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Jan. 27, 2004 | STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- Sweden's prime minister has been bombarded with about 14,000 e-mails from a U.S.-based Jewish human rights group protesting an art exhibit featuring the image of a Palestinian suicide bomber, the government said Tuesday. The flap threatened to overshadow a three-day international conference in Stockholm on preventing genocide that ends Wednesday. Israel downgraded its representation at the conference after the Museum of National Antiquities refused to remove a display showing a picture of Islamic Jihad bomber Hanadi Jaradat, who killed herself and 21 bystanders in an Oct. 4 suicide attack in Haifa, Israel....

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Following a row between Sweden and Israel over a controversial art exhibit, Prime Minister Goeran Persson's office has been bombarded with thousands of protest e-mails at the request of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a government official said Tuesday. "This morning we had received 13,603 online protest letters," government registrar Ulla Hildert said in an telephone interview. The flap threatened to overshadow the three-day international conference on preventing genocide in Stockholm, which ends Wednesday. Israel downgraded its representation at the conference after a museum refused to remove the display showing a picture of an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber...

Israel's Ambassador to Sweden, Zvi Mazel, is in hot water with the Swedish Foreign Ministry in frigid Stockholm. While attending an art exhibition intended to complement an upcoming government-sponsored conference on "Preventing Genocide: Threats and Responsibilities," the ambassador unplugged three spotlights illuminating an exhibit entitled "Snow White and the Madness of Truth." Pictured in a small ship floating in a pool full of blood-coloured water, is a homicidal Snow White, not out of Hans Christian Anderson, but an Islamic Jihad homicide bomber who mass-murdered 22 Israeli Jews and Arabs at a Haifa cafe last October. Hanadi Jaradat is shown "with...

Not that anybody's going to agree with me, but there is no glorification of Palestinian terrorism whatsoever in the now infamous pool-of-blood art installation in Stockholm – not by the artists, not by the Swedes, not by anybody. Just the opposite. Snow White and the Madness of Truth makes Palestinian terrorism – and Israeli repression, too, but mainly Palestinian terrorism – so graphic and immediate as to be nauseating, which is the effect terrorism and repression should, but unfortunately don't, have on people at large. The Jewish reaction to the artwork and to Ambassador Zvi Mazel's trashing of it show...

To me, her smile is grotesque. She floats there, the Mona Lisa of mayhem, her photograph forming the sail of a little toy boat on a pool of blood. The pool is half-frozen, and the blood seeps into the pure white snow covering the courtyard garden. People gather in quiet, serious groups; TV cameras attend the Swedish minister of culture as she, too, looks quietly, seriously, at the gory pond. Personally, I want to laugh. I would love to laugh. Because this is the stupidest story you will ever hear about art, outrage and international diplomacy. Only it isn't funny....

Everyone talks about insufferably pretentious art, but no one does anything about it. Until now. Perhaps you read the story: Zvi Mazel, the Israeli ambassador to Sweden, shows up at an art gallery and comes across an installation called "Snow White and the Madness of Truth." Picture a rectangular pool of blood-red water and a tiny boat bearing the picture of Hanadi Jaradat, a woman who murdered 21 people in Haifa last October. The artist wanted a reaction? He got one. News reports made it sound as if the ambassador rampaged through a gallery, knocking over waiters and patrons, yelling...

STOCKHOLM - A Swedish museum official said Tuesday that he will remove posters for an art exhibition that sparked a diplomatic spat with Israel, but said the display at the root of the controversy will remain. The man in charge of the exhibition at the Museum of National Antiquities said he will take down posters showing a Palestinian suicide bomber that were posted in 26 subway stations throughout Stockholm to advertise the exhibit. "This is a personal decision where I as an artistic leader take full responsibility of removing and replacing the posters," Thomas Nordanstad said. Israeli Ambassador Zvi Mazel...

<p>January 20, 2004 -- Israel's ambassador to Sweden, Zvi Mazel, says he has no regrets over what he did to a piece of "art" in a Stockholm museum that glorified a Palestinian bomber who killed 22 innocent Israelis, comparing her to Snow White. Nor should he.</p>

The Swedish landlord of Israel's Embassy in Stockholm has asked that the embassy be moved to a different location, Israel's Ambassador to Sweden, Zvi Mazel, told Israel Radio Monday morning. The landlord told the diplomatic staff that the Israeli presence in the building poses a threat to the other residents of the building, according to the ambassador. Israel's Embassy in Stockholm has been in the same building over 50 years. Mazel said that the demand to relocate the embassy is part of "the general atmosphere of hostility towards Israel all around Europe - Sweden included." Mazel caused a diplomatic stir...

JERUSALEM Ignoring accusations of censorship, Israel warned Monday that it would boycott an international genocide conference in Stockholm next week unless Sweden disowned an exhibit at a related art show Israeli participation will depend on the Swedish government's willingness to "disassociate itself" from the art work, which depicts a smiling Palestinian suicide bomber, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said at a Jerusalem news conference. "Then and only then will I consider positively what needs to be done," he said. The conference organizer, Krister Kumlin, has ruled out the exhibit's being removed, saying the Swedish government would never agree to such an...

