Israeli authorities declared writer Gunter Grass, a winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize in literature, persona non grata over his poem criticizing Israel’s military plans, Jerusalem Post said on Sunday.
Grass, 84, published earlier this week a poem titled “What must be said” where he wrote that nuclear arms allegedly possessed by Israel “threaten the fragile world peace.”
The poem, which appeared in German Süddeutsche Zeitung and several other prominent Western newspapers, lambasts the German government for its plans to sell to Israel six Dolphin-class submarines capable of carrying nuclear warheads, which may be used for a much-discussed Israeli preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“If Grass wants to continue to spread his twisted, lying creations, he should do so in Iran, where he’ll find a receptive audience,” Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai said, Jerusalem Post reported.
The ban is formally based on Grass’ time in Waffen-SS military force during the last years of the Nazi Germany, when he was still a teenager. Grass, a famous peace activist of moderately leftist views, publicly confessed to serving in Waffen-SS in 2006.
