Roughly 200 celebrities, including Sting, Paul Simon, Richard Branson, Margaret Atwood, Mark Ruffalo, and Ian McKellen, issued an open letter for Israel to release the convicted murderer and terrorist Marwan Barghouti, who reportedly served as the leader and commander of the Al-Aqsa Brigades that murdered over 1,000 Israelis during the Second Intifada.
The statement reads: “We express our grave concern at the continuing imprisonment of Marwan Barghouti, his violent mistreatment and denial of legal rights whilst imprisoned. We call upon the United Nations and the governments of the world to actively seek the release of Marwan Barghouti from Israeli prison.”
Barghouti, 66, was convicted on five counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison in 2004. Barghouti was found responsible for a June 2001 attack in which a Greek monk was murdered, a January 2002 terror attack on a gas station, a March 2002 attack at Tel Aviv’s Seafood Market restaurant, where three people were murdered, and a car bomb attack in Jerusalem.
In 2017, The New York Times was harshly criticized by many people, including Yair Lapid, former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren, and former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, for publishing an op-ed by Barghouti while failing to inform readers that he had been convicted of five counts of murder and was implicated in four other terror attacks.
“He was the leader of the second intifada before his arrest in 2002,” Jamestown reported of Barghouti.
Israeli Brigadier-General Yossi Kuperwasser wrote:
Barghouti was the leader and commander of the Al-Aqsa Brigades, the key terror component of Fatah that carried out many terror attacks throughout the Second Intifada. He was also the leader of the umbrella organization of the Islamic and national forces, which oversaw the entire range of terror activity during those years, and served as coordinator between the different organizations. … Documents captured by the IDF in “Operation Defensive Shield” (April 2002) shed light on Barghouti’s involvement in commanding the terror efforts under Arafat. In those documents, Barghouti asks Arafat to authorize payments to several lists of Fatah terrorists, while he himself was approached by local commanders who asked him to authorize payments to terrorists from their units.
According to data, during the Second Intifada, 764 of the 1,010 Israelis murdered in attacks from September 2000 – 2005 were civilians.
Just between May 2001 and May 2002, prior to the bombing at Hebrew University, there were these massacres: five Israelis murdered by a suicide bomber at the HaSharon Mall in May 2001; 21 Israelis murdered by a suicide bomber at the Dolphinarium Discotheque in June 2001; 15 Israelis murdered by a suicide bomber at Sbarro’s Pizza in August 2001, including six children and a 31-year-old woman who was the only child of her parents and was five months pregnant; 11 Israelis murdered in a bus bombing on Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem on December 1, 2001; 15 more Israelis murdered the very next day in a Haifa suicide bombing; 11 more Israelis murdered in a bus attack 10 days later in Immanuel; six Israelis murdered in an attack at a bat-mitzvah in January 2002; 11 more Jews killed in an attack on a yeshiva in March 2002, including a five-month-old child; 11 Jews murdered in a bombing at Café Moment in March 2002; 30 Israelis killed as they celebrated Passover in Netanya on March 27, 2002; 16 Israelis murdered in a suicide bombing four days later at the Matza restaurant, and 16 Israelis murdered in Rishon LeZion in May 2002.
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