The Truth About Marwan Barghouti

An arch-terrorist is the new heartthrob of the beautiful set.

When the Israeli government first released people associated with the March 21, 2002, suicide bombing in which my son and I were injured, I wondered if they would have let the same people out if some of the victims had last names like Rabin, Peres, or Netanyahu. Justice is a fickle thing, and what may be justice for you is not necessarily justice for somebody else. Look at Hunter Biden (it’s okay to squint). He should be in jail for drugs, or on a gun charge, or for his money schemes to get rich off the Big Guy, or for his failure to pay taxes. But he is not in jail, and his “presidential pardon” was essentially a blank piece of paper with the only recorded actual signature made by the hand of Joe Biden. It’s easy having two-tiered justice; just ask the British who used to call their bland prime minister Two-Tier Keir.

Just as indigestion may periodically afflict a person, the calls to release mass murderer Marwan Barghouti come in waves, the most recent involving actors in Marvel movies demanding the release of the PLO killer. I wonder if those Hollywood clowns would sign the request for his release if they knew that he had ordered an attack that had killed their loved ones. If their spouse was dead and Barghouti stood at the top of the terror chain in the attack, would they still man up and demand his release from Israeli prison? I have a feeling that they wouldn’t. The Kennedy family lawyers are always present at every hearing for Sirhan Sirhan and have made sure that he never sees parole for his murder of RFK Sr. It’s easy to ask for the release of a killer when one has no skin in the game.

Historically, there have been individuals on both sides of good and evil who could be described as irreplaceable. When the U.S. ambushed and shot down Admiral Yamamoto’s plane, the Japanese cried foul. The U.S. did not apologize and said that the brilliant naval strategist was the equivalent of an aircraft carrier. Who could have replaced Hitler in putting Germany together to take on the world and almost succeed? Oppenheimer in the bomb project was indispensable. And Marwan Barghouti was that essential right hand to Yasser Arafat: he turned the PLO chairman’s desire to destroy Israel into actual attacks with terrorists, weapons, targets, and goals. He was intentionally tried in a civilian court, so that the world would not say that a military court had unfairly judged him. The five cases brought in the complaint against him were only a portion of the many attacks in which he was involved. Prosecutors chose the murder cases with the highest likelihood of conviction; that does not mean that there are not tens of other cases — including our own — in which Barghouti was involved at some level of planning or financing. Marwan Barghouti was a key element in the second intifada, in which 1,100 Israelis were murdered, and over 10,000 were injured. He has never denied his activities. He has never apologized for them. And he has never sworn off terror. He speaks in the forked tongue beloved by the West: he waxes on about wanting peace while making it clear that his fees in the Kill the Jews Union are paid up in full.

So why do those on the Left love Barghouti, the mass murderer? Sting, Paul Simon, and others previously signed a letter demanding his release. What always happens in cases like this is that supposedly decent people in the West find it hard to say that they want Jews dead. It sounds so 1942, so Nazi. So they are big on euphemisms: from the river to the sea (and all the 8 million Jews in that space dead). Intifada revolution: we’ll kill the Jews wherever we find them. So Barghouti the Murderer is given a quick shower and haircut and called “the Palestinian Nelson Mandela.” And with that, the Hollywood and music grandees can whitewash his bloodletting during the early years of the intifada. In our attack, the indictments show that Barghouti gave $600 to the terrorists who planned the suicide bombing. In that attack, a young woman pregnant with twins was murdered along with her husband. Another fellow, whom I saw on the sidewalk, was also killed. Eighty-one people ended up in hospitals. Does the Marvel crew really support the murder of pregnant Jewish women? They can never say that they do, and you would never catch them dead suggesting the same. But in their sterilized manner, they support the guy who minimally knew about the attack beforehand and contributed to its success. Would Paul Simon, an embarrassment to Jews everywhere, wish that I pay some guy to break into his house and burn it down? Would he write a letter demanding my release from jail, because — you know — there are bigger things in the world than burned-out brownstones in New York City?

If you wish to find centers of mental retardation, you couldn’t do better than starting with Hollywood and Western universities. In both places, you have people who, like Hitler, are technically very bright but are — like Hitler — so demented in their thoughts and views that they are willing to support evil in the guise of good. They are wealthy losers, dumber than a signpost, people whose Jew hatred burns in their heart but through their cowardice need to use obtuse methods of expressing it. It’s hard for them to say or write, “We demand the release of the one man who spilled gallons of Jewish blood! His usefulness to society is back in Ramallah and not rotting away in an Israeli jail for the murders he committed. Let him go and let’s start the Jewish burial processions again!” That is what they think, but they are too timid to write the same. So they dress up a cretin as a righteous fighter for his people and demand his release from those nasty Israeli Nazis. I can only wish that they should spend as much time in hospitals as we did — with as many surgeries. They deserve no less.

There will never be peace with the Palestinians because, as even Bill Clinton belatedly admitted, Arafat’s goal was never peace but rather the murder of Jews and destruction of Israel. Nobody, not the feckless Palestinian Authority nor Hamas, is interested in living in Kumbaya with the Jews. Each schemes to get rid of the Jews and take the land for the Arabs. Adding Barghouti would be a big win for the killers, so the Western friends of the Palestinians are asked to put their name to the request to spring him from jail. If he had said that he wants to be a Gandhi and has sworn off violence forever, the Palestinians would ask the Israelis to keep him in jail even after he dies. His value is in knowing how to plan, organize, and execute attacks that leave lots of Jews dead and wounded. Israel and Israelis are not interested in dying for the Marvel Supermorons. May they soon find out how mortal they really are. May they get sick and hover between life and death as so many did here after nail-laden bombs made by Barghouti’s Fatah thugs detonated in malls, cafes, and on buses. It’s a zero-sum game. They want Barghouti out to kill more Jews; I look forward to reading their obituaries with pictures of them wearing their Spandex costumes that could not save them from cancer or a car crash. They support the killer; I support those who wish to live. They can take their movies and shove them up their capes.