The incident in which Israel's ambassador in Sweden, Zvi Mazel, damaged an art installation over the weekend that seemed to express sympathy for acts of suicide and murder at the Maxim restaurant in Haifa, raises questions about the limits of freedom of artistic expression, and the limits of protest against this same freedom of expression. The installation itself should come as no surprise, as the Tel Aviv Museum has exhibited a work in which a swastika was incorporated into a Jewish star. It is not surprising that the museum in Stockholm or that an Israeli is involved in the galling...

Communique: 19 January 2004 SWEDISH 'ART' OUTRAGE Dear HonestReporting Subscriber, On January 16, Israel's ambassador to Sweden, Zvi Mazel, attended a Stockholm art show linked to an international conference on preventing genocide. Mazel was shocked to encounter there a large exhibit glorifying the Palestinian terrorist who murdered 21 Israelis at Haifa's Maxim restaurant in October. Dubbed "Snow White and the Madness of Truth," the exhibit showed a tiny sailboat floating on a pool of red water. Attached to the boat was a smiling photo of the female bomber, Hanadi Jaradat. In protest, Mazel pulled the plug on three spotlights illuminating...

The “artwork” is titled “Snow White and the Madness of Truth” and it will be on display at the Historical Museum exhibition for an international anti-genocide conference in Stockholm this month. Although the title of this piece of “art” may sound like a fairy tale, it is more akin to a nightmare. The piece consists of a shallow basin of water dyed red to simulate blood and a small white boat with a picture mounted on its mast, perhaps to act as a sail. The picture on this makeshift sail is a smiling portrait of Hanadi Jadarat, a Palestinian female...

Is there an inviolable sanctity to art that transcends our mundane existence and becomes totally removed from the political realities that shape our lives? Do the normal rules governing freedom of expression expand to include statements so provocative that they would be considered in the worst taste in any other context? To go back to my first question, is art above and divorced from politics? Deputy Knesset Speaker Mohammed Barakeh seems to think so. The most recent example of a growing trend in worldwide anti-Semitism now centers on the actions of Israeli Ambassador to Sweden Tzvi Maz’el, who attempted to...

Pride. Yes, that’s the word I’ve been searching for. It has been a while since any diplomatic move on the part of Israel has done me proud. What Zvi Maz’el, Israel’s ambassador to Sweden, did last Friday is a testimony to the tenacity of the Jewish spirit. It seems that the man who has tip-toed for years through Israel’s diplomatic minefield, smoothed ruffled feathers and sipped champagne at embassies in Cairo, Madagascar, Romania and Paris finally blew a fuse in Sweden. Having served on the front lines of Israel’s diplomatic front, I bet Ambassador Maz’el has seen more than his...

Let it not be said that art has lost its power to provoke. "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...

An undiplomatic act by Israel’s ambassador to Sweden has switched the spotlight on a virulent strain of anti-Semitism sweeping West Europe that draws its moral legitimacy from demonizing the Jewish state. What better symbol of this hybrid object of hate than the exhibit whose plug ambassador Zvi Mazel furiously pulled? The exhibit consists of the photo of the female Palestinian suicide bomber who blew 21 Israelis to their deaths in a Haifa restaurant on October 4; it is planted on a boat floating serenely on a large pool of red water. Labeled “Snow White”, it was shown in an exhibition...

JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) praised Israel's ambassador to Sweden on Sunday for vandalizing a Stockholm art display about a Palestinian suicide bomber, saying the "entire government stands behind him." The Israeli ambassador, Zvi Mazel, threw a mounted spotlight at the outdoor exhibit in Stockholm's Museum of National Antiquities on Friday. He said the display legitimized genocide, and Israel has demanded that it be removed. The artwork depicts a small ship in a rectangular pool filled with red-colored water. The ship carries a picture of Islamic Jihad bomber Hanadi Jaradat, who killed herself and 21...

Ambassador Mazel’s "Performance Art" 17:26 Jan 18, '04 / 24 Tevet 5764 Israeli Ambassador to Sweden Tzvi Mazel caused an international diplomatic incident Friday with his act of protest against an installation art piece equating an Islamist suicide bomber with her Israeli victims. Israeli Ambassador to Sweden Tzvi Mazel caused an international diplomatic incident Friday with his act of protest against an installation art piece equating an Islamist suicide bomber with her Israeli victims. The Ambassador literally pulled the plug on the exhibit, on display at Stockholm’s Museum of National Antiquities. The piece, entitled "Snow White and the Madness...

"The whole problem is by and large based on a misunderstanding, a misinterpretation of a piece of art which may very well be in bad taste," Sweden's ambassador to Israel Robert Rydberg said Sunday after meeting Israeli Foreign Ministry officials on the diplomatic affair in which Israel's ambassador to Sweden Zvi Mazel damaged on Friday a Stockholm art exhibit that depicted a Palestinian terrorist as Snow White. During the meeting dozens of terror victims' relatives demonstrated near the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, Israel Radio reported. Rydvberg told the radio that the meeting with the Foreign Ministry officials went well. He...