Waxing political

Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum is host to a feisty little uproar. Yasser Arafat, some say, deserves a good melting.

By Michael J. Jordan

May 24, 2001 | Yasser Arafat has never looked better.

He is smiling benignly, with his hands clasped behind his back. The trademark checkerboard headdress, the kaffiyeh, is nobly swept over his right ear. His olive military fatigues are starched and pressed. His brown leather shoes gleam. And while his beard is sparsely populated with kinky salt and pepper, and liver spots are visible around his temples, the acne scars have all but disappeared.

Sure, Arafat has the sheen of the embalmed. But he is wax, after all.

And here at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum on Times Square, the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize winner is in esteemed company.

In the museums's bright, airy rotunda, standing before a row of Roman-style columns, is a pantheon of figures described by the museum as "distinguished and diverse world citizens whose lives and achievements have had dramatic impact on the affairs of our planet." From left to right are Mahatma Gandhi, Pope John Paul II, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro, Arafat, Mikhail Gorbachev and Golda Meir.

None is universally beloved, but it's Arafat who sparked protests last Thursday outside Madame Tussaud's -- and extra security measures inside.

"Yasser Arafat is a symbol of terror and violence; he should not be glorified," said New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who led some two dozen protesters in demanding the statue's removal.

"Some people say, 'What's the big deal? It's only wax.' But it is a big deal. Thousands of visitors go through there, and to have him in that hall sends a message that he is kosher. And Yasser Arafat is not kosher, with all the Jews and Palestinians he's willing to sacrifice for his vision of peace."

This brouhaha is only the latest salvo in the battle between American Jews and Arabs to capture American public opinion on the Middle East conflict. At stake is the crucial support of the world's lone superpower, which some Jews view as vital for Israel's very survival. These highly publicized scrapes also enable American advocates to feel they are somehow joining their brethren on the front lines of the faraway conflict.

Presumably, neither side believes it will change the minds of those already familiar with Mideast politics. But by demonizing the other side -- say, by painting the Israelis as killers of Palestinian children, or Arafat as sending those children into harm's way while going after Israeli children with suicide bombers -- activists hope to sway voters seeking a simpler way of separating the good guys from the bad.

News coverage, of course, is instrumental in shaping that opinion. And both Arabs and Jews say the U.S. coverage has been slanted against their brethren throughout the eight months of this, the second, Palestinian intifada. So the rivals continue their stateside crusades to drive home their messages.

In October 1999, for example, Disney buckled under Arab pressure to not identify Jerusalem as Israel's capital in its Epcot Center millennium exhibit. The Arab community had resurrected the threat of boycotts, first introduced in 1945 and consistently condemned by the U.S.

CNN caved the following month, changing Jerusalem from the capital to Israel's "largest city" on its year 2000 Web site. (Israel was the only nation without a capital.) Jews responded angrily, and the network later clarified that Jerusalem is Israel's "self-declared capital" and explained to readers the city's disputed status. (CNN came under fire again in August, when Jewish viewers forced the network to return Jerusalem to its place beneath Israel on its online weather map.)

Arabs have also targeted Sprint, Burger King, Benetton and Ben and Jerry's with boycott threats, in some cases for doing business in the West Bank.

Jews are also on the lookout for affronts, and have sometimes proved prone to overreaction. In December, many were outraged to learn that Wal-Mart and Sam's Club were selling decorative globes that denoted Palestine but not Israel. They then sheepishly learned that Israel was indeed identified (with inlaid gemstones, to boot), with Jerusalem as its capital. The word "Palestine" was there, too, but mysteriously hovering over the Mediterranean somewhere between Israel and Lebanon.

The Wal-Mart incident came just a few weeks after complaints about McDonald's had petered out. Protesters discovered that Israel's outlets had been excluded from the chain's Web site because of a decision made by the Israeli franchise owners, not McDonald's.

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