Why do I say only now,
Aged and with my last ink,
That the nuclear power of Israel endangers
The already fragile world peace?
Because it must be said
What even tomorrow may be too late to say;[i]

Can one criticize Israel – asks Günther Grass in the company of millions people all over the world. Such a simple question and so obvious the answer. The poet is worried, he writes about the possibility of annihilation of Iranian people and asks himself in the poem: “Why do I forbid myself to name that other country?”  But he knows why, he plainly suggests that he is afraid people might suspect he is biased against Czechs. But now, at the end of his life, he musters his courage. He cannot be silent any longer. He knows for sure that he once heard this speech:

... And now we are faced with the final problem that must be solved and will be solved! It is the final territorial demand which I shall make of United Nations, but it is the demand which I shall not give up and which with Allah’s help I shall ensure is fulfilled.
The history of this problem is this: in 1948, in the spirit of "the right of nations to self-determination" Palestine was torn apart and reshaped by some insane so-called statesmen. Without regard to the origins of the Peoples, their national aspirations, the economic necessities, Palestine was fragmented and new states were formed arbitrarily. It is to this process that Israel owes its existence.

This Zionist entity began with one single lie. The inventor of that lie was a man called Ben Gurion. This Mr. Ben Gurion appeared at that time in UN and first of all assured his audience that there was an Israeli nation. He had to invent this lie in order to provide the limited number of his own countrymen with a somewhat larger and therefore justified importance....

The poet tries to remember who said this. Egypt’s President Morsi or maybe Iran’s President Ahmadinejad? No it was probably the President of the Palestinian Authority, Abbas, or maybe the Prime Minister of Government in Gaza, Haniyah. The poet hears the roll of drums, drums…he sees a little boy with a tin drum. The boy is not playing with his tin drum any more, he is 11, it’s September 1938, he sits proudly at the radiogram and listens to the Leader of the Nation, Adolf Hitler. Now the words come in loud and clear:

... And now we are faced with the final problem that must be solved and will be solved! It is the final territorial demand which I shall make of Europe, but it is the demand which I shall not give up and which with God's help I shall ensure is fulfilled.
The history of this problem is this: in 1918, in the spirit of "the right of nations to self-determination" Central Europe was torn apart and reshaped by some insane so-called statesmen. Without regard to the origins of the Peoples, their national aspirations, the economic necessities, Central Europe was fragmented and new states were formed arbitrarily. It is to this process that Czechoslovakia owes its existence.

This Czech state began with one single lie. The inventor of that lie was a man called Benes. This Mr. Benes appeared at that time in Versailles and first of all assured his audience that there was a Czechoslovakian nation. He had to invent this lie in order to provide the limited number of his own countrymen with a somewhat larger and therefore justified importance....

 

Ah yes, those were the days! That was a great speech, but as the Nobel Laureate recalls it, it seems that it merges into something else. It has a very contemporary resonance.

... So finally through Mr. Ben Gurion Jews annexed Palestine. Since this state did not seem viable, they simply took further territories in violation of Palestinians’ right to self-determination and their will to decide their own fate.

When Mr. Ben Gurion created this state by a pack of lies at that time, he solemnly swore to respect the rights of Arabs. We all know how Mr. Ben Gurion solved the problem. He began a regime of terror! At the time the Palestinians already tried to protest against this arbitrary violation of their rights. They were gunned down and since then there has been a war of extermination. During these years of "peaceful" development in Israel almost 800,000 Palestinians had to leave Palestine.

That was how that old speech went, wasn’t it? No, wait a sec. Perhaps some of the words were a bit different, very slightly different….

            ... So finally through Mr. Benes the Czechs annexed Slovakia. Since this state did not seem viable, they simply took three and a half million Germans in violation of their right to self-determination and their will to decide their own fate.

When Mr. Benes created this state by a pack of lies at that time, he solemnly swore to divide it into cantons on the Swiss model, for there were some among the democratic statesmen who did experience pangs of conscience. We all know how Mr. Benes solved the problem of this system of cantons. He began a regime of terror! At the time the Germans already tried to protest against this arbitrary violation of their rights. They were gunned down and since then there has been a war of extermination. During these years of "peaceful" development in Czechoslovakia almost 600,000 Germans had to leave Czechoslovakia.

