Sweden objects to Israeli diplomat's action over artwork
Saturday, January 17, 2004 Posted: 2:04 PM EST (1904 GMT)
Artists Gunilla Skold Feiler, left, and Dror Feiler stand behind their restored art installation, "Snow White and the Madness of Truth" on Saturday.
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(CNN) -- The Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs says it plans to scold the Israeli ambassador to Sweden for damaging artwork depicting a Palestinian suicide bomber.
The Israeli government says the piece glorifies suicide bombings and should be dismantled.
The artwork, "Snow White and the Madness of Truth," was shown Friday in Stockholm at the opening of a museum exhibit, staged in conjunction with an upcoming anti-genocide conference.
In the piece, a boat floats in a rectangular basin filled with red water, carrying a portrait of Palestinian suicide bomber Hanadi Jaradat. Jaradat attacked a restaurant in the Israeli city of Haifa in October, blowing herself up and killing 21 others.
In news footage from Reuters television, Israeli Ambassador Zvi Mazel pulled out electrical wires attached to the artwork, sending a spotlight crashing to the ground. He was asked to leave.
Mazel told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that he didn't cut or rip the electrical wires but unplugged electrical projectors that provided lighting to the display. He told Haaretz it was an act of protest.
Artist Dror Feiler, an Israeli who lives in Sweden and created the piece with his wife, Gunilla Skold Feiler, told an Israeli newspaper that the artwork wasn't intended to glorify the suicide bomber but to "call attention to how weak people left alone can be capable of horrible things."
The incident comes at a time when some Israelis and Jews around the world have expressed concern about what they say is a growing return and tolerance of anti-Semitism in Europe.
Anna Larsson, a spokeswoman for the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, said Mazel will be contacted next week and asked to come and "explain himself."
"Then we will tell him our view that his actions are unacceptable," Larsson said, saying Sweden believes it is not acceptable to destroy works of art.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman David Saranga said Sweden promised Israel "there would be no connection between the genocide conference and the Middle East issue."
"With this exhibition yesterday, they broke that understanding. Israel calls on the Swedish government to immediately remove the exhibit that glorifies the suicide attack."
Saranga said Israel's Foreign Ministry general-director for European affairs "has spoken with the Swedish ambassador [to Israel] and complained about the exhibit, adding that Israel sees the Swedish government as the element that must act to remove this exhibit and that Sweden cannot hide behind the excuse of freedom of speech as legitimization for attacks against Israel."
Mazel, speaking on Israeli television's Channel 2, said the artwork is "complete legitimization of genocide, the murder of innocent people, innocent civilians, under the guise of culture."
"When you stand before that, you ask yourself what exactly are people thinking, do they understand at all what is happening, do they have feelings, where is this all going?"
Dror Feiler said on Israeli TV that "if [Mazel] doesn't like it, and if this makes him very upset, it is possible to understand. If he wishes to argue, if he wants to object, but to behave like a hooligan? ... The papers here will write, if the ambassadors act like this, how do the normal people behave, the soldiers at the front line?"
Diplomatic sources in Jerusalem said they understood Mazel's reaction to the artwork.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak told Israeli TV: "I can absolutely understand him. There are definitely instances where nondiplomatic behavior can send a message in a more correct manner."
CNN's Yoav Appel in Jerusalem and freelance journalist Dana Rosenblatt in Atlanta, Georgia, contributed to this report.
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