The debate over Günter Grass’ poem again lays bare Germans’ troubled relationship with Israel, Jews and their own history – By Peter H. Koepf
He wanted to remain silent no longer, he wrote, and that he was weary of the “West’s hypocrisy.” Germany, itself burdened by history, could not be permitted to become a “subcontractor for a crime.” Thus spoke Günter Grass. The nuclear arms power Israel threatens world peace and wants to exterminate the Iranian nation. Because Germany is to deliver another submarine to an Israel “specialized in directing all-obliterating warheads toward an area in which not a single atom bomb has been proven to exist,” the Nobel Literature laureate (The Tin Drum) felt compelled to say “what must be said.”
The echo was as immediate as it was predictable. “Anti-Semitism” was the word that all the newspaper reports had in common. Grass is a “preacher with a wooden mallet,” wrote the poet Durs Grünbein. Dieter Graumann, President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, called Grass’ poem “an aggressive pamphlet of agitation” that demonizes Israel.
More than a few critics pointed out that the author, when he was 17 years old, had been a member of the SS for a few months, something he had waited a long time to admit. That was why, in The National Interest, Jacob Heilbrunn muzzled him. “First and most obvious is that a former member of the SS has no moral standing, to put it mildly, to criticize Israel,” he wrote.
Grass expected the anti-Semitism cries. He wrote as much in the poem. Those who do not follow the general silence concerning Israeli policy must expect this “verdict,” it says. Afterwards he trumpeted defiantly to the world that although he had only received reproach from the media, there was plenty of support in private emails. Because there can be no doubt that – it is time to face facts here – Günter Grass said aloud what many Germans feel.
Were – and are – the Germans incorrigible anti-Semites?
Jews living in Germany continue to feel marginalized, defamed, reviled and threatened, as a group of experts led by historian Peter Longerich recently found in their study “Anti-Semitism in Germany.” The main culprits here were far-right extremists, whom it called “the most important political supporters of anti-Semitism” and identified as responsible for most of the associated violent crimes. However, traditional anti-Semitic prejudice lingers among the wider population.
One in five Germans harbors “latent anti-Semitic” views, the study found (It did not explicitly state that such tendencies were not detected in the other 80 percent). Twenty percent of all Germans still feel that Jews have too much power in economic life or on financial markets. Almost half feel that Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust. However, agreement with such statements has fallen continually during the past ten years.
Still widespread, however, is the sentiment voiced by Grass, that Germans are not allowed to criticize Israel. An implied “Jewish lobby” suppresses all criticism by “excessively” alleging anti-Semitic motivations, the study said.
Yet is criticism of Israel really taboo for Germans? And when is it anti-Semitic?
Public criticism of Israel is plentiful. Excepting the far right, in Germany it comes mainly from the left, the experts found. They wrote that, if Israel’s critics make one-sided judgments, ignore the Jewish State’s legitimate security concerns and carelessly question its right to exist, this criticism could promote anti-Semitic rhetoric. But the study found that leftists primarily regard Israel as an imperialist and capitalist state, not a Jewish one. They tend to regard Arabs and/or Palestinians as “victims of a Western bid for domination.”
A group of researchers at Bielefeld University found that 38 percent of respondents to a survey expressed anti-Semitic criticism of Israel. These people espoused the following statement: “Given the policies of Israel, I can well understand that people have something against Jews.” Agreement with this statement, the group wrote, signaled that the respondent equates the decisions of the Israeli government with all Jews.
It cannot be ruled out that the results would have been identical if the word “Jews” had been replaced by “Israelis.”
Apparently, these kinds of questions are answered – thoughtlessly or not – similarly throughout Europe. In European anti-Semitism rankings, Germany lies in the middle. That is why Longerich’s research group concedes there can be some doubt that the criticism of Israeli policy is an anti-Semitically charged debate with specifically German causes, conducted to exonerate Germany. That anti-Semitism appears more widespread in Poland, Hungary and Portugal than in Germany lends credence to this interpretation. Of course, none of this exonerates any German Jew-hater.
So are American commentators on the mark when they allege that a wave of anti-Semitism is flooding all of Europe?