 

What an inspiring speech that was! Yes, sitting there by the old radiogram in the parental sitting room with the clock on the wall registering 1938 and the calendar reading 7:30 in the evening…or was it the other way round? No, it is a very clear memory, as clear as day. The inspiring Leader continued…

... I explained clearly to Mr. Obama what we now regard as the only possible solution. It is the most natural one in the world. I am primarily the spokesman for the Palestinians and I have spoken for these Palestinians and made it clear that I am no longer willing to stand idly by and watch while this madman in Jerusalem thinks that he can simply mistreat millions of people. And I left no doubt that Muslim patience is now finally exhausted. I left no doubt that while it is a characteristic of our Muslim mentality to be tolerant and patient in the face of repeated provocation, there comes a moment when enough is enough! And now finally America and Europe have made the only possible demand of Israel: release the occupied territory and cede it to the Palestinians.

 

When you hear a speech like that, you remember it for the rest of your life! At least, some people do. Oh, but wait! That wasn’t exactly the way it went, either! Now that The Laureate thinks hard the real words come back:

... I explained clearly to Mr. Chamberlain what we now regard as the only possible solution. It is the most natural one in the world. I know that all of the various nationalities have no desire to remain with this Mr. Benes. However, I am primarily the spokesman for the Germans and I have spoken for these Germans and made it clear that I am no longer willing to stand idly by and watch while this madman in Prague thinks that he can simply mistreat three and a half million people. And I left no doubt that German patience is now finally exhausted. I left no doubt that while it is a characteristic of our German mentality to be tolerant and patient in the face of repeated provocation, there comes a moment when enough is enough! And now finally England and France have made the only possible demand of Czechoslovakia: release the German territory and cede it to the Reich.

It’s a privilege to be alive when such stirring speeches are being given! They become almost a part of you. You remember the thrill of hearing the sonorous words issuing from the radiogram, and it seems only natural to hear them again in other circumstances. Now the Leader is intoning:

... I have now given the American Government a memorandum with a final Muslim proposal. This memorandum proposes nothing that Mr. Netanyahu has not already promised. The contents of this proposal are very simple: The area whose population is Palestinian comes to Palestine; and I do not mean only after Mr. Netanyahu has succeeded in expelling possibly one or two million Palestinians, but right now, immediately! I have selected the border based on 1967 and with full right of return for refugees.....

... I am grateful to Mr. Obama for all his efforts. I have assured him that the Muslim People desire nothing but peace. However, I have also told him that I cannot retreat once the limit of our patience has been reached. I have also assured him, and I repeat this assurance here, that, once this problem is solved, there exist no further territorial problems for Palestinians! And I have further assured him that as soon as the Israeli problem is solved, that is to say when the Jews have dealt with the problem of refugees, and I mean by peaceful methods not suppression, I shall have no further interest in the Israeli state. And he has my guarantee of that! We do not want any Jews. However, I want to also say to the Palestinian People that with respect to the refugee problem my patience is now exhausted! I have made Mr. Netanyahu an offer, which contains nothing but the realization of what he himself assured us would be done. The decision is in his hands! Peace or war!

 

In his reverie the Nobel Laureate hears those rousing words, those stirring sentiments. Yes (here he knocks his pipe on the ashtray), but something isn’t exactly right. Something is very slightly off. What could it be? Perhaps those original words from the radiogram were a bit different:

... I have now given the British Government a memorandum with a final German proposal. This memorandum proposes nothing that Mr. Benes has not already promised. The contents of this proposal are very simple: The area whose population (Volk) is German and which wants to join Germany, comes to Germany; and I do not mean only after Mr. Benes has succeeded in expelling possibly one or two million Germans, but right now, immediately! I have selected the border which, based on the information on the demographic and linguistic distribution in Czechoslovakia which has been available for decades, is just.

... I am grateful to Mr. Chamberlain for all his efforts. I have assured him that the German People desire nothing but peace. However, I have also told him that I cannot retreat once the limit of our patience has been reached. I have also assured him, and I repeat this assurance here, that, once this problem is solved, there exist no further territorial problems for Germany in Europe! And I have further assured him that as soon as the Czechoslovakian problem is solved, that is to say when the Czechs have dealt with their other minorities, and I mean by peaceful methods not suppression, I shall have no further interest in the Czech state. And he has my guarantee of that! We do not want any Czechs. However, I want to also say to the German People that with respect to the Sudeten German problem my patience is now exhausted! I have made Mr. Benes an offer, which contains nothing but the realization of what he himself assured us would be done. The decision is in his hands! Peace or war![ii]

The Great Nobel Laureate studies the map

The great Nobel Laureate is not sure if the memory might not be deceiving him. Yes, he has heard something about the leader of Iran, that he was a “loud-mouth”. He does not remember if it was about the President or about the Supreme Leader—apparently they are arguing about the timing of the Mahdi’s appearance and who has the more genuine contact with Him. The Loud-Mouth said something, but it is not worth paying attention to his words. Israel wants to annihilate the Iranian nation. The Nobel Laureate looks worriedly at the map.

