Demonizing drives the violence

I have probably never before taken part of anything as improbable. After an intensive working day I leave for the inauguration festivities at the Historical Museum.

Somebody shouts that the Israeli Ambassador har destroyed a part of the exhibition. Suddenly he stands beside me.

— ….. makes a hero of a mass murderer. That is unacceptable, it encourages mass murder, says the Ambassador in anger.

The installation “Snow White and The Madness of Truth” consists of a pool with blood colored water with a boat and a picture of the suicide bomber Hanadi Jaradat.

A text mixes excerpts out of the Brother Grimm Snowhite and quotes about Jaradat from Israeli newspapers.

In the text her life is depicted, how she is broken down of sorrow when a brother and a cousin are killed by Israeli forces, how she murders herself and 19 innocents. Also the suffering her suicide action leads to is described in the text.

Is that an homage to a suicide bomber? The artists Gunilla Sköld Feiler and Dror Feiler see Israel as their second home land. Dror is grown up there, they have friends and relatives there. Are they antisemits?

— It is impossible to state that what the nazis did was wonderful. We know exactly what they did, says the Ambassador at my side. Now we know what the arabs do. They are instigators of terror everywhere, everywhere. Particularly in Israel. The arabs, the Palestinians, absolutely, yes.

— Mr Ambassador, you do not mean to say that all Palestinians and all arabs are terrorists? I hear myself say.

— Everyone, the Ambassador answers.

I take a deep breath.
— Excuse me, you make me sad. It is just that kind of generalizations my grand parents were subjected to in Germany and Austria of the 30’s, I insist. Does he hear me? Perhaps he pauses a bit and gives me a puzzled look. I try to gather my thoughts.

Does the Ambassador not know that incitement to racial hatred is forbidden in Sweden just so that the nazi deeds shall never have a chance to be repeated?
I must talk to him.

— Mr Ambassador, how can you as representative for a country calling itself democratic censor a piece of art in this way?

— It is not a piece of art, it is an obscene insult to the killed jews, to my people.
— And who gives you the right to be the judge of what is art and what is not?

Somebody calls:
— What about the occupation?

— There is no occupation he answers.

— But your government kills Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza. Are their lives less worth than the Israeli victims for suicide bombers?

— They attack us.

— You mean to say that every Palestinian that your army has killed, every women and child, has attacked Israel?

— Every one of them.

The action of the Ambassador and my discussion with him gives me no peace at mind.

Why was he so provoked? The installation describes Hanadi Jaradat in a chain of inhuman violence, changing her into a murderer whose victims in turn risk becoming perpetrators themselves.

“And now many people cry: Zer Aviv’s family, Almog’s family and all relatives and friends of the dead and wounded” it says in the text at the installation.

Maybe that became too much for the Ambassador. To him a suicide bomber is evil, blood thirsty, brain washed. Period. It is not a human and need not be treated as such.

How tempting is it not with simplifications when the truth becomes unconfortable and complex? To divide people into good or evil – those who are for us and those who are against us – does after all make the analysis and life much simpler.

To reflect whether the forcing away of people, the oppression and the occupation of the Palestinians is contributing to the desperation giving rise to suicide bombers is painful.

It is, of course, simpler to see them only as murderers. And it is simpler to call critics anti-semits than to reflect over what they really say.

The dehumanisation of the opponents has a prize. It acts on one’s self. The oppression fo the Palestinians creates a mentality which like a cancer pervades society. The Ambassador destroys pieces of art rather than discuss.

Israely soldiers shoot suspects instead of bringing them to court. If the Palestinians are not human one does not need to deal with them according to Jewish ethics.

The dehumanisation of opponents has often been used in history. The cruel colonial empire of Britain and the apartheid system in South Africa are examples.

Zygmunt Bauman writes that the dehumanisation of the jews by the nazis was a precondition for the genocide.

No, I do not make Israeli politics equivalent to the nazis’. Such simplifications are not of my doing. But whoever demonizes his opponents denounces one of the most important human qualities: the ability to understand the situation of others.

Sweden is anti-semitic, and Swedish newspapers daily contain anti-semitic articles, claims the Ambassador Mazel. In TV he has insinuated that the arch bishop K G Hammar is anti-semitic and that the assassinated Foreign Minister Anna Lindh was an immature girl.

Such simplifications trivializes anti-semitism. It is an insult to those who have suffered from anti-semitism in history. In addition: by watering out the term we face the risk that nobody listens when we warn of real threats.

To try to understand is not to excuse. But if we understand what drives violence, then we can create efficient cures without at the same time become inhumanized. “Snow White and The Madness of Truth” is an attempt at understanding.

Such an analysis probably leads us to the conclusion that the occupation, the oppression, the building of the wall, etc. creates an increased Palestinian desperation and more, not fewer, suicide bombers.

The politics of Sharon leads to greater suffering also for the Israelis themselves. Thereby any attempt at intellectual analysis becomes a threat against Israeli politics, which only can be motivated through a black and white demonization of a standardized nature.

The Ambassador Mazel can not discuss the piece of art, only destroy it.

The exhibition “Making differences” aims at tolerance, understanding, atonement and remembrance. There is every reason to support the forces working for peace in Israel and to condemn the Ambassador’s sabotage and attempt at censorship as well as his generalisations and incitements against Palestinians and arabs.

HENRY ASCHER
Consultant and associate professor of Paediatrics

Henry Ascher is the child of refugees from nazism. His father’s whole family and all relatives died in concentration camps. Henry Ascher is medically responsible for the Rosengren clinic in Gothenburg, a clinic for hidden refugees.