Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Sunday said his entire government stood behind Israel's ambassador to Sweden after the envoy attacked a museum exhibit featuring a picture of a Palestinian suicide bomber.
Zvi Mazel was thrown out of Stockholm's National Antiquities Museum after he interfered with the piece, the work of an Israeli artist who has lived in Sweden for 30 years.
He ripped out electrical wires around the work and threw a spotlight into a pond of red-colored liquid with a boat carrying the picture of a female bomber who killed 22 people in Haifa. In the background played Bach's 199 Cantata: My Heart Swims in Blood.
Mazel defended Friday's attack on the exhibit, called Snow White and the Madness of Truth, because he said it was "a call for genocide."
"My wife and I stood there and began to tremble," he told the Israeli news agency, Ynet. "There was the terrorist, wearing perfect makeup and sailing placidly along the rivers of blood of my brothers and the families that were murdered."
On Sunday Sharon defended the ambassador's actions as resisting growing hatred of Jews and Israel in Europe.
"I called [Mazel] last night and thanked him for his strength in dealing with increasing anti-semitism, and told him the entire government stands behind him," he told his Cabinet on Sunday.
"I think Ambassador Mazel behaved in an appropriate way ... I think the phenomenon is so serious it would have been forbidden not to have acted on the spot," he said.
Public Security Minister Tzachi Hanegbi called for Mazel to be awarded a citation.
"If there is a situation in which an ambassador should act in an undiplomatic manner, this is it," he said.
The exhibit is the work of Tel Aviv-born Dror Feiler, who said he opposes suicide bombings.
"The display itself is against violence," Feiler said.
"It can be summed up by a biblical quote, `He who spills human blood shall have his own blood spilled by man,' and this is exactly what we need to put an end to," Feiler told Israel's army radio. "The ... ambassador caused diplomatic and political damage to Israel."
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