Zionist Provocateurs Close Down ‘Leipzig Meeting to Defend Günter Grass’

April 27th, 2012 | Author: Chris Roubis

Right-Wing Zionist Blocking the staircase

By our correspondents / World Socialist.Org

Pro-Israeli Provocateurs with an
American flag after the arrival of the police

On Tuesday, the International Students for Social Equality (ISSE), the student organization of the Socialist Equality Party (PSG), held the third in a series of meetings titled “Defend Günter Grass”.

As was the case in previous meetings in Frankfurt and Berlin, Tuesday’s meeting in Leipzig was subjected to a huge and coordinated provocation. In alliance with right-wing Zionist provocateurs, a representative of the student council at Leipzig University closed down the meeting prematurely.

At the start of the meeting, a group of right-wing opponents of Grass sought to gain entry. They denounced the author of The Tin Drum and Nobel prize winner as an anti-Semite and tore up leaflets advertising the meeting. There was no doubt they were intent on disrupting the event, and the organizers of the meeting refused to allow them to participate.

A short time later another group of aggressive Zionists turned up bearing Israeli flags, a banner with the inscription “Stop the mullah regime” and a megaphone. They attempted to disrupt the meeting from outside by loudly chanting “Long Live Israel” and “Down with the mullahs”. When this failed, the crowd of about 60 provocateurs gathered in front of the door to the meeting room and pounded on the door and walls.

On a number of occasions they physically attacked stewards and sought to forcibly invade the meeting. One of the hooligans shouted out: “Does anyone have an ice pick here?”, an obvious reference to the 1940 assassination of Leon Trotsky by a Stalinist agent using an ice pick.

When the meeting continued despite these attacks, a leader of the right-wing provocateurs read out a statement over a megaphone in the corridor outside the meeting. He began by braying: “Our intention was to read out this statement inside the ISSE meeting, but if we cannot get in, then I will read it out here.”

He called Grass a “notorious anti-Semite” who had already made clear where he stands by having briefly served in the SS as a 17-year-old at the end of World War II. Grass’ assertion that Israel was preparing a military first strike against Iran was nothing more than the repetition of the “anti-Semitic attacks made by the Iranian mullahs’ regime on Israel.”

He described Israel as a “shelter for the Jews” which had to be defended by all military means against “global anti-Semitic madness”. His argument was based on a grotesque distortion of history, aimed at exploiting the crimes of the Nazis and the Holocaust to justify and support the aggressive war policies of the US and Israeli governments.

At that point, two representatives of the student council, Marcel Wodniock and Jacob Heuschmidt, arrived. They demanded that the ISSE stewards move away from the door to allow the provocateurs access to the meeting. In an absurd argument, they invoked democratic principles, tolerance of dissent and free access to all public events to justify the complete disruption of the meeting and likely physical assault on those taking part.

Marcel Wodniock has studied law and knows that free access to public events does not mean allowing access to organized groups armed with banners and a megaphone who are clearly intent on violently disrupting the meeting. On the contrary, the organiser has the obligation to provide for the orderly running of the event and refuse entry to those clearly intent on provocation.
Wodniock lined up with the right-wing provocateurs and demanded that they be allowed to enter the meeting. The ISSE stewards countered by arguing that the right of assembly was a basic democratic and constitutional right. The student council is therefore obliged to defend a meeting approved by the university against provocateurs.
Wodniock responded angrily. He claimed that he would decide whether the meeting would continue and not the ISSE. To the cheers of the provocateurs, Wodniock declared the ISSE event to be over. Together with some pro-Israel thugs, he pushed stewards aside, stormed into the meeting room, pulled the plug of the PowerPoint presentation and demanded that the audience leave the room immediately.
Many participants reacted indignantly. Mathias, who had attended a lecture given by David North on Leon Trotsky and the defense of historical truth just a few weeks earlier was outraged. He had not thought such an attack on democratic rights was possible “here on the campus of the university”, he said. The lecture hall in which North had addressed an audience of more than 300 is located in the same building of the Leipzig University.
Even after the event, participants were harassed and attacked by the right-wing provocateurs. The ISSE announced that it will oppose the violent disruption of its meetings and called upon all those in attendance to intensify their defence of Günter Grass and the right to free speech.
Editing : Debbie Menon
Related Articles:

• Israel Declares War on Gunter Grass
• The Devil Sings Again
• The Nobelist, the Zionists and Where it Hurts Most
• Littlewood : Good for Günter!
• Günter Grass Exposes Israel As a Nuclear Power that “Endangers” a Fragile World Peace
• William Cook : In Defense of Guenter Grass
• Gunter Grass Addresses Israel’s Nuclear Threat
• Art of Resistance – A Comment on Günter Grass

 Related Posts:

• A BBC Documentary on Vanunu Exposes Who Controls the Media in America
• The Nobelist, the Zionists and Where it Hurts Most
• What If Somebody Gave A War And Nobody Came?
• Israel Declares War on Gunter Grass
• Art of Resistance – A Comment on Günter Grass

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian  
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

The Nobelist, the Zionists and Where it Hurts Most

April 15th, 2012 |
 By Ismail Salami

German Nobelist Gunter Grass

The new poem by German Nobelist Gunter Grass warning the world of a dangerous nuclear Israel left the Israelis with a bitter feeling of rage and revenge in their encounter with truth and the Germans with angst over ties now teetering on the brink of rupture.

