Israel bars German author over poem critical of its nuclear arsenal
Source: McClatchy
JERUSALEM — Israel's interior minister declared the celebrated German author Gunter Grass "persona non grata" on Sunday, barring his entry to the country, in response to a new poem in which the Nobel laureate called Israel's undeclared nuclear arsenal a threat to world peace.
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Grass's poem, titled "What Must Be Said," was published in the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, provoking Israeli condemnations and criticism in Germany, where the memory of the Holocaust constrains public debate about Israel and infuses the complex relationship between the two countries.
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The Israeli Embassy in Berlin branded Grass's poem anti-Semitic, saying that its publication before the Jewish Passover holiday, "belongs to European tradition to accuse the Jews of ritual murder before the Passover celebration."
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle wrote in a commentary Sunday in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that "putting Israel and Iran on the same moral level is...absurd," adding that Germany has an "historic responsibility" toward Israel.
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Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/04/08/3542989/israel-bars-german-author-over.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
the shoe hit the dog the whelps. Watch the flame war and censorship begin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun
, was a Zionist paramilitary group that operated in Mandate Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of the earlier and larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah Hebrew: "Defense". When the group broke from the Haganah it became known as the Haganah Bet Hebrew: literally "Defense 'B' " or "Second Defense", or alternatively as haHaganah haLeumit or Ha'ma'amad.[1] Irgun members were absorbed into the Israel Defence Forces at the start of the 1948 Arab–Israeli war. The Irgun is also referred to as Etzel, an acronym of the Hebrew initials, or by the abbreviation IZLIsrael is just having a hard time coming to terms with being a rouge nation with a failed and rather un-American ideological philosophy. Their reign of terror will end eventually, just like the nazi's did, when the world gets sick of appeasement.
Can we include that as well? 
you meant ONE book! 
Fortunately, the Google cleared things up for me.
The Flounder http://www.amazon.com/Flounder-Helen-Kurt-Wolff-Book/dp/0156319357
The Rat http://www.amazon.com/The-Rat-Gunter-Grass/dp/015675830X/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b
There are plenty of Israelis who believe that their government has overreacted. See, e.g., http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/israel-has-reacted-with-hysteria-over-gunter-grass-1.423312
From the article:
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The emotions can be understood, but it's hard to accept the overreaction. When the interior minister says, "If Gunter Grass wants to continue to distribute his false and distorted works, I suggest he do so from Iran, where he'll find an appreciative audience," he doesn't even detect the irony in his words. Because it's precisely his decision not to let Grass enter Israel because of a poem he wrote that is characteristic of dark regimes like those in Iran or North Korea.
The combination of declarations against Israel and a past as a Nazi soldier is an explosive combination that invites sharp reactions. But while Benjamin Netanyahu's remark describing Grass' work as "ignorant and shameful declarations that any fair person in the world must condemn" can be accepted as part of the public debate, Yishai's use of his governmental authority is not legitimate. Any protest should be expressed within the democratic-liberal framework, which allows every person to express his views - provocative though they may be.
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his short time in the german army IS who he truly is and this poem proves it
Whatever he has done AFTER the war was just a cover and false identity he made for himself until he could fire of this broadside of a destructive poem
Perfectly logical
and obviously i was totally sarcastic above, but there seems to be some who believes some variety of the above
