Marwan Barghouti & Hollywood’s Whitewashing of a Terrorist

Hundreds of prominent artists have signed a new petition calling for Israel to release from prison Marwan Barghouti, a man they are calling the “Palestinian Mandela”. Barghouti is a convicted terrorist with the blood of at least five innocent civilians on his hands. He is no peacemaker.

“History shows us that cultural voices can shift the course of politics,” explained singer Brian Eno, one of the signatories, on why he is throwing his fame and influence behind this particular terrorist.  “Just as global solidarity helped free Nelson Mandela, we all have the power to accelerate the day that Marwan Barghouti walks free.  His release would mark a turning point in this long struggle and bring much-needed hope to all of us.”  (Readers were left scratching their heads trying to figure out what “hope” Eno was talking about in his nonsensical word salad as he championed a convicted killer.)

As the “Free Marwan” campaign gains steam worldwide – some press reports note that the large, wealthy, and prominent Barghouti clan seems to be behind the effort – the West’s usual cast of useful idiots is busy depicting Barghouti as some sort of a martyred saint.  France’s Le Monde newspaper recently – and ludicrously – asserted that the entirety of “peace in the Middle East depends on the release of Marwan Barghouti.” The Christian Science Monitor dubbed Barghouti a “preacher” of peace who rose “from humble farmhand” to a modern-day prophet preaching a “message of democracy, unity, and resistance to occupation…”

To this day, Barghouti refuses to renounce violence and terrorist or to recognize the State of Israel.

Convicted for Five Murders

Far from rising from humble “farmhand” beginnings, Barghouti was born in 1959 and grew up in the village of Kobar in the West Bank in the wealthy, powerful, and politically connected Barghouti clan.

When he was 15, he joined Yasir Arafat’s Fatah party and helped recruit other teenagers. From the beginning, Barghouti was drawn to extreme violence, planning terrorist attacks against Jews and recruiting Arab Muslim and Christians, often teenagers, to carry them out.

At the age of 18, Barghouti was arrested and convicted on terrorism-related charges, serving a four-year prison sentence in Israel. After his release, Barghouti returned to his work planning terror attacks. During the First Intifada of the late 1980s and early 1990s, Barghouti was a field leader, overseeing bombings and terror campaigns across Israel. Deported to Jordan in 1987, he returned to Israel after the Oslo Accords in 1994. Again, he threw himself into terrorism, leading the Tanzim, Fatah’s armed faction. He also founded and was a senior officer in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a designated terrorist organization, which planned hundreds of bloody attacks on Israeli civilians during the Second Intifada, often using women and children to carry out their plans.

After the Oslo Accords, most of the West Bank was governed by the Palestinian Authority (PA). Israel made request after request to the PA to arrest Barghouti; time and again the PA refused. In 2001 Barghouti granted an interview to The Guardian. Asked if he attacked civilian targets inside Israel, Barghouti grew coy, first denying allegations that he’d masterminded attacks, but then admitting that the PA’s dedication to attacking Israel “necessitated” deadly attacks on civilians: “In such a situation, anything can be developed.”

Finally, in 2002, Israeli forces arrested Barghouti and brought him to trial, charging him with 26 counts of murder in 36 separate terror attacks. In the end, he was convicted in a Jerusalem court of five counts of murder in three separate terror attacks. Here are the victims he was accused of ordering hits on:

Father Tsibouktsakis Germanus, 35, was murdered on June 12, 2001, by terrorists who used guns that Barghouti supplied to shoot him as he drove along a highway near the city of Jericho.  Father Tsibouktsakis’s car had yellow Israeli license plates, and his murderers assumed he was a Jew. He was one of dozens of civilians shot as they drove along roads in Israel and the West Bank likely on Barghouti’s orders.

Father Tsibouktsakis was originally from Thessaloniki in Greece. A simple man, he worked in a dyeing factory in Thessaloniki and rode his bike in his spare time.  He became dedicated to religion and gave away all his possessions and moved to Israel to in 1990 to live and work in a remote monastery near Jericho where he tended the monastery’s garden and repaired ancient stone walls. At the time of his murder he achieved a life dream of becoming a priest and looked forward to ministering to his flock for many years to come - a dream that was cruelly stolen from him on Barghouti’s orders.

Yoela Hen, 45, was a mother of two who was driving to a family wedding along with her aunt, on January 15, 2002.  Just outside Jerusalem, Mrs. Hen pulled over to buy gas.  As she was filling her car, terrorists acting on Barghouti’s orders opened fire and shot her, killing her in front of her horrified aunt.

Yosef Habibi, 52, a businessman from the Israeli city of Herzliya near Tel Aviv, and Eli Dahan, 53, the owner of a popular cafe in the Israeli city of Lod, were among scores of people enjoying live music at a hot new Tel Aviv restaurant, the Sea Food Restaurant, on March 5, 2002. The place was filled with people singing, dancing, drinking, and eating.

Outside, 22-year-old Palestinian Authority official Ibrahim Hasuna stood atop a nearby overpass, armed with grenades, commando knives, and a long-barreled M-16 sourced by Barghouti, and began lobbing grenades and shooting into the packed restaurant. When the terrorist’s gun jammed, he ran into the restaurants and began slashing and stabbing customers. Yosef Habibi was shot dead; his wife Haya was stabbed and severely injured.  Eli Dahan was also killed instantly.

Police Sergeant Salim Barakat, a 33-year-old Druze Israeli, heard the commotion and rushed to the scene.  He managed to shoot the terrorist twice, but was stabbed to death when he bent over to see if he was still alive.

