Photo Credit: Kobi Gideon/Flash 90
A Palestinian child admires a mural of jailed Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti at the Qalandiya checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem.

{Originally posted to the authors’ website, This Ongoing War}

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.

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  [Twitter link] 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.

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Frimet and Arnold Roth began writing and speaking publicly soon after the murder of their fifteen year-old daughter Malki Z"L in the Jerusalem Sbarro massacre, August 9, 2001 (Chaf Av, 5761). They have both been, and are, frequently interviewed for radio, television and the print media, including CNN, BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, Al-Jazeera, and others. Their blog This Ongoing War deals with the under-appreciated price of living in a society afflicted by terrorism which, they contend, means the entire world. Frimet is a native of Queens, NY while her husband was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia. They brought their family to settle in Jerusalem in 1988. They co-founded the Malki Foundation in 2001 and are deeply involved in its work as volunteers. They can be reached at [email protected] .