The study confirms this impression while naming two possible causes: At the beginning of the 2006 Lebanon conflict and the 2009-10 Gaza conflict, attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions spiked in France, Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden. In some of those countries many of the attacks were carried out by people with Muslim backgrounds – a growing population segment itself facing substantial prejudice. The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism at Tel Aviv University provided evidence that, in the wake of the 2009 Gaza conflict, the number of anti-Semitic attacks in Germany climbed moderately compared to other EU states.
This does not change the fact that the German study still generally identified “deep seated anti-Semitic stereotypes and perception patterns in everyday culture.” That’s why politicians and other prominent figures keep stumbling over their own inadequacies.
In 2008, Hans-Werner Sinn, an economist and head of the Munich-based Ifo Institute, said that in 1929, the Jews were the scapegoats for the global depression; today corporate managers were. Former German President Christian Wulff also spoke of a “pogrom” against managers.
In 2009, former Augsburg Catholic Bishop Walter Mixa compared the Holocaust with today’s “crimes against life.” He said the number of abortions in Germany had exceeded that of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis.
SPD chief Sigmar Gabriel recently had to grope for explanations when asked what he meant when during a visit to Hebron he tweeted: “That is an Apartheid regime for which there is no excuse.”
Also not long ago, a vegan member of the rising Pirate Party tweeted: “Of course it’s a crime to kill 6 million Jews. But in comparison to 56 billion murdered animals per year?”
Each of these comparisons is obviously inappropriate. And yet, many Germans feel unable to express sentiments permitted to other nationalities. In the US, anti-abortion activists call themselves “survivors of the abortion Holocaust.” When the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) tried to introduce their campaign motto “Holocaust On Your Plate” in Germany, the Constitutional Court barred the move, saying it made “the fate of the victims of the Holocaust appear banal and trivial.” The lawsuit was brought by the Central Council of Jews in Germany, which also sharply criticized Gabriel for a remark that approximately repeated a stance that the UN, Jimmy Carter and Ehud Barak, among others, had earlier espoused.
Does that mean tougher rules apply to Germans than to others?
Marcel Reich-Ranicki, the dean of German literature critics and a Polish-born German Jew, simply sweeps such questions off the table. “This taboo does not even exist in Germany,” Reich-Ranicki told an editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Yet average people seem to feel that pressure. Perhaps it’s self-imposed? Let’s call the phenomenon “anticipatory obedience.” The average Joe German at the bar or a dinner party doesn’t want to be accused of being an anti-Semite, let alone a Nazi. So he gives vent to his feelings only in private or in anonymous surveys.
At home, in his kitchen, he can then say what every German is allowed to express without being prosecuted: that since its foundation, Israel has expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in what some Israeli historians have called ethnic cleansing; that Israel violates international treaties and further complicates any resolution of the conflict with each new settlement it builds in the West Bank; that its separation barrier is a “breach of international law”; that calling the suffering of the people of the Gaza Strip a “humanitarian disaster,” as the UN has, is a euphemism; and that in no way are all Palestinians (and Arabs) terrorists. And if he’s especially bold, he asks why Iran can’t have a bomb if Israel already has several.
Germans, particularly those who feel attached to Israel, can and should speak out about all of these things. Insincere philo-Semitism helps neither Israel nor the Jewish people.
Those who remain silent when a friend seems to be doing the wrong thing are false friends. And those who disagree with their friends’ opinions can of course take an opposing position – soberly and with arguments. Not all of Grass’ critics, German gentiles in op-ed and culture pages included, have done so.
How much better it would have been to just point out the fundamental flaw in Grass’ poem: Israel does not want to “exterminate” the Iranian nation. It is Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad who keeps threatening Israel with annihilation. The background noise surrounding this debate, has drowned out the actual argument. And that is why Germans, in kitchens and pubs, continue to discuss whether criticizing Israel makes them anti-Semites.
Not to worry, world. Most Germans follow the reasoning of Chancellor Angela Merkel: “Protecting Israel’s right to exist is part of Germany’s reason of state.” Günter Grass does not speak for Germany.