Israeli vandalises Swedish suicide bomber art

[Bereta_Eder]

No I don't think it's madness. It's his way of viewing the whole incident. Some people don't buy the "crazed terrorist" mantra. That woman was a lawyer and had two kids and yet she did what she did. Tragic, murderous no doubt. But easily dismiss it like a "lunatic" isn't so convinving for some people who think those people are pushed to do what they do because of the occupation. So it's art, not even provocative IMHO but I'm not an Israeli. And the ambassador is of course human as well. Everything is understandable if you see it from both sides.

[Agathon]

Is there any group of people more self righteous than right wing Israelis?

I mean we're supposed to support them no matter what they do and if we don't we're Hitler. Great....

[Winston]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


Was it equating or was it irony; that somebody who superficially resembles Snow White is actually the opposite of an innocent?

That has to be a matter of individual perception. I'm not very inclined to give him and his wife the benefit of the doubt...

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Winston


That has to be a matter of individual perception. I'm not very inclined to give him and his wife the benefit of the doubt...

Did the artist not say in the quoted article that she was showing the irony that a woman with two children, and a lawyer, could blow herself up with as a suicide bomber?

If the piece is trying to show her as an innocent, why's she floating in a pool of blood?

[Combat Ingrid]

Quote from the artist:

I'm absolutely opposed to suicide bombers

You lying bastard!



EDIT: link for quote: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3406745.stm

[Nubclear]

I don't mean to be anti-semite, but Jews always seem to be really uptight about everything.
Heck, if I were to say that in public..."YOU HITLER NAZI LOVER!!!!" "ANTI-SEMITE NAZI PIG!!!!"

Though if I were to replace it with anything else....It would be fine.

[Fake Boris]

The case is obvious.

The artist does not support suicide bombers. And even if she did, she's got the right to. As long as it's only in an 'artistic' way.

[Edan]

Originally posted by paiktis22
No I don't think it's madness. It's his way of viewing the whole incident. Some people don't buy the "crazed terrorist" mantra. That woman was a lawyer and had two kids and yet she did what she did. Tragic, murderous no doubt. But easily dismiss it like a "lunatic" isn't so convinving for some people who think those people are pushed to do what they do because of the occupation.
[/qb]

Suicide bombing is a highly communitarian enterprise. According to Ariel Merari, the director of the Political Violence Research Center, at Tel Aviv University, and a leading expert on the phenomenon, in not one instance has a lone, crazed Palestinian gotten hold of a bomb and gone off to kill Israelis. Suicide bombings are initiated by tightly run organizations that recruit, indoctrinate, train, and reward the bombers. Those organizations do not seek depressed or mentally unstable people for their missions. From 1996 to 1999 the Pakistani journalist Nasra Hassan interviewed almost 250 people who were either recruiting and training bombers or preparing to go on a suicide mission themselves. "None of the suicide bombers—they ranged in age from eighteen to thirty-eight—conformed to the typical profile of the suicidal personality," Hassan wrote in The New Yorker. "None of them were uneducated, desperately poor, simple-minded, or depressed." The Palestinian bombers tend to be devout, but religious fanaticism does not explain their motivation. Nor does lack of opportunity, because they also tend to be well educated.

Often a bomber believes that a close friend or a member of his family has been killed by Israeli troops, and this is part of his motivation. According to most experts, though, the crucial factor informing the behavior of suicide bombers is loyalty to the group. Suicide bombers go through indoctrination processes similar to the ones that were used by the leaders of the Jim Jones and Solar Temple cults. The bombers are organized into small cells and given countless hours of intense and intimate spiritual training. They are instructed in the details of jihad, reminded of the need for revenge, and reassured about the rewards they can expect in the afterlife. They are told that their families will be guaranteed a place with God, and that there are also considerable rewards for their families in this life, including cash bonuses of several thousand dollars donated by the government of Iraq, some individual Saudis, and various groups sympathetic to the cause. Finally, the bombers are told that paradise lies just on the other side of the detonator, that death will feel like nothing more than a pinch.

Members of such groups re-enact past operations. Recruits are sometimes made to lie in empty graves, so that they can see how peaceful death will be; they are reminded that life will bring sickness, old age, and betrayal. "We were in a constant state of worship," one suicide bomber (who somehow managed to survive his mission) told Hassan. "We told each other that if the Israelis only knew how joyful we were they would whip us to death! Those were the happiest days of my life!"

The bombers are instructed to write or videotape final testimony. (A typical note, from 1995: "I am going to take revenge upon the sons of the monkeys and the pigs, the Zionist infidels and the enemies of humanity. I am going to meet my holy brother Hisham Hamed and all the other martyrs and saints in paradise.") Once a bomber has completed his declaration, it would be humiliating for him to back out of the mission. He undergoes a last round of cleansing and prayer and is sent off with his bomb to the appointed pizzeria, coffee shop, disco, or bus.

For many Israelis and Westerners, the strangest aspect of the phenomenon is the televised interview with a bomber's parents after a massacre. These people have just been told that their child has killed himself and others, and yet they seem happy, proud, and—should the opportunity present itself—ready to send another child off to the afterlife. There are two ways to look at this: One, the parents feel so wronged and humiliated by the Israelis that they would rather sacrifice their children than continue passively to endure. Two, the cult of suicide bombing has infected the broader culture to the point where large parts of society, including the bombers' parents, are addicted to the adrenaline rush of vengeance and murder. Both explanations may be true.

