JERUSALEM -- Reflecting a deepening rift with Europe, Israel's ambassador to Sweden received strong support yesterday after vandalizing a Stockholm art exhibit he saw as glorifying Palestinian suicide bombers. Zvi Mazel's outburst -- captured on security cameras at Sweden's Museum of National Antiquities -- added fuel to a debate over artistic freedom and Europe's views about Israel.

But Mazel said those were minor issues compared with what he described as a tide of European anti-Semitism that reminded him of the eve of the Second World War.

"This exhibit was the culmination of dozens of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish events in Sweden," Mazel said. "When you don't protest, it gets worse and worse. It had to be stopped somehow, even by deviating from the behaviour of the buttoned-down diplomat."

The exhibit opened in tandem with an international conference on preventing genocide this month in Stockholm, but is not tied to it. An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the exhibit broke an understanding Israel had with Sweden that the genocide conference would not include the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.