04-Apr-17: Something you rarely read about Marwan Barghouti the killer

Marwan Barghouti, the reality: on trial in an open court, convicted
and sentenced to life Image Source: Getty

Times of Israel has a report today ["Jailed Fatah terrorist organizing hunger strikes, protests"] by Avi Issacharoff, its high-profile Middle East analyst, that focuses on the latest manouveurings by Marwan Barghouti to stay in the public spotlight.

We added this to the comments section at the foot of the article:

News sites ought to be very careful about how they describe convicted felons who have a political role to play. How they're labeled in the news has a strong impact on how they're viewed. Almost no one goes back and does their own research. They rely on the "experts". 

Marwan Barghouti and his Fatah handlers must be pleased by the headline of this story. They are probably also happy for him to be described as "jailed for life by Israel for orchestrating a string of murders during the Second Intifada..." as he is in this report. 

But a more accurate way - the right way - to say why Barghouti is spending the rest of his life behind bars is this from BBC: "But it was his arrest by Israel in 2002 and conviction on five counts of murder two years later that turned his into a household name." [BBC News] 

Barghouti, the terrorist thug, is not an orchestrator. He's not (just) a jailed terrorist. He's a convicted murderer.  

From experience, it's exceedingly rare for him to be called that in news reports.

Marwan Barghouti, the icon: A concoction of "resistance"
fantasy and an army of waiting supporters

For a range of reasons, there has been a series of efforts to paint Marwan Barghouti as an apostle of non-violence, as an emerging alternative to the thuggish Palestinian Arab political class. The reality is he is as demonstrably thuggish as the worst of them, and efforts to present him differently are cheap spin.

Here's a good illustration from, of all sources, Haaretz, which happens to be the preferred forum for much of the propaganda seeking to give birth to a new, kinder, gentler, bogus Barghouti:

In the early days of the second intifada, Barghouti led mass demonstrations. When the confrontations escalated, he declared, “The time when only we sacrifice victims is past. We must take revenge. We must kill Israelis. Yes. We have bullets. We have rifles, and they will be aimed at the occupation.” ["Will Marwan Barghouti be the Palestinian Nelson Mandela?", Haaretz, July 5, 2016]

For personal reasons, we (Frimet and Arnold Roth) have strongly negative personal feelings about Barghouti. We sat through his 2003-4 trial in a Tel Aviv court-room.

• Marwan Barghouti personally paid for the design and the making (by Abdullah Barghouti, a clansman of his) of the explosives-and-nails-filled guitar case that destroyed Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria on August 9, 2001 and along with it the lives of our daughter Malki and many other innocents. Marwan Barghouti paid Abdallah Barghouti US$500 for his work. That sum came on top of the $117,000 he received for his product engineering work from Hamas, according to evidence [Jerusalem Post - Archive, November 30, 2004] given to the court in Abdullah Barghouti's multi-murder trial.
• Quote: The senior Hamas activist behind the Sbarro restaurant bombing in Jerusalem, Bilal Barghouti, told interrogators that Marwan [Barghouti] hid him for a few days while Israel was hunting for him and gave him a weapon when he left. ["Barghouti's Top Aide Incriminated Him in Tanzim Terror Strikes", Haaretz, April 26, 2002] 

An elderly South African social activist ["Archbishop Desmond Tutu nominates imprisoned Palestinian for Nobel Peace Prize"] often expresses [here for instance] how he thinks the world  [Twitter link] of Barghouti. We're fairly certain he knows most of the things we have just mentioned, along with the fact that one of the victims of Barghouti's murders was a Greek Orthodox priest whose beard gave him a vaguely Jewish appearance.

But we're confident that, like many people of similar outlook, the South African doesn't give a damn. We offer some little-publicized background here ["09-Jun-16: The convicted killer, the churchman, the prize"]. 

Click here for additional past Barghouti posts of ours.