It is certainly the case that vast segments of Palestinian culture have been given over to the creation and nurturing of suicide bombers. Martyrdom has replaced Palestinian independence as the main focus of the Arab media. Suicide bombing is, after all, perfectly suited to the television age. The bombers' farewell videos provide compelling footage, as do the interviews with families. The bombings themselves produce graphic images of body parts and devastated buildings. Then there are the "weddings" between the martyrs and dark-eyed virgins in paradise (announcements that read like wedding invitations are printed in local newspapers so that friends and neighbors can join in the festivities), the marches and celebrations after each attack, and the displays of things bought with the cash rewards to the families. Woven together, these images make gripping packages that can be aired again and again.

Activities in support of the bombings are increasingly widespread. Last year the BBC shot a segment about so-called Paradise Camps—summer camps in which children as young as eight are trained in military drills and taught about suicide bombers. Rallies commonly feature children wearing bombers' belts. Fifth- and sixth-graders have studied poems that celebrate the bombers. At Al Najah University, in the West Bank, a student exhibition last September included a re- created scene of the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem after the suicide bombing there last August: "blood" was splattered everywhere, and mock body parts hung from the ceiling as if blown through the air.

Thus suicide bombing has become phenomenally popular. According to polls, 70 to 80 percent of Palestinians now support it—making the act more popular than Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Fatah, or any of the other groups that sponsor it, and far more popular than the peace process ever was. In addition to satisfying visceral emotions, suicide bombing gives average Palestinians, not just PLO elites, a chance to play a glorified role in the fight against Israel.

Opponents of suicide bombings sometimes do raise their heads. Over the last couple of years educators have moderated the tone of textbooks to reduce and in many cases eliminate the rhetoric of holy war. After the BBC report aired, Palestinian officials vowed to close the Paradise Camps. Nonetheless, Palestinian children grow up in a culture in which suicide bombers are rock stars, sports heroes, and religious idols rolled into one. Reporters who speak with Palestinians about the bombers notice the fire and pride in their eyes.

"I'd be very happy if my daughter killed Sharon," one mother told a reporter from The San Diego Union-Tribune last November. "Even if she killed two or three Israelis, I would be happy." Last year I attended a dinner party in Amman at which six distinguished Jordanians—former cabinet ministers and supreme-court justices and a journalist—talked about the Tel Aviv disco bombing, which had occurred a few months earlier. They had some religious qualms about the suicide, but the moral aspect of killing teenage girls—future breeders of Israelis—was not even worth discussing. They spoke of the attack with a quiet sense of satisfaction.

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/06/brooks.htm

So it's art, not even provocative IMHO but I'm not an Israeli. And the ambassador is of course human as well.

Was that just performance art?

[Bereta_Eder]

you must be crazy if you think i'm going to read all that condence your thoughts in two or three sentences and you may have a chance

[Winston]

Why represent the suicide bomber as Snow White in the first place, if not to convey the message of purity and innocence, at least to some extent?

Usually very few mitigating circumstances accompany mass murder. Why portray her that way then with a smile on her youthful face.

You do remember of course that this week another young woman, the mother of four, killed four Israelis in the same way. What was she, Cinderella?

[Bereta_Eder]

BTW If we want to talk about the symbolisms of snow white... then there are plenty IMHO. Cleansing , purity by fire... deliverance by vengeance, return to innocence through fulfilment of "righteoues due" etc etc as the man who made it might have seen it. But I don't think the point is this and these are guesses.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Winston
Why represent the suicide bomber as Snow White in the first place, if not to convey the message of purity and innocence, at least to some extent?

Usually very few mitigating circumstances accompany mass murder. Why portray her that way then with a smile on her youthful face.

You do remember of course that this week another young woman, the mother of four, killed four Israelis in the same way. What was she, Cinderella?

This is art, not a newspaper article. Art is supposed to make you think, that is why she shows it in an 'unusual' way, and why she highlights the irony.

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by Winston
Why represent the suicide bomber as Snow White in the first place, if not to convey the message of purity and innocence, at least to some extent?

Usually very few mitigating circumstances accompany mass murder. Why portray her that way then with a smile on her youthful face.

You do remember of course that this week another young woman, the mother of four, killed four Israelis in the same way. What was she, Cinderella?

more like ancient tragedy for all sides concerned

[Combat Ingrid]

Originally posted by Winston
Why represent the suicide bomber as Snow White in the first place, if not to convey the message of purity and innocence, at least to some extent?

If you bother to read any of the artists comments, you will find out that it was all about the apparent purity and innocence in the picture of her, yet she took off and murdered all those people in cold blood.

[Jarouik]

Originally posted by Winston
Displaying the image of a smiling suicide bomber on board a toy boat named Snow White is not art. It's blatant political advertising and glorifying of a murderous terrorist mindset.

The Israeli ambassador was entirely justified to act as he did, such an insensitive exhibit should not be tolerated, not even under the guise of freedom of speech. If I had the guts, I'd have done the same.

I would like to think there is such a thing as common decency, even in the misguided "art" establishment of today.

It seems peoples' interpretations of the piece of exhibit vary a great deal. When I think of it, I see the same thing as what the artist said: the incomprehensibility of a young woman doing such an extreme deed. I thing it is in no way glorification, with the pool full of blood and all.

Yes, I can understand people getting angry if they interpret the work of art differently. The subject of the work is a tragic one. Considering the artist had no intention of insulting, though, I don't think you should blame him for your own overtly emotional interpretations. I think it is clear that a Swedish-Israeli artist doing this sort of work in an exhibit depicting suicide bombers' victims is *not* trying to glorify violence.

What I would have done when seeing the piece of exhibit is stand there and reflect on the senselessness of it all, not try to trash the work. Seeing the piece triggers in me sadness and grief, not violence. But for someone nearer the conflict, I can understand emotions running high.