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ing up with the tourist hordes inevitably
conflicts with the desire to expand the
scholarly component of the museum.
The museum is a complex bureau-
cracy that is attached to the biggest
bureaucracy of all — the U.S. govern-
ment. The director must be a scholar,
an administrator, a showman — and a
deft bureaucratic tactician.
And more: He or she must be a
diplomat and a politician capable of -
navigating treacherous issues like the
recent Arafat incident, and be capable of
interacting with an often-prickly Jewish
community.
The Arafat incident, while not the
cause of Reich's ouster, reflects other
conflicts in the museum's operation.
The Jewish community sees the
museum as a kind of extension of the
communal infrastructure, which is not
surprising, since Jews give most of the
$20 million in privately raised money
that funds the museum's operations.
But from the beginning, the creators
of the museum wanted it to be some-
thing bigger — an American museum,
standing for the American determina-
tion that the outrages of the Holocaust
not be repeated, against Jews or any-
body else.
In the case of the Arafat invitation,
the museum's leadership was torn
between those roles.
Special Mideast peace envoy Dennis
Ross and his assistant, Aaron Miller,
both members of the Holocaust Coun-
cil, wanted Arafat to visit because they
thought it might have a salutary impact
on the stalled peace process. That was
clearly in keeping with the original
intention of the museum.
Who better than Arafat, the erstwhile
terrorist, but also someone who was
engaged in a peace process?
But some Jewish leaders worried:
could the museum, as a "Jewish" institu-
tion, legitimately welcome this man
with so much Jewish blood on his
hands, whose quasi-government includ-
ed outspoken Holocaust deniers?
An Arafat visit might be appropriate
for a museum that tries to teach univer-
sal truths about war and hatred, inap-
propriate for a memorial to millions of
dead Jews. The fact that it serves both
roles added to the confusion.
And should the museum become
entangled in today's political controver-
sies? Helping with the Mideast peace
process seems like an appropriate func-
tion for a museum dedicated to human
understanding, but getting caught in
the crossfire over the "details" of that
process could be seen as unnecessary
and risky political involvement. ❑

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47