He remembers that he has heard about the might of this arrogant state which is threatening all its neighbours. He reaches for his pipe, imagines that he is a moral authority, that his words “will free many from silence”, that it is imperative to “prompt the perpetrator of the  recognized danger to renounce violence”, that only in this way both the Israelis and Palestinians can be helped.

The Nobel Laureate is staring at a tiny red blob in a green sea and is seeing red, because “secretly, there has been a growing nuclear potential” of a nuclear superpower and a German U-boat (sold for profit), can serve as a means to destroy the Iranian nation. It’s no joke! More than once Israeli atomic bombs have fallen on innocent Muslim cities, they tested those bombs on Kurds and on peoples of Darfur, and with other bombs they totally razed Gaza to the ground.

The Nobel Laureate is afraid of accusations of prejudice against Czechs but he knows that he must be brave, in spite of a slight stain on his biography. He mentions this stain in his poem but this stain cannot stop his voice of conscience. It is a stain from the childhood, when he listened to another loud-mouth’s words and was ready to give his life for that loud-mouth, but those are the sins of the youth, and the madman from Prague – oops, Jerusalem – must be stopped, everything is getting mixed up, but the only important thing is the moral message.

A Polish netizen agrees with the words of the great Nobel Laureate, and after the news about Iran rebuilding those destroyed stores of rockets in Gaza, he writes:

CRIMINAL ZION

Hamas should get an Atomic Bomb! Criminal Zion is not touching countries which are armed with one. An Atomic Bomb would protect the populations of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. The latest example is Syria. Every country which is not subjugated by Zion should as soon as possible acquire the A Bomb. North Korea will help. Iran is the hope of the World free from the criminal Zion! Long live Poland-Palestine friendship!

Yes, it’s possible that the loud-mouths of this world are uttering some empty words and only unwise young people are listening to them. The loud-mouth from Iran just announced for the hundredth time:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that resolving the Palestinian issue does not need war, but requires a unified Islamic decision to remove the Zionist entity off the map.[iii]

Those are empty words, especially now, after the cease-fire. After all, the Nobel Laureate knows that Israel is a nuclear power and that it is Israel which is threatening the world, and not vice versa. The problem is that to stop the madman from Prague (or rather, from Jerusalem), one has to summon up one’s courage and warn the world.

An Honest Polish Journalist weighs his words

An Honest Polish Journalist, trying to understand, writes about the final stage of conflict:

 

During four days 120 rockets fired from Gaza fell on the south of Israel. They didn’t harm anybody, there was not a whisper about it in any serious (and not so serious) media outlet in Europe and in the world. After all, there have been rockets from Gaza on Israel for at least six years.

Which four days has the Honest Polish Journalist chosen? I don’t know, he doesn’t tell us, but is this important?  What is important is that, terrified, he asked his friends in Israel:

“What the hell is going on?” They answered: “Just as usual, nothing is happening”.

The Honest Journalist is aware of the danger and writes:

Imagine, for years over one million people in southern Israel have experienced such days. And they say, “Nothing special is happening”.

The Journalist tries to understand and give us some information and analysis of what it all looks like:

 

In a general way it looks like this: rockets are coming from Gaza, Israel answers with single retaliatory operations which cause more rockets to come, so that new actions are necessary. And so on, until the cup runs over, Israel organizes a military operation, which gets its code name and really looks like a war. Then comes a cease-fire and the rockets start falling again.

The Honest Journalist admits that lately there have been some reasons to shoot at Hamas. He has a literary flair so it’s not always clear whom he is quoting, but the quote itself is interesting:

 

“It looked like the end of this ‘round’, Hamas people started to surface and then we knocked out Ahmed Jabaari. So they started to shoot with greater intensity. They have Iranian and Libyan rockets which can reach Tel Aviv, smuggled through the tunnels on the Gaza/Egypt border, so the jokes were over”.

It seems that the Honest Journalist’s Israeli friend must have informed him that earlier it was just jokes, but when Israelis knocked out this Ahmed, the jokes were over.

