“ former member of the SS has no moral standing, to put it mildly, to criticize Israel.” Heilbrunn whips the SS line so hard and fast, he’s forced to drag up from his thesaurus the awkward phrase “quondam SS member.” Why must Grass be condemned and his words ignored? Because as a seventeen year-old he served for five months in the Waffen-SS. But when the shock and outrage is contrived, it serves a purpose: it is designed to distract and pacify those who might otherwise pose awkward or challenging questions. We don’t try and reason with them - we offer them sympathy and try and soothe their distraught emotions. When anyone in proximity to the trauma of the Holocaust gets upset they tend to solicit a human response. The theatrical and logical contours of the performances of Israel’s mindless and rabid defenders should by now be perfectly familiar.įirst comes the shock and outrage. He has further besmirched his reputation. Here is what must be said: Grass has achieved the impossible. Unfortunately, in this instance it is fully deserved. Now, anti-Semitism is a charge that is flung about too frequently against critics of Israel. Under a headline posing the question, Is Günter Grass An Antisemite?, Heilbrunn proceeds with passion and no reason to a foregone conclusion: Jacob Heilbrunn describes Grass’s language as “wild and fevered and calumniatory,” though this is a more accurate description of his own feculent commentary. In his controversial new poem, “ What Must Be Said,” Günter Grass felt obliged to anticipate the utterly predictable reaction: “the verdict ‘Anti-semitism’ falls easily.”
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