Snow White and the Madness of Truth

Snow White and the Madness of Truth (Swedish: Snövit och sanningens vansinne) was a 2004 item of installation art by Swedish, Israeli-born composer and musician Dror Feiler and his Swedish wife, artist Gunilla Sköld-Feiler. Feiler and Sköld-Feiler created the visuals and the music for the artwork together, which was installed in the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm, Sweden.

The installation consisted of a long pool of water coloured blood red, upon which floated a small white boat named "Snövit" ("Snow White") carrying a smiling portrait of Hanadi Jaradat, a Palestinian suicide bomber who killed 21 Jewish and Arab Israelis, and injured 51 more.

A text was written on the walls, and the sound of Bach's Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut (Cantata 199) played in the background. This piece begins with the words, "My heart swims in blood / because the brood of my sins / in God's holy eyes / makes me into a monster". According to the artists, the installation was made to "call attention to how weak people left alone can be capable of horrible things".

The artwork became the centre of some controversy when then Israeli ambassador to Sweden, Zvi Mazel, vandalized it, claiming that it "glorified suicide bombers" and was "an expression of hatred for the Israeli people." Journalist Sverker Lenas compared the reactions to those in the US about Steve Earle's song "John Walker's Blues", which appeared on his 2002 album Jerusalem. As an attempt to expose the moral panic resulting from the phenomenon of hasty misinterpretation followed by reactionary judgment, he explained:

Det går att jämföra "Snövit"-debatten med den amerikanska debatt som uppstod i spåren av Steve Earles "John Walker´s blues" på skivan "Jerusalem". I låten får vi se världen som den skulle kunna se ut genom "den amerikanska talibanens" ögon.... Steve Earle av en nästan samstämmig amerikansk mediekör stämplad som antipatriot (ja, det var avsett som en beskyllning). Ändå tar Steve Earle ingenstans John Walkers parti. ...Av samma anledning spelar det ingen roll att Dror och Gunilla Sköld Feiler säger sig "fördöma självmordsbombningar till 100 procent". Som den israeliska poeten Yitzhak Laor skriver i tidningen Haaretz bryter texten "mot ett israeliskt tabu som förbjuder oss att titta ordentligt på självmordsterroristernas ansikten".

[It is possible to compare the "Snow White" debate with the American debate that arose in the wake of Steve Earle's "John Walker's Blues" on the album Jerusalem. In the song we see the world as it could be through the eyes of the "American Taliban".... Steve Earle was labeled by an almost unanimous American media chorus as an anti-patriotic... Yet Steve Earle nowhere takes John Walker's side. ...For the same reason, it doesn't matter that Dror and Gunilla Sköld Feiler say they "condemn suicide bombings 100 percent." As Israeli poet Yitzhak Laor writes in the newspaper Haaretz, the text "violates an Israeli taboo that forbids us from looking closely at the faces of suicide terrorists."]