.S.S. Liberty, to the Murder by Bulldozer of Rachel Corrie, to the 2008-2009 Operation
Cast Lead, to the targetted assasinations of Peace Activists on the Mavi Marmara,
to the routine bombings of Gaza and the illegal settlements of the West Bank . . .
as film maker Anthony Lawson would say, "Need I go on?" . ..
"Iran Bashing, Terrorism and Who Chose The Chosen People, Anyway?"
. . . yes, the time has come to speak of many things . . .
. . . but unfortunately, it appears these are the "7 Third Rails Of Zionism That
Can Never Be Questioned." . . . :-)
"I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.
See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly.
I'm crying.
Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come.
Corporation tee-shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday.
Man, you been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long.
I am the eggman, they are the eggmen.
I am the walrus, goo goo g'joob."
- "I Am The Walrus" by The Beatles
peace.
. .
It is one thing to point out the totalitarian, fascist connections, between Western states, and exposing the class myths of Israel that are similar to
the class myths, class dogmas of Obama's Free markets. But to focus only or mostly on Israeli, Jewish connections without understanding
it as a failed class history, failed class states, including Israel, borders on true racism, anti semitism. This Western Fascism holds true not only for
Israel, but all failed class states linked to a global totalitarian Matrix. The Holocaust was a product of Fascism and therefore is central to this
discussion why the world is moving towards global Fascism.
Res ipsa loquitur - The thing speaks for itself . . .
Social change writes:
"A Holocaust of 1 Million to 6 Million is still Mass Murder - But to focus only or mostly on Israeli,
Jewish connections without understanding it as a failed class history, failed class states,
including Israel, borders on true racism, anti semitism."
So, it is perfectly fine for you, Social Change, to call me a "true racist" and an "anti-semite"
for merely writing that I have observed that there are 7 topics that are not allowed to be
discussed . . . or else, like Nobel Laureate Gunter Grass, one risks being branded as
a "racist" and an "anti-semite". . .
. . . while completely ignoring the entire point of the comment . . . or the poem, for that matter.
"Anti-semitic, its a trick we always use it"
Quod erat demonstrandum - What was to be demonstrated has been demonstrated
"It's easier to tell a lie than it is to tell the truth
It's easier to kill a fly than it is to turn it loose
It's easier to criticize somebody else
Than to see yourself
It's easier to hurt someone and make them cry
Than it is to dry their eyes
I got tired of fooling around with other people's lies
Rather I'd find someone that's true"
- "See Yourself" by George Harrison
peace.