The Honest Journalist asks his Israeli friend how it is, and he explains that earlier it was mostly people from Islamic Jihad, Hamas’ rival, who were shooting and Israel should not act according to collective responsibility. He does not like lumping all Gazans together.

We are informed that the friend is a lawyer and his area is human rights. He helps Palestinians in their arguments with the Israeli state. He has no doubts that Israel has a thing or two on its conscience; he sympathizes with Palestinians, whose “thinking is a mirror image of Israelis’ thinking”.

The Honest Journalist reports honestly, does not interrupt, is not surprised, even if he probably knows that there is a lot of different thinking in Israel.

“M” – (probably another friend of our Journalist) says:

 

“I can’t rid myself of the conviction that behind the Pillar of Defense something more is hidden than just the military goal: destruction of arsenals in Gaza. It’s typical that we started to pound Gaza just after the issue of an attack on Iran’s nuclear installations disappeared from the agenda”.

The Honest Journalist does not interrupt. He does not ask when and where this attack was on the agenda nor who said that it was no longer there. You could think that this is important news, at least for the great Nobel Laureate. Also in Teheran they would probably be happy to know. But Teheran didn’t say anything about it; they were happy first because of the cease-fire and immediately promised a new delivery of rockets, without mentioning how many for Islamic Jihad and how many for Hamas.  Neither do we know who actually is implying that the election was a factor—we know only that one friend of our Honest Journalist thinks that if the election campaign were merely about economy and social issues, Netanyahu would be in deep water.

At last the Honest Polish Journalist arrives at the cease-fire, on which the Emir of Qatar, the Prime Minister of Turkey, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the President of Egypt all worked. He honestly informs us that Iran announced that it supplied Hamas with technology for the production of rockets which can reach Tel Aviv, and adds that a bomb exploded in a bus in Tel Aviv but nobody was killed.[ivi]  

This is not only a military conflict. The propaganda front is possibly even more important, at least for Islamists and their friends. In this war pictures of dead children are the bombs. A picture of a dead child is like a long-range missile. A child killed by Jews is worth gold, and because the supply of murdered children is much greater in Syria, in the propaganda war Palestinians are using the victims of the civil war in Syria on a large scale. Even Western journalists are taking part in this practice but it does not cause any major scandals. “One side is as bad as the other,” people say, even if nobody ever found any such falsification from the Israeli side. 

The Honest Journalist does not tell us whether he was reading The JerusalemPost and some more serious analysis of this conflict. If he is, he is keeping all the knowledge to himself. He does not write why Iran could have been interested in the intensification of the conflict, but most of all, he carefully hides his knowledge that for Israel this is a war for survival and for the Muslim side this is a religious war, and on top of everything else there is an element of rivalry not only between Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Gaza but also between Cairo and Tehran, Riyadh and Ankara and a few other axis powers not present in the deep analysis of our Honest Journalist’s Israeli friends.

Rockets are causing inconvenience but actually they do not harm Israelis. The Polish Journalist says that more cautiously than The Washington Post which wrote:

 

But let’s be clear: The overwhelming majority of rockets fired from Gaza are like bee stings on the Israeli bear’s behind.[v]

The most painful thing and the most obvious is the issue of proportionality. Here not only the great Nobel Laureate puts his authority on the line, not only the UN’s Human Right Council, not only Amnesty International and Human Right Watch; public opinion can point to the most serious newspapers, which avoid the language of emotion and quote scrupulously checked data. The British weekly, The Economist, shows statistics of victims of this conflict:

How unbelievable, how striking is this lack of proportion! Hard data inform us that there are more Palestinians killed than Israelis, which is self-evident proof that Israel is a criminal abusing the weaker party. Is it worth asking who started it? According to our Journalist’s friends this is the most idiotic question under the Sun. Is it worth quoting the voices of Israeli politicians who do not declare a desire to kill anybody, who call for peaceful co-existence, even offering help?  While the other side (and by other side here I mean the current authorities in Gaza, i.e. the Islamofascists called Hamas) openly declare that they do not want peace, that they will never agree to acknowledge Israel, and that they will keep firing until Judgment Day  because that is what Allah orders them to do. Serious journalists are trying to convince us that there is no need to treat such declarations seriously.  It’s different for the inhabitants of Israel (at least those who are not friends of the Honest Polish Journalist). For them those are not empty threats, because Islamofascists are shooting at them daily and because the international community will not guarantee their safety – they have to defend themselves without outside help.

