An Old School German Intellectual Poetry Attack Par Excellence

Günter Grass has it all: That fat and sassy moral high ground he’s king of the hill of, that left-wing obsession for defending brutal regimes in the name of “world peace,” that Nobel Prize for literature and that SPD party membership book (I’m not sure which one gives him more legitimacy here).

But above all else, he’s got that which all successful peacenik artists and Künstler the world over must invariably have: That inability to keep their mouths shut when it comes to addressing issues they clearly know nothing about.

At the moment Grass is worried about how “the nuclear power Israel is endangering the already fragile world peace” (think Iran) and has written a shockingly predictable poem about it. It must be a real humdinger, too, but to be fair I must admit that I haven’t read it yet and most certainly never will because I’m waiting to read his poem about Iran’s threat to world peace first. I assume that he will publish that one next week, but you know what they say about when you assume things…  Blah, blah, blah. Meet the new school. Same as the old school.

Israel currently has three Dolphin submarines from Germany – one half-funded and two entirely funded by Berlin – two more are currently under construction, and the contract for a sixth submarine was signed last month. Dolphin-class submarines can carry nuclear-tipped missiles, but there is no evidence Israel has armed them with such weapons.