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Update April 20, 2012
WHAT MUST BE SAID
“Why do I say: Israel's atomic power endangers world peace? Because what must be said may be too late tomorrow.” by Günter Grass
1999 Nobel Prize in Literature
Günter Grass has received dozens of international awards and in 1999 achieved the highest literary honour: the Nobel Prize in Literature. . The Swedish Academy noted him as a writer "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history" His literature is commonly categorised as part of the artistic movement of “Vergangenheitsbewältigung”, roughly translated as "coming to terms with the past."
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
”What Must Be Said" (German: "Was gesagt werden muss") is a 2012 political prose poem by the German writer Gunter Grass, recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature . The poem discusses an alleged threat of annihilation of the Iranian people and the writer's fears that Germany's delivery to Israel of a sixth class of submarine allegedly capable of carrying nuclear warheads might facilitate an eventual Israeli nuclear attack on Iran, and thus involve his country in a forseeable crime.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
What Must be Said
by Günter Grass
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What must be said
Why have I kept silent, held back so long,
on something openly practised in
war games, at the end of which those of us
who survive will at best be footnotes?
It's the alleged right to a first strike
that could destroy an Iranian people
subjugated by a loudmouth
and gathered in organized rallies,
because an atom bomb may be being
developed within his arc of power.
Yet why do I hesitate to name
that other land in which
for years – although kept secret –
a growing nuclear power has existed
beyond supervision or verification,
subject to no inspection of any kind?
This general silence on the facts,
before which my own silence has bowed,
seems to me a troubling, enforced lie,
leading to a likely punishment
the moment it's broken:
the verdict "Anti-semitism" falls easily.
But now that my own country,
brought in time after time
for questioning about its own crimes,
profound and beyond compare,
has delivered yet another submarine to Israel,
(in what is purely a business transaction,
though glibly declared an act of reparation)
whose speciality consists in its ability
to direct nuclear warheads toward
an area in which not a single atom bomb
has yet been proved to exist, its feared
existence proof enough, I'll say what must be said.
But why have I kept silent till now?
Because I thought my own origins,
tarnished by a stain that can never be removed,
meant I could not expect Israel, a land
to which I am, and always will be, attached,
to accept this open declaration of the truth.
Why only now, grown old,
and with what ink remains, do I say:
Israel's atomic power endangers
an already fragile world peace?
Because what must be said
may be too late tomorrow;
and because – burdened enough as Germans –
we may be providing material for a crime
that is foreseeable, so that our complicity
will not be expunged by any
of the usual excuses.
And granted: I've broken my silence
because I'm sick of the West's hypocrisy;
and I hope too that many may be freed
from their silence, may demand
that those responsible for the open danger
we face renounce the use of force,
may insist that the governments of
both Iran and Israel allow an international authority
free and open inspection of
the nuclear potential and capability of both.
No other course offers help
to Israelis and Palestinians alike,
to all those living side by side in enmity
in this region occupied by illusions,
and ultimately, to all of us.
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