Zvi Mazel, iconoclast

"Snow White and the Madness of Truth," by Swedish artist Gunilla Skold Feiler and her Israeli-born husband, Dror Feiler, features a small ship bearing the picture of Hanadi Jaradat, floating in a rectangular pool of blood-colored water. Jaradat, you may recall, was the Islamic Jihad suicide bomber who murdered 21 Israelis at the Maxim restaurant in Haifa last fall.

Mazel, a career diplomat who also served as ambassador to Egypt and Romania, was invited to attend the opening of the exhibit, organized by Swedish Museum of National Antiquities. The exhibit was commissioned by the Stockholm International Forum, the sponsor of a conference of international leaders on "Preventing Genocide: Threats and Responsibilities" to be held later this month.

"My wife and I stood there and began to tremble," Mazel explained yesterday to the Web site Ynet. "There was the terrorist, wearing perfect makeup and sailing placidly along the rivers of blood of my brothers and the families that were murdered."

In front of the assembled dignitaries, he unplugged the spotlights illuminating the exhibit, and pushed one of them, deliberately or not, into the pool of dyed water.

The Swedes also reacted, not at the exhibit but at Mazel's behavior. Museum director Kristian Berg, at Feiler's request, escorted Mazel out of the exhibit, scolding, "You are a diplomatic person, you should know how to behave," and the ambassador was called in by the Swedish Foreign Ministry to explain his actions.

The Israeli government, for its part, has endorsed Mazel's actions and demanded that the exhibit be removed, or Israel will "reconsider" its participation in the associated conference.

It can be argued that Mazel played into Feiler's hands, by giving his work attention it did not deserve. It can be said that Mazel behaved undiplomatically. Both are true. But we're past the point where we can pretend that the demonization of Israel will go away if we don't call attention it.

As for "diplomacy," Mazel was communicating his point in the only way possible. A formal protest would merely have been "duly registered," filtered and lost in the back channels of European diplomacy. So he chose to scream. But screaming was the only option Europe now gives Israel.

Now we are told that Mazel's response was inapropriate. But what would have been the apropriate response by Israel's representative to depicting the spilt blood of its citizens by "Snow White" as a form of art? Perhaps a strongly-worded letter to the editor?

It is the great cliche of the age that art is sacrosanct. We can debate whether "Snow White and the Madness of Truth" rises to the level of art. Even if it does, art is not sacrosanct. There are values that trump art, the preservation of human life above all.

Swedish Ambassador Robert Rydberg admitted the exhibit was in "bad taste," while claiming the matter had been "blown out of proportion." It has not. If anything, the process by which Israeli lives have become cheap has not produced the outrage it deserves. The official Palestinian Authority press center even leads toward the laudatory, describing the depicted bomber as a "female resistance activist."

Israel has no business attending a conference on "Preventing Genocide" that is oblivious to the slow-motion genocide being perpetrated against Israel. We use that word deliberately, since these are not individual murders, but representative of the genocidal threats made by nations and groups against Israel that remain unimplemented only for lack of ability, not of will.

At the first of the Stockholm conferences on genocide, in 2000, a clarion call was made to establish "rapid reaction mechanisms" with the recognition that "averting genocide is in principle the duty of all signatory states of the UN Anti-Genocide Convention." If so, the top agenda item of the current conference should be to sound the alarm against the growing acceptability of genocidal anti-Semitism: calls for and terror in the name of the destruction of Israel.

Mazel went against the grain and smashed this particularly vile little icon. If this is his way of capping a distinguished diplomatic career, it is an honorable way indeed.

Mazel went against the grain and smashed this particularly vile little icon. If this is his way of capping a distinguished diplomatic career, it is an honorable way indeed.

Right on. Great editorial.

It is obscene for Israel to send a representative to meetings with nations who will inevitably scold her for objecting to the slaughter of her children.

The ambassador reacted to the affront of the display as a normal man would. He was evidently the only man present capable of normal response.

"Israel has no business attending a conference on "Preventing Genocide" that is oblivious to the slow-motion genocide being perpetrated against Israel. We use that word deliberately, since these are not individual murders, but representative of the genocidal threats made by nations and groups against Israel that remain unimplemented only for lack of ability, not of will."

Well, some people seem to be oblivious to the fact that lot of countries and people in the world have the opinion that Israel is commiting genocide on the Palestinians as well.

I do think the act was unacceptable for a man in his position, no matter how tasteless the installation might have been.
Furthermore, Sweden has now become the target of accusations of being anti-semitic and anti-jewish, mostly from Israeli sources.
The general opinion of the Swedish Jewish communities is that Israel, as a secular institution is out if its pond here, claiming that it has no right acting as the head of all Jewish people everywhere.

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