What has to be said

Nobel Laureate Guenter Grass

“Why do I stay silent, keep silent too long, about what is obvious and has been practiced in map exercises, at which end as survivors we are mere footnotes.

It is the claimed right of the first strike, that could annihilate a people that is subjugated by a loudmouth and lead to organized cheering, the Iranian people, because it is assumed that building a nuclear bomb is in its reach.

But why do I forbid myself from naming the country in which for years – although under secrecy – a growing nuclear arsenal has been available bare any control, because inaccessible for any inspection?

The common silence of this fact, to which my silence was subordinate, I feel as a wearisome lie and constraint that announces punishment if disobeyed; the verdict of “antisemitism”is common.

But now, coming from a country that again and again is overtaken and taken to task by its very own incomparable crimes, a country that again wants to provide a submarine to Israel out of pure business sense, but quickly declared as recompense, a submarine, specialized to direct all-annihilating warheads to the place, where the existence of one singular nuclear bomb is unproven but where fear should count as proof, now I have to say, what has to be said.

But why did I stay silent for so long? Because I thought that my ancestry, which is afflicted by an irredeemable blemish, would forbid me to confront with this fact as spoken truth the land of Israel, to which I am and want to stay connected.

Why now, aged and with my last ink, do I say: The nuclear power Israel is endangering the already fragile world peace? Because it has to be said what could already be too late tomorrow; also because we – as Germans guilty enough – could become the suppliers to a crime that is predictable, so that none of the usual excuses would redeem us from our complicity.

Admittedly, I keep my silence no more, because I am tired of the hypocrisy of the west; furthermore it can be hoped that many will free themselves from their silence and ask the initiator of the visible danger to abstain from violence while demanding that the governments of both countries will permit an international authority to have permanent and unencumbered inspections of the Israeli nuclear capabilities and the Iranian nuclear power plants.

Only this will bring help to Israelis and Palestinians, further help to all the people who live hostile so close together in this region governed by delusion, and finally help to us."