Israel declared Nobel Prize-winning German author Guenter Grass "persona non grata" on Sunday over a poem in which the former SS soldier described the Jewish state as a threat to world peace.
Grass would be barred from visiting for his "attempt to inflame hatred against the State of Israel and people of Israel, and thus to advance the idea to which he was publicly affiliated in his past donning of the SS uniform," Interior Minister Eli Yishai said in a statement.
In the poem published by a German newspaper last week, Grass, 84, condemned his country's arms sales to Israel and said the Jewish state must not be allowed to launch military strikes against Iran.
Israel, widely assumed to have the Middle East's only nuclear weapons, has threatened to take military action, with or without US support, to halt what it sees as a nuclear threat from Iran.
Tehran says it is developing nuclear technology for purely peaceful purposes, but its calls for Israel's destruction, support for Islamist guerrillas on its borders and questioning of the Nazi genocide have stirred international war jitters.
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