DIPLOMATIC VANDALISM

 

I read on the front page of Bahrain's Gulf Daily News (Sunday, 18 January 2004) that Israel's ambassador to Sweden had vandalized an art exhibit featuring a picture of Hanad Jaradat who blew herself and 19 others up in Haifa in October.

The article focused on the fact that the ambassador destroyed the exhibit and said nothing about the artist.

That same evening, I received an email from a friend with the following article from Haaretz Service and Reuters:

Israel's ambassador to Sweden destroys artwork in Stockholm museum
STOCKHOLM - Israel's ambassador to Sweden destroyed an artwork depicting a Palestinian suicide bomber in a Stockholm museum on Friday, Swedish radio reported on Saturday.

The art installation, entitled "Snow White and the Madness of Truth", consisted of a rectangular basin filled with red water on which floated a boat carrying a portrait of Hanadi Jaradat, who killed herself and 21 others in an attack at the Maxim restaurant in Haifa on 4 October.

Ambassador Zvi Mazel was among the guests at the opening of the Historical Museum's exhibition linked to an international anti-genocide conference to be held in Stockholm from 26 to 28 January.

Public service SR radio news said Mazel furiously ripped out electrical wires attached to the art work and threw a spotlight in the basin.

"This was not a piece of art," Mazel told SR. "It was a monstrosity. An obscene distortion of reality." 

The artists who created the installation are Dror Feiler, an Israeli who resides in Sweden, and Gunilla Skold Feiler, his Swedish wife. [Emphasis added] Feiler, who described the ambassador's actions as "vandalism", was to have performed at the exhibition, but announced that he would not perform as long as Mazel was present, Israel Radio reported. Museum director Kristian Berg then requested that Mazel leave, and escorted him out of the exhibition hall.

Berg said he realized the installation may have been emotional for Mazel, but that destroying art was unacceptable.

"If you don't like what you see, you can leave the premises," he told SR.

Imagine my surprise to read that the artist was an Israeli, which had not been reported in the local newspaper.

I wrote this short poem to my friend:

     A vandal in diplomatic undress

     Just imagine the uproar that would have followed -

     the screams of anti-Semitism,

     the reminders of a holocaust,

     the guile for guilt campaigns

     the heroic ambassador medal,

     and the Arab hate mail -

     if the artist had been anything but an Israeli! 

The following day (Monday, 19 January 2004), I read in the local paper that Ariel Sharon had defended his ambassador, referring to the exhibit as anti-Semitic and ranting on about the increase in anti-Semitism in Europe!

Sharon obviously missed the Haaretz report about the artist being an Israeli. In this, Sharon acted as pre-emptorily as he, his Likud reactionaries and their neo-conservative partners in Washington do regularly.

The poem to my friend already needs revision:

     Just listen to the uproar that followed -

     the screams of anti-Semitism,

     etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.