A first lyrical strike against the Zionist entity, the poem titled What Must Be Said was published on April 4 in the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung as a reaction to Israel’s repeated threats to launch a strike against Iran in order to prevent the country from acquiring nuclear weapons despite the fact Israel is in possession of over 300 nuclear warheads without the knowledge or acquiescence of the international community. The poem considers Israel as a threat to world peace and warns of the consequences of a military strike against Iran.

Grass’s denigration of Israel as a danger to world peace fell heavy on Germany because the German government seems to be following a secret malicious agenda part of which is focused on the Islamic Republic. Empowering the Israeli regime, which kills Palestinian women and children with impunity, is not only morally wrong but politically incorrect. This is a subtle point Gunter Grass has perceived and expressed with no fear for his life being threatened by the Zionist elements in Germany. To hear such words from the mouth of a German intellectual of an international caliber changes the way the Germans in particular and the rest of Europeans in general see Israel as they are instructed to.
It was quite natural that Israel was not able to suffer the brunt of a German intellectual’s criticism and soon lambasted at the poet and cauterised him as a persona non grata. An Israeli association of Hebrew-language writers called on the Nobel Prize committee and the PEN writers group to slam the German author and his “shameful and immoral positions”.

“They must speak: it is not political, it’s moral, because Grass is complicit in whitewashing the genocidal declarations of Iranian leaders,” the head of the Hebrew Writers’ Association, Herzl Hakak, told AFP.

Where does all this rancour come from?

Their rancour however grew more intense when the Swedish Academy rebuffed the call.

“I wish to point out that Mr Grass received his Nobel Prize in 1999 on literary merit and literary merit alone — this applies to all recipients,” the Academy’s permanent secretary, Peter Englund, said in a statement.

“There is and will be no discussion in the Swedish Academy on rescinding the award.”

Part of the poem criticises Germany for selling nuke-capable submarines to Israel. In March, Germany announced that it would sell Israel a sixth Dolphin-class submarine capable of carrying nuclear warheads with an operating range of 4,500 kilometers.

Why should Israel need super advanced nuclear submarines? Why should Germany threaten the security in the world by such an uncalculated act?

For a number of reasons only known to itself, Germany has been making ugly efforts in recent years to empower the Israeli regime instead of reining this potentially dangerous power. The sale of the nuke-capable submarines to Israel which is to a large extent subsidised by Germany is part of these sacrificial efforts. Quite obviously, Germany is contributing to the feeling of insecurity Israel is creating in the region and in the world. One can easily envisage a world fraught with horror and death when one contemplates that Israel is already in possession of five sophisticated submarines with the capability to nuke any part of the Middle East and Europe to boot. Isn’t it horrible? Is it not enough to conjure up an image of dereliction and decay? With Israel already having at its disposal over 300 nuclear warheads, Germany is making this nuclear demon even uglier and more horrid by selling its nuke submarines.

Parenthetically, Germany is not alone in empowering the Zionist regime. A new report reveals that Washington has contributed over 115 billion dollars in financial aid to Israel over a period of 64 years, which averages out to about $4.9 million a day. Published by the Congressional Research Service, the report shows that Israel has received more aid from the US than 15 European countries did over the years. It’s amazing to note that over 67 billion dollars of Washington’s aid has been focused on supplying military equipment to Israel. Also, the report reveals that the US has allocated 3.1 billion dollars, around one-fifth of its defense budget, to Israel this year alone.

I don’t have the least intention of speaking in the manner of a cynic or a didactician but these facts and figures deserve due contemplation especially on the part of the American community who are now in financial straits. The US and Germany are of course following their own agendas and Gunter Grass seems to be putting a spoke in Germany’s wheel.

Gunter Grass is a poet and a poet has poetic license. In other words, he has the power to manipulate the language the way he desires. Add to it poetic liberty. i.e. the liberty to give expression to his thoughts. Grass’s cry of protest is indeed a first sign that suggests that anti-Israeli muffled voices in Germany are now becoming loud and clear and that the German government should think well before it proceeds with its perverted and Zionophilic policies.

Grass’s only sin is that in his poem he depicted Israel as the aggressor and Iran as the victim. And this is the part that hurts most.

If a poet does not have the freedom to express his opinion, who has?

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian  
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

Iran Hails Grass’s “What Must Be Said” Lyric

Local Editor
At a time when politics can’t be frank enough to reveal the facts in the world, literature still has the chance to do so, despite the strong condemnation it could face due to that.

This is the type of response significant German author Gunter Grass received after writing about the dangerousness of Israel rather than Iran’s nuclear power, and calling on the German government to stop military aid to the Zionist entity.

The lyric entitled “What Must Be Said” was condemned by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin who considered that “Gunter Grass's shameful moral equivalence between Israel and Iran ... says little about Israel and much about Mr. Grass."

“It is Iran, not Israel, that is a threat to the peace and security of the world,” Netanyahu added.

Similarly, several German politicians criticized the work and described it as “abominable", "irritating" and "over the top".

In contrast, Iran hailed Saturday the poem in a letter it addressed to “distinguished author Dr. Grass”.

“I read your literary work of human and historical responsibility, and it warns beautifully,” Iranian Deputy Culture Minister Javad Shamaqdari said.

According to AFP, Shamaqdari added that “telling the truth in this way may awake the silent and dormant conscience of the West. Writers are able single-handedly to prevent human tragedies, in a way that armies cannot."

Source: Agencies
07-04-2012 - 15:07 Last updated 07-04-2012 - 15:07

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian  
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!