Not that anybody’s going to agree with me, but there is no glorification of Palestinian terror whatsoever in the now infamous 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 terror —Israeli repression, too, but mainly Palestinian terror — so graphic and immediate as to be nauseating, which is the effect terror and repression should, but unfortunately don’t, have on people at large.
The Jewish reaction to the artwork and to Ambassador Zvi Mazel’s recent trashing of it (see last week’s Chronicle) shows how automatically we’ve come to see anti-Semitism everywhere, especially in Europe.
It also shows how as soon as the cry of anti-Semitism rises loudly enough, there is no discussion in Israel or the diaspora whether it was justified.
I’m afraid Jews see “Snow White” very much as American blacks saw the murder charges against O. J. Simpson — through a prism distorted by trauma, but also by defensiveness and communal pressure, and with reflexively closed minds.
As for myself, “Snow White” is probably the only modern art installation I’ve ever seen — albeit in this case only on TV and in the newspapers — that I think I understand.
When I learned it showed a picture of a Palestinian suicide bomber who’d killed 21 Israelis, and that her picture was floating on a pool of fake blood, I concluded immediately that whatever the artists were trying to say, they certainly did not mean to glorify terror.
If you want to try to glorify a suicide bomber, you do not spell out that she killed 19 civilians eating in a restaurant. (The text that goes with “Snow White” made a mistake in the death toll.)
How it’s always done
Above all, and most obviously, you do not show the suicide bomber, in this case Hanadi Jaradat, floating on a pool of blood. That is guaranteed to bring to mind — and to the stomach — what happened to the terrorist’s victims. It will cause viewers to react with loathing.
No, if you want to glorify Palestinian terror, you airbrush out any trace of Israeli victims, and the only images you show in connection with the terrorist are of Palestinians being shot down, of Israeli tanks and soldiers, of barbed wire, etc. That’s how it’s always done.
Then when I read the text of “Snow White,” it became even clearer that the artists, Israeli-born Dror Feiler and his Swedish wife Gunilla Skold Feiler, intended not to applaud terror but to display its devastating effect.
“She secretly crossed into Israel, charged into a Haifa restaurant, shot a security guard, blew herself up and murdered 19 innocent civilians… And many people are indeed crying: the Zer Aviv family, the Almog family, and all the relatives and friends of the dead and the wounded,” goes part of the text’s conclusion.
“…murdered…innocent civilians…crying…the Zer Aviv family, the Almog family…” If the Feilers are anti-Semites, they’re the most incompetent anti-Semites who ever lived.
For good measure, Dror Feiler said in an IDF Radio interview that what Jaradat had done was “the worst, most horrific thing.” He also said that by embracing terror, the Palestinians “were removing themselves from the family of civilized nations.”
I don’t know what more the Feilers or Swedish officials have to say or do to convince people.
I’m not saying this is a “pro-Israel” work. “Snow White” doesn’t only dramatize the effect of Palestinian terror. It shows that before Jaradat became Israel’s victimizer, she was Israel’s victim.
“For the June 12 deaths of her brother, and her cousin… Seemingly innocent with universal non-violent character… She was hospitalized, prostrate with grief, after witnessing the shootings… After his death, she became the breadwinner and she devoted herself solely to that goal,” read parts of the text.
The installation is saying there is a causal connection between Israeli killings of Palestinians and Palestinian killings of Israelis.
I don’t know whether or not the Feilers think it’s a one-to-one connection — that Palestinians engage in terror only because of Israeli military repression. I myself think there are additional reasons, including a Palestinian societal bent towards violence and radicalism, and Islamic fundamentalist mania.
But I also think that suffering and death at the hands of Israelis is definitely one of the causes.
You may disagree with this view, but is it a glorification of terror? Is it anti-Semitic? I’m afraid it’s no more than common sense. Innocent victims become victimizers of innocents; this is the logic of tragedy. Or maybe “the madness of truth.”
While finding the installation in “bad taste,” Robert Rydberg, Swedish ambassador to Israel, went on TV to voice his understanding of the sensitivities of Israelis. He lit a yartzeit candle with a relative of a terror victim at the demonstration outside the Swedish embassy.
Is he an anti-Semite? Is Sweden, the home of Raoul Wallenberg, a country that symbolizes fairness and decency, a sponsor of incitement to terror?
Come on. Open your eyes.
Larry Derfner writes about Israeli society for U.S. Jewish newspapers and the Jerusalem Post.
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