ARTicles: Israel Diplomat Defends Attack on Bomber Art in Stockholm

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/international/middleeast/18MIDE.html

By GREG MYRE

Published: January 18, 2004

JERUSALEM, Jan. 17 — Israel's ambassador to Sweden said Saturday that he had physically attacked an art exhibit at a Stockholm museum because it "glorified suicide bombers." The incident a day earlier has created a diplomatic flap between the countries.

The ambassador, Zvi Mazel, was among several hundred guests invited to the Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm on Friday for an exhibit linked to a coming international conference on genocide sponsored by Sweden. Israel is one of the scheduled participants.

The piece that enraged the ambassador, "Snow White and the Madness of Truth," was in the museum's courtyard and featured a large basin filled with red fluid. A boat floated on top carrying a photo of a smiling Hanadi Jaradat, a woman who became a suicide bomber, killing 22 people in an Oct. 4 attack on a restaurant in Haifa. The work was created by Dror Feiler, an expatriate Israeli artist living in Sweden, and his Swedish wife, Gunilla Skold Feiler.

"When I saw it, I became a bit emotional," Mr. Mazel said in a telephone interview from Stockholm. "There was the terrorist, wearing her perfect makeup and floating on the blood of my people."

He said he had ripped out electrical wires lighting the exhibit and tossed a spotlight into the basin.

Mr. Mazel said Mr. Feiler had accused him of "practicing censorship."

"I told him: `This is not a work of art. This is an expression of hatred for the Israeli people. This has glorified suicide bombers.' "

After heated discussions with Mr. Feiler and others, the ambassador was escorted out of the exhibit. He has been summoned to meet Swedish government officials on Monday.

"We want to give him a chance to explain himself," Anna Larsson, a spokeswoman for Sweden's Foreign Ministry, was quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse. "We feel that it is unacceptable for him to destroy art in this way."

In Israel, the Foreign Ministry said Saturday that the Swedish government had pledged not to link the genocide conference, scheduled for Jan. 26-28, to the Middle East conflict. Israel is reconsidering its participation.

Mr. Mazel, who has served in his post for a little over a year, said he has faced considerable anger directed at Israel during his time in Sweden. "There is a hostile ambience in this country that is orchestrated by the press and the extreme left," he said. But he said Prime Minister Goran Persson "has very good intentions with this conference."

Mr. Feiler told Agence France-Presse that during his exchange with the Israeli ambassador, Mr. Mazel said "he was ashamed that I was a Jew."

"We see this as an offensive assault on our right to express our thoughts and feelings," Mr. Feiler said.

Mr. Feiler is a member of Jews for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, a group based in Stockholm that opposes the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, according to the Reuters news agency.

Mrs. Feiler told Expressen, a Swedish newspaper, that the work was not intended as "a glorification of the suicide bomber." Instead, she said, "I wanted to show how incomprehensible it is that a mother of two — who is a lawyer no less — can do such a thing," apparently conflating the Haifa bomber with an attack carried out on Wednesday by another Palestinian woman.

Israeli officials have called the Swedish ambassador in Israel to protest the exhibit, said Jonathan Peled, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry. "We think this kind of exhibit condones terrorism against Israeli civilians," he said.

The museum director, Kristian Berg, said he did not consider the exhibit to be offensive, and it was again on display on Saturday, Agence France-Presse reported.