When I think of the United States’ – and free world’s – war on terror, I think of Iraq,… When I think of the United States’ – and free world’s – war on terror, I think of Iraq, Afghanistan, Homeland Security and numerous other things somehow related to the use of force. I doubt anyone thinks about art, let alone an art exhibit in Sweden.

This is why you should: On Jan. 17, Zvi Mazel, Israel’s ambassador to Sweden, destroyed an art exhibit titled “Snow White and the Madness of Truth.” In a premeditated action, Mazel unplugged the three spotlights illuminating the exhibit featuring what The Jerusalem Post described as a “small ship carrying the picture of female suicide bomber Hanadi Jaradat sailing in a rectangular pool filled with blood-colored water.” Mazel threw one of the spotlights into the pool, destroying the exhibit.

Jaradat murdered 21 Israelis, including several babies, when she detonated herself at the Maxim restaurant in the Israeli port city of Haifa.

Numerous stories can be taken from this event. One could talk about the irony of the exhibit’s opening being linked to an international forum on the prevention of genocide. But this really isn’t much of a story. The irony is too obvious – and it’s no surprise that the nation that gives us Volvos and false hope for socialists would support suicide bombers and accuse Israel of genocide, though they remained “neutral” during World War II while supplying Germany with the iron ore necessary to produce their materiel.

There is a story in the fact that Mazel destroyed the exhibit while its creator Dror Feiler watched. Mazel’s actions raise all sorts of questions about taste and free expression – questions that are too deep to be explored in this column. What are interesting are Feiler’s thoughts after seeing his anti-Semitic hate-speech destroyed.

“People in Sweden who hear about this say to themselves, if this is how an Israeli ambassador who is supposed to be diplomatic and restrained acts, how do the soldiers in the occupied territories behave,” Feiler said.

For Feiler, and if he is to be believed, for many Swedes, destroying hate-speech is a greater cause for moral suspicion than blowing oneself up in an act of mass murder.

It would be truly atrocious if Israeli soldiers destroyed arms caches, weapons factories, and tunnels used to smuggle arms with the deftness and barbarism that Mazel used in destroying the exhibit. Insert sarcasm here.

If this really is the lens with which supposedly sophisticated and intelligent Europeans view reality, then this is a story.

Unfortunately, the story is that many of the United States’ traditional allies in Western Europe can no longer be counted on to stand up and defend the values that let them create such filth in the name of art.

Despite being interesting, these stories fail to capture the larger story here – one of individual action. With deliberation and forcefulness, Mazel, to put it crudely, gave Feiler, Sweden, and those who would support Feiler’s project “the bird.” Doing so requires courage and a moral conviction that are admirable.

Mazel’s not-so-diplomatic destruction of hate-speech struck a large, if symbolic, blow to an aspect of the war on terrorism that often goes overlooked: the war of ideas. The Islamic fundamentalism and culture of death prevalent in Palestinian society, which produces suicide bombers like Jaradat, is dangerous to people who wish to live in peace and security. When fundamentalists and terrorists find allies in the West who are willing to explain and even celebrate them as cultural phenomena and/or legitimate resistance, instead of understanding suicide bombing as perverse mass-murder, the freedom of the West becomes imperiled.

If the brave men and women of our armed forces, intelligence agencies and other security apparatuses are ever to win the war on terror on the ground, the ideas that support and condone terror must also be defeated and discredited.

Mazel’s actions provide an individual reference for how to win the war of ideas, regardless of his standing as a government official. Though we need not employ his dramatics, we must assertively and forcefully speak out against the elements in our Western society who would equivocate with regards to, or defend, suicide-bombing – not to mention other anti-Semitic tropes like reporting Jewish blood libels in state-sponsored media and preaching a message of death and destruction for Israel and the West at Islamic places of worship. These, amongst numerous other instances of anti-Semitism, happen with regularity in the Islamic world, as The Jerusalem Report noted Dec. 13, 2003.

Our Western society, founded upon the freedom of conscience, can only flourish in safety when those of good conscience are able to stand up to those of bad conscience.

Jason Lawrence would like to think he would have acted as restrained as Mazel did in the presence of the exhibit’s creator. You can e-mail your thoughts to [email protected].