In 1998, the lay chairman of the Holocaust Memorial Council—which supervises the Washington, DC Holocaust Museum—invited Yasir Arafat to pay the museum an official visit. Walter Reich, then the museum’s director, objected strenuously to the invitation. In an interview with Rafael Medoff, he describes what happened:

I [said] that it was a bad idea—that the museum must be protected from the political or diplomatic use to which it was vulnerable as a federal institution. Many Americans, especially in the Jewish community, distrusted Arafat’s intentions, as did Israelis. Such a visit would be orchestrated by the State Department and the White House to convince the American public, as well as Israelis, that Arafat could be trusted because he wanted to feel the pain of the Jews.

The museum, I said, mustn’t allow itself to become a prop for a politically motivated photo-op. Besides, I added, what if he were to emerge from the museum saying to the press, as he’d often said before, that the Israelis were doing to the Palestinians exactly what the Nazis had done to the Jews? . . .

The night before [Arafat] was supposed to visit, the Monica Lewinsky story broke. The reporters and photographers went to the White House to cover that historic news. There would be no photo-op at the Holocaust Museum. Arafat’s delegation called the museum to say that he wouldn’t be coming. So much for Arafat’s desire to be educated about the Holocaust. Many years later, Aaron David Miller of the State Department, who was also a council member and . . . had [initially] suggested the visit, . . . wrote an article in which he conceded that his idea of inviting Arafat was “one of the dumbest ideas in the annals of U.S foreign policy.”

Today, the museum’s quick retraction of its recent study arguing that U.S. intervention in Syria wouldn’t have helped [defeat Bashar Assad] may have been a result, partly, of the fact that it had been burned by the attempt to use it for political purposes during the Arafat affair. Critics of the Syria study argued that its goal was to justify President Obama’s decision not to intervene in the Syria crisis; they noted that Obama had appointed members of his national-security team to the museum’s council and that a former member of Obama’s National Security Council was the director of the unit that commissioned the study.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.