Friday, April 13, 2012

Who's Calling Who 'Delusional'?

Former IDF corporal and scribbler for The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, is outraged that former Waffen SS conscript and Nobel Prize-winning writer, Gunter Grass, is blowing the whistle on Israel's coming aggression against Iran.

He's particularly got it in for these lines from Grass' poem What Must Be Said:

"What is this right to 'preventive war'?/ A war that could erase the Iranian people."

In an opinion piece, Grass's demonising verses of Israel have not been lost in translation, published in The Australian on April 11, Goldberg accuses Grass of being "delusional." How could the "targeting of 6-8 Iranian nuclear sites in Iran for conventional aerial bombardment," he asks, amount to "annihilating the Iranian people"?

He goes on, "To make yourself believe that Israel is seeking to murder the 74 million people of Iran, you must make yourself believe that the leaders of the Jewish state outstrip Adolf Hitler in genocidal intent."

God forbid! Israel? Genocidal intent? Never!

But if Grass is delusional is he any more so than an Israeli leader asserting that Iran (which doesn't even have the bomb) is seeking to murder the 7 million people of Israel, and is therefore outstripping Adolf Hitler in genocidal intent?

What else would you call this from the Israeli prime minister: "I will never let my people live under the shadow of annihilation"?

Or this from Goldberg himself: "The goal of an Israeli attack would be to deny the ayatollahs the means of bringing about [Israel's physical elimination]"?

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