- JERUSALEM: Israel’s prime minister has lambasted German poet Guenter Grass for calling Israel a threat to world peace.
- Grass, a Nobel laureate, published a poem in a German newspaper on Wednesday in which he questioned how Israel could call for ending Iran’s nuclear program while holding what is widely believed to be its own nuclear arsenal.
Netanyahu said on Thursday that Grass’s “shameful moral equivalence between Israel and Iran, a regime that denies the Holocaust and threatens to annihilate Israel, says little about Israel and much about Mr. Grass.”
Tehran claims its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes but Israel and the West believe it’s pursuing atomic weapons.
Israel has threatened military action if international sanctions and diplomacy fail to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