During his trial and questioning, Barghouti showed no remorse and insisted that Israel had no right to try him for the murder of its citizens and residents. He admitted that he planned terror attacks on behalf of Yasser Arafat, who gave him carte blanche to plan attacks. It was Barghouti’s job to provide money and weapons to those charged with carrying out terrorist attacks.

In 2004, Barghouti was sentenced to life in prison. He’s continued to be politically active, writing, contributing to political discussions, and granting interviews.

Mandela Did Not Praise Barghouti, Nor Compare Himself to Him

Much of the “Free Marwan” movement relies on spurious claims that Marwan Barghouti is the “Palestinian Mandela” and that Nelson Mandela himself compared Barghouti’s situation to his own.  The “Free Marwan” web page prominently features Mandela’s image and a made-up quote in support of Barghouti, in an obscene inversion of the truth. In fact, the smear that Mandela considered Barghouti his successor was wholly created by the Barghouti clan and the Palestinian Authority.

In 2002, while Barghouti was being put on trial, his lawyers flew to South African to cajole President Nelson Mandela to attend the trial. President Mandela rebuffed their offers, but that didn’t stop Barghouti’s legal team from claiming otherwise. “He said he was enthusiastic about coming,” Barghouti’s lawyer Khader Shkirat told The Guardian newspaper after the visit.  “He quoted South Africa’s most famous political prisoner as saying: ‘What is happening to Barghouti is exactly the same as what happened to me.” What no one told the credulous journalists at The Guardian is that claiming that Nelson Mandela said something isn’t the same thing as it being true. Since Mandela was never quoted supporting Barghouti in any other context, it’s left to us to wonder whether he was in fact quoted accurately by Barghouti’s legal team.

No, “World Experts” Did Not Find “Deep Flaws” With Israel’s Trial

Another plank in the “Free Marwan” movement is that Israel conducted a show trial and Barghouti’s guilt was a foregone conclusion despite his being innocent. Selma Dabbagh, a British based novelist and lawyer who signed Barghouti’s petition confidently – and wrongly – told The Guardian this week that “Marwan Baghouti’s trial was widely recognized as a sham.” Wikipedia, which recent reports have found has a problem with anti-Israel bias, similarly asserts that “An Inter-Parliamentary Union report found that Barghouti was not given a fair trial…”

Repeating this lie over and over does not make it true. When allegations that Barghouti did not receive a fair trial are based on any sort of tenuous evidence, the evidence given is that the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) – an obscure Swiss-based NGO – found fault with the trial. Setting aside for a moment that almost nobody has ever heard of the IPU before, they took issue with Barghouti’s trial not because it was unfair but because they felt he should have been afforded diplomatic immunity. In fact, the IPU’s own report notes that Israel conducted a fair and impartial trial. (The fact that Barghouti was acquitted on most charges would seem to indicate that his trial was real and not a “sham.”)

Like the IPU, Barghouti himself maintained that Israel had no authority to try him for murder. Yet Barghouti’s reasoning was somewhat different: an implacable foe of Israel, he claims that it is an illegitimate state and thus not deserving of trying him for murdering its citizens. He continues to refer to Israel’s “occupation” beginning in 1948, with the country’s founding, asserting that none of Israel is legitimate.

No, Barghouti is Not “The One Man Who Could Unite Palestinians”

Much of the breathless excitement for the “Free Marwan” campaign comes from the completely bogus claim that, in the words of a recent BBC report, he is “the one man who could unite Palestinians - and the various Palestinian political factions - across both Gaza and the occupied West Bank.  Opinion polls have consistently indicated that he is the most popular Palestinian leader…”  Readers might be forgiven for thinking that Barghouti was the new Churchill or Lincoln of our time. In reality, though Barghouti is somewhat popular, he’s no savior - and his popularity reflects growing antipathy towards Israel.

A major 2024 opinion poll found that Marwan Barghouti is more popular than he previously was in Gaza, with 29% of respondents mentioning his name when asked who they would like to see lead the Palestinian Authority after its current head, Mahmoud Abbas, steps down. (There’s no sign of Abbas relinquishing power; he’s currently in his 19th year of what was meant to be a four-year term.)

It’s not Barghouti’s supposed dedication to peace that’s improving his name recognition among Arabs in Gaza and elsewhere. It’s his steadfast refusal to recognize Israel’s legitimacy and his history of violence that contribute to his growing popularity in the region.

Barghouti’s Supporters Are Being Played

Marwan Barghouti’s family is still receiving “martyr’s” payments from the Palestinian Authority each month for his deadly terrorist activities. The Barghouti family is whitewashing his image, and showing off their impressive political reach while they do so.

Barghouti’s wife Fadwa, also a PA official, travels the world campaigning for his release and burnishing his image.  Barghouti’s son Arab has become a fiery orator in his own right, granting interviews and calling his father the only man who can unite all Palestinians in the international press. Barghoutis’ other son Sharaf is married to Nadeen Ayoub, the woman who successfully engineered her crowning this year as “Miss Universe Palestine” though she’d never competed in a beauty pageant before, and used her time in the spotlight to claim that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

Hollywood loves a redemption arc, but the “Free Marwan” petition isn’t a movie pitch — it’s a real-world campaign to launder a terrorist into a saint. By signing on, these celebrities are being used to whitewash murder, reward a cynical family brand, and pressure Israel to release a man who has never renounced the violence that put him in prison. That isn’t solidarity; it’s moral malpractice dressed up as justice.