{Originally posted to the authors’ website, This Ongoing War}
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.
We have strongly negative personal feelings about Barghouti. He paid for the making (by a clansman of his) of the explosives-filled guitar that destroyed Jerusalem’s Sbarro pizzeria in August 2001, and along with it the lives of our daughter Malki and many other innocents. We sat through his 2002 trial in a Tel Aviv court-room.
And he personally sheltered in his own home several of the members of the Hamas gang that executed the Sbarro bombing attack and massacre in order to protect them from Israeli security who were doing a search.
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 [] of Barghouti. We’re fairly certain he knows the facts we have just mentioned. But, like many people of similar outlook, it’s doubtful he gives a damn.
Click here for past Barghouti posts of ours.