Admittedly, the defense of the lives of Israeli citizens is astonishingly effective, but this is not admired by those who admire Islamofascists. Israel reacts to terror by striking terrorists and she manages to minimize casualties among Gaza’s civilian population, which is not easy because in Gaza the slogan is: “You love life, we love death”. Islamofascists care so much about the civilian victims in their own population that they do whatever is in their power to get as many as possible. Israelis do not fire at children, they do not fire at schools, civilian casualties among Palestinians is a tragedy for them (they are targeting terrorists hidden behind the civilian population). A quite different philosophy is prevalent in Islamofascists’ circles: with malice aforethought they are targeting schools and hospitals, and the best missile they managed to get (an anti-tank self-guided missile) was immediately directed towards a school-bus. Yes, Israelis are protecting the life of their citizens and are also trying to protect the life of Palestinian citizens.

Is public opinion throwing itself with equal voracity on the statistics of human victims in Syria? There are many fewer fiery watchers but no matter who is rooting for whom one has to admit that both sides in the Syrian conflict have much better scores than the Islamofascists from Gaza with their rockets. That is, the Islamofascists from Gaza have equally good results in killing their own population (just the Hamas’ coup in Gaza meant 500 murdered rivals from Fatah). Hamas sometimes kills their rivals from Islamic Jihad, sometimes co-operates with them. Anyhow, they are killing somebody every day (not counting the victims of Hamas’s rockets fired towards Israel which fall short – on Gaza).

I have the impression that two songs show the essence of this conflict much better than all those friends of the Honest Polish Journalist. One, from Gaza, speaks about the joy of having Iranian rockets which may strike Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, about the joy of firing them and sowing terror; the other one (Israeli) tells about teaching children – with the help of music and song – how to relax during the attack, how not to panic and how to run to the shelter, how to behave after the attack in order to diffuse the shock. [vi]

It’s an interesting story, this proportionality. More fatalities are on the side that declares that it does not want peace and that it does not value the life of its children. The great Nobel Laureate is right, sometimes the criticism of Israel triggers suspicions that we are dealing with prejudices against the Czechs.

After the latest stage of this conflict subsided the number of rockets directed towards Israel grew with another 1,000 pieces. More replacements are on their way but those rockets are not entirely cost-free. Palestinians are saving on everything, on food for their children, in order to achieve victory and are convinced – which they are not hiding – that the more victims they have, the greater their victory will be. “You love life, we love death”. We people of the West love rationalism; it’s not possible that such irrational principles should rule in this conflict. If not for Israel…

A netizen writes:

 

Konzentration Lager Gaza Strip, bombed by Israel! It’s not enough that consecutive Israeli regimes created and administer this camp, keeping the Palestinian population barely alive in dramatically difficult conditions (lack of electricity, water, food, medicines) and blocking all deliveries of humanitarian help, moreover Palestinians are checked on the streets and arrested under any pretext by the Israeli occupation army. Now this army of the Israeli regime commits mass bombardment of Palestinian towns, killing a few guerrillas and a lot of civilians. This is a war crime. Meanwhile the propaganda mouthpieces in EU and U.S. are either silent or are commenting it with a great measure of understanding for the Israeli regime. This proves that the propaganda of those countries is biased and extremely unjust, unequivocally giving propaganda support to criminals from Israel.

Reading those countless comments it is sometimes difficult to discern whether this critique of Israel is coming from the left or from the right. Those voices are so deceptively similar. More and more often through the world a righteous mob is rolling, demanding peace, demanding compassion for the weaker, demanding the head of the madman from Prague.

In this Kafkaesque world nobody notices that in Iran the bodies of people hanged from cranes decorate the public squares. In the last ten days they hanged 81 people. We recently published an article about the  murder of a blogger who wrote an open letter to the Supreme Leader of Iran’s Islamic Republic. Just a handful of readers opened it. Iranian corpses are of scant interest.

In 1938 people believed that Adolf Hitler was speaking the truth about the madman from Prague. People also believed that peace was secured “in our time”, that those obnoxious, arrogant Czechs had to be sacrificed. That overwhelming spirit of the times was supported by endless numbers of people of good will whose hearts were full of righteous anger.

When a righteous mob is on the march, solitude seems the only right choice.

Translated by Małgorzata Koraszewska and Sarah Lawson

[Wersja polska: http://www.racjonalista.pl/kk.php/s,8529]

[ii] http://comicism.tripod.com/380926.html

[v]Photo of dead baby in Gaza holds part of the truth

[vi]Zadamy cios w Tel Awiw, Kolor czerwony