German author banned entry in Israel over writing criticism

Israel has declared the German author Guenter Grass “persona non grata” and barred him from entering the country for writing against it, BBC News reported on Sunday. Grass, a Nobel laureate, recently criticised Israel in a poem. In it, Grass condemned German arms sales to Israel, and said the Jewish state must not be allowed to launch military strikes against Iran. Israeli interior minister Eli Yishai says Grass is not welcome because he has tried “to inflame hatred against the State and people of Israel.” Yishai, the leader of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish party in Israel’s coalition government, suggested that Grass should go to Iran, “where he would find a sympathetic audience should he want to continue disseminating his warped and mendacious work.”
‘What Must Be Said’: In one section of the poem, published in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung and called “What Must be Said”, Grass attacks Israel’s nuclear programme. “Why do I say only now… that the nuclear power Israel endangers an already fragile world peace? Because that must be said which may already be too late to say tomorrow,” Grass wrote in the German-language poem, “Also because we – as Germans burdened enough – may become a subcontractor to a crime that is foreseeable.”