Posted on 01/17/2004 10:20:16 AM PST by anguish
Ambassador wrecks suicide bomber exhibit in SwedenBy JPOST.COM STAFFIn what the avant garde might call a transgressive work of performance art, Israel's ambassador to Sweden, Zvi Mazel, wrecked Friday an exhibit in Stockholm's Museum of National Antiquities depicting a Palestinian suicide bomber. Located in the museum's courtyard, "Snow White and the Madness of Truth" depicted a smiling Hanadi Jaradat, the Maxim restaurant suicide bomber who killed 21 patrons and staff as well as herself on October 4. Her photograph was placed on a little boat floating in a basin filled with water dyed red. The ambassador was a guest at the opening of the museum's exhibition, which is linked to an international conference on genocide, "Stockholm International Forum: Preventing Genocide - Threats and Responsibilities," to be held January 26-28. Israel has threatened to boycott the conference if the museum's "Making Differences" exhibit on the Middle East conflict is not dismantled, Army Radio reported, saying that the exhibition breaks understandings Israel reached with Sweden. "This was not a piece of art," the ambassador told Sweden's SR radio news station. "It was a monstrosity." "For me it was intolerable and an insult to the families of the victims," he said. "As ambassador [of] Israel I could not remain indifferent to such an obscene misrepresentation of reality." Museum director Kristian Berg suggested that Mazel endangered those in the museum. "He pulled out the plugs and threw one of the spotlights into the fountain, which caused the entire installation to short-circuit and made it totally life-threatening," Berg told Swedish news agency TT, AFP reported. The museum director said he did not consider the artwork to be a provocation. "It is rather an invitation to think about why such things happen in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," he said. Swedish Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anna Larsson said the ambassador will be asked to explain his attack. "We will ask him to explain and from our side we will maintain that it is unacceptable to destroy works of art in this way," Larsson said. The artists behind the installation are musician Dror Feiler - himself an Israeli Swede - and his Swedish wife Gunilla Skold Feiler. Feiler, who described the ambassador's actions as "vandalism," announced that he would not perform as long as Mazel was present. The museum director requested that the ambassador leave, then escorted him out. Feiler told the Associated Press that his installation aimed to call attention to how weak people left alone can be capable of horrible things. "[Mazel] tried to stop free speech and free artistic expression from being carried out in Sweden," Feiler said. As a political activist, Feiler is president of Jews for Israeli Palestinian Peace, which initiated a campaign entitled "Jewish Manifesto: Sharon is Israel's Worst Enemy." Feiler describes himself as the "eye-bleeding ultimate composer of intifadic and eruptive lung-outs." |
We wouldn't want a memorial to a suicide bomber to be dangerous or anything.
Someone needs to put together a "Swedish Suicide Exhibit" since this is the only thing these people lead the world in.Urban legend - Sweden was early in putting together comprehensive statistic about suicide, something that unfortunately was used domestically in the United States in the 50's to argue against 'the third way'. That is, there are (and were) so many factual faults with 'the third way' that there's no use for non-factual arguments.
The Swedes didn't mind Nazi concentration campsErr, dunno where you got that from. Sweden is however historically tied to Germany, and there was a small but loud fraction of Nazi's during WWII, but not in any significant numbers. Most of the pro-german sentiments at the time was also rather anti-Soviet sentiments (Soviet invasion of Finland & historical enemy of Sweden).
In 1994, they awarded their Nobel Peace Prize to ArafatThe Nobel Peace Prize has always been awarded by Norway.
We all have our favorites, mr. pink. I'll say this for them -- they make some really good toilets.
As for the Swedes, there is not a greater collection of hypocrites on earth. Big fans of Ho Chi Minh, they earlier supplied Nazi Germany with raw materials all during the war until they saw that the tide was turning.
LOL! That could be, mr. pink, but if you ever want a toilet tough enough to survive a full-scale prison riot, go to the Swedes.
When it went off and ruined everyone's clothes, he could have pointed out that at least those whose clothes were ruined are still alive - but if he had been a Pali suicide bomber, anyone with red on their clothes would have been DEAD.
Then you could say it was an example of performance art, and would thus not be inappropriate for an institution.
Not so. Swedish iron ore built the Nazi war machine. More recently, Swede and French interference guaranteed the Rwandan genocide. Swedes were and are pseudo-cultured barbarians. They pretend a varnish of culture without the slightest understanding of what culture means.
And, anyone who travels to Sweden learns, Swedes shortchange.
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