new frontier: beyond his grassp

Do you believe that on that day all the children of Abraham are going to lay down their swords forever and eternally in Jerusalem. What to make of Gunter Grass? The pen as sword but within the context of the Society of the Spectacle.Here, publicity is the only ideology which to his frustration is applying the mantra of a socially inclusive democratic state, a sort of to him falafel swallowing ethnic version of Germany or other Western enlightenment based societies. Despite the trappings of normative status, a Jewish state despite the two sided coin of violence and stultifying depression can never be truly normal for various reasons but essentially based on the Torah, which is probably beyond Grass’s intellectual Grassp. What he does understand is how ideology and the entertainment celebrity is a piece of merchandise in a culture constructed on appearances…

---Today’s “hilltop youth,” as the young extremists are known, are just emulating the behaviour of the original movement, says Gershom Gorenberg, author of The Unmaking of Israel, his second book on the history of the settlements. In the 1970s, the Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) pioneers also saw Israel’s army as their enemy; its left-wing kibbutz-born leaders, such as Mr. Rabin, governing a different Israel from the Land of Israel they had in mind. The leaders of today’s army also are seen as serving a different Israel from the Jewish kingdom the young settlers seek, although the rank and file is becoming much more settler-oriented. Contacts within the IDF are believed to warn the settler and hilltop groups of impending military action, as appeared to be the case Thursday, when people in Mitzpe Yitzhar were warned about an hour before the IDF arrived. The warning didn’t prevent the temporary demolition of the outpost’s structures, but apparently led to another phone call to carry out the action on Burqa.---Read More:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/jewish-extremists-burn-new-west-bank-mosque/article2273202/

To him, the answer rings of Eichamann style ingenuity, in that he too, means well: He just want to find a little firm footing for the Jews. At 84 years old, he’s no William Blake, in fact he willingly walks in to the shithouse himself, on a train to some allegorical camp by becoming a psychotc piece in a spectacle. A kind of glamorized robot, depersonalized and derealized, a figure beyond absurdity with no pretense in engaging reality. His poem was a piece of pseudo art; another small man inflated by the media publicity into a big name. I don’t dispute his attack on Zionism per se, a sort of auto-mutilation for him since its socialist liberal pretexts and disdain for Judaism align closely with his own views.In this sense, Grass is not a racist, just the old, provincial, ignorant peasant German who dislikes Judaism. In fact, he probably looks at the Judea and Samaria, the Settler movement, the way the Nazis regarded Degenerate art, a partial splitting off of themselves they were unwilling to confront since it exposed their own contradictions.

And, all in all I am sympathetic with the Settler movement, the Land of Israel movement ;The Judea and Samaria jews who are like giving an enema to Gideon Levy and Gunter Grass types; their pioneer spirit, their conviction, their near armed conflict with the Zionist government, their antagonism towards the armed units that beat them and destroy their homes; There is a plausibility in their belief in fulfilling the Jewish mission of being a light in this world through their actions and thoughts.   I get the feeling that Grass really hates these people; perhaps not once a Nazi always a Nazi, but like Rev Niemoller’s expression, first they came for Yamit and I did nothing, then they came for Gush Katif and I did nothing, then they came for Migron and I did nothing, then they took Jerusalem and I….

ADDENDUM:


Steve Earle. Jerusalem:

I woke up this mornin’ and none of the news was good
And death machines were rumblin’ ‘cross the ground where Jesus stood
And the man on my TV told me that it had always been that way
And there was nothin’ anyone could do or say

And I almost listened to him
Yeah, I almost lost my mind
Then


gained my senses again
And looked into my heart to find

That I believe that one fine day all the children of Abraham
Will lay down their swords forever in Jerusalem

Well maybe I’m only dreamin’ and maybe I’m just a fool
But I don’t remember learnin’ how to hate in Sunday school
But somewhere along the way I strayed and I never looked back again
But I still find some comfort now and then

Then the storm comes rumblin’ in
And I can’t lay me down
And the drums are drummin’ again
And I can’t stand the sound

But I believe there’ll come a day when the lion and the lamb
Will lie down in peace together in Jerusalem …

———————————-

( see link) ….Meanwhile, Grass became overnight the darling of Neo-Nazis all over the world. A cabinet minister from Iran just loves the Grass poem. Deputy Culture Minister Javad Shamaqdari wrote in a sycophantic letter to Grass: “I read your literary work of human and historical
responsibility, and it warns beautifully…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.” Leftists and Neo-Nazis of various stripes took to the streets of Germany in rallies of support for Grass. The brownshirts were joined by the “World Socialist Web Site” and the pro-terror “Electronic Intifada” and Al Jazeera. They were also joined by Neo-Nazi “anarchist” Stephen Lendman, who posts daily anti-Semitic spam on the “Indymedia” anarchist sites.

Another supporter of Grass, in fact his sidekick in trying to prevent an Israeli theater company from performing in Britain, has been Emma
Thompson, a leftist British actress who claims to be an anarchist. You may recall her recent bon mot on American television in which she claimed that British residents of the Isle of Man stone homosexuals to death.Read More:http://stevenplaut.blogspot.ca/
———————————
Apparently, Grass has been a frequent flyer to Israel, having been in the country often, and likely in tune with the various NGO’s and left secularist groups. He even had an Israeli girlfriend,leading me to wonder if he didn’t regard Jewish women as a kind of joy division for him as a privileged individual able to objectify the “other”:

( see link) I did not meet him during his many visits to Israel. On at least one of them he acquired a girl-friend, a well-known writer.Read More:http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1334242715?ver=Thu%2C+12+Apr+2012+17%3A58%3A39++0300_1334268420

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