Marwan Barghouti is not just the most famous Palestinian political prisoner in Israeli jails. He’s the most popular Palestinian political leader hands down. In the past, he’s negotiated with Israeli authorities on a number of critical issues involving Israeli-Palestinian relations. He’s been willing to serve as a bridge between the two parties despite the life sentence he’s serving for commanding Palestinian resistance during the Second Intifada.
But in light of the looming Jerusalem Intifada and Israel’s increasing obtuseness, Barghouti took a radically new tack. He smuggled a letter from prison that called for a renewal of armed resistance against Israel:
Jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouthi urged the Palestinian leadership to give its backing to “armed resistance” against Israel in a letter published Tuesday as a wave of violence surged.
…In a letter to mark 10 years since the death of veteran leader Yasser Arafat, Barghouthi said that “choosing global and armed resistance” was being “faithful to Arafat’s legacy, to his ideas, and his principles for which tens of thousands died as martyrs.”
“It is imperative to reconsider our choice of resistance as a way of defeating the occupier.”
His letter pointedly included other forms of resistance as legitimate as well. But the dramatic policy change involved his call for armed struggle in light of Israel’s increasingly bellicose and provocative acts in Jerusalem’s Palestinian neighborhoods and on the Temple Mount.
The fact that Barghouti was able to smuggle the “incendiary” (to the Israelis) letter from a tightly guarded prison has to be terribly embarrassing to them. To take revenge, the prisoner has been placed in solitary confinement (Hebrew) for a week, where he presumably won’t be able to have any contact with other Palestinian prisoners or the outside world. While revenge may feel sweet for a time, Israel hasn’t bargained for the fact that punishing it’s most important, popular prisoner will further around anger among Palestinians. They are already a tinder box. This will light the match and certainly more acts of resistance will result.
Marwan Barghouti being an intelligent man, I presume he has thought out the consequences of his remarks. Myself, I agree with him. But he might be a bit out of date.
So what are the consequences of a new intifada? I don’t know enough to say. What is Netanyahu’s plan?
Palestine can already espy its Mandela. The waiting is now for Israel’s Frederik de Klerk. Could it be that ultimately s/he has to be found in the diaspora?
The Jewish Daily Forward reports that Adelson, who recently indulged in the brutish acknowledgment of reality that his billions allow, might have alienated and embarrassed many American Jews, as I remarked before.
“He may have stepped farther outside of the American Jewish mainstream than ever before, however, in statements at a conference in Washington on November 9 in which he seemed to write off Israel as a democratic state.
“I don’t think the Bible says anything about democracy,” Adelson said. “[God] didn’t talk about Israel remaining as a democratic state… Israel isn’t going to be a democratic state — so what?” “
Many Jewish organisations are remarkably reluctant in answering questions about Adelson’s remark and Mort Klein, the President of the Zionist Organisation of America, has even made a feeble attempt to explain it away as some kind of a joke.
Yet I think it is all to the good that the American Jewish mainstream finally acknowledges that Israel, in its present set up, can only make a charade of democracy – as South Africa did in the apartheid era.
Read more: http://forward.com/articles/209072/sheldon-adelsons-dismissal-of-israeli-democracy-dr/#ixzz3ItvLKlUZ
Barghouti is no rock star. Barghouti’s “fight for liberation in Palestine” involved three terror attacks in which five Israelis were murdered, not to mention his leadership of a terror organization. The court determined that “Barghouti was responsible for providing the field units with money and arms” and that the attacks were sometimes “based on instructions” he received personally from Yasser Arafat.
Specifically, the court found Barghouti responsible for a June 2001 attack in Maale Adumim in which a Greek monk was murdered, a January 2002 terror attack in Givat Zeev, a March 2002 attack at Tel Aviv’s Seafood Market restaurant in which three people were murdered, and a car bomb attack in Jerusalem.
You make him sound like a well-trained Zionist apparatchik. How many Israeli terrorists have scored just as decisively as Barghouti? Dozens, no doubt. Your comments make it sound that the oppressed, dispossessed, jailed, tortured, victimized people have no right to defend themselves, to push back, that Israel sets the status quo and anything else is, well, “terrorism.” The right to defend one’s home is universally accepted, it is not terrorism. Face the music, Zionist mouthpiece.
The three people murdered were suspected Zionist terrorists.
Actually, the Greek monk who was murdered wasn’t a terrorist, and neither were the three diners murdered at the Tel Aviv Seafood Market restaurant.
BTW. Bargouthi was charged with 33 additional counts of murder, but those charges were dropped due to insufficent evidence. So, I guess he wasn’t railroaded in court either.
David. What’s really eating you? What’s missing in your life?
It’s you I’m missing! Come and straighten me out, give me the scoop, the gospel, the real deal!
If they were not suspected terrorists then they were unfortunate collateral damage from an assault aimed at a Zionist terrorist. As we all know, these Zionist terrorists habitually hides themselves among civilians so you gotta expect some civilian casualties.
For all of it, not a single Zionist terrorist is imprisoned anywhere in Palestine, but were there even one such, they would be consigned to solitary in retaliation.
Bloody Barghouti doesn’t build bridges, he burns them down.
Here is what responsible Jews and Arabs are saying and doing to avoid more bloodshed and disorder; paying particular note to Israeli President Rivlin, who seems a more responsible leader than most.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4590433,00.html
“Responsible Jews and ARabs” are people committed to the status quo. It is precisely the status quo that is unacceptable. Have you given up on thinking altogether?
The oppressed, dispossessed victims pushed back in Libya, Syria and Iraq. Look what they got for it. Maybe the ‘cooler heads’ are onto something.
BTW, David. Where are you from?
*he won’t respond*
Oh yes, we know the dynamic — bombing countries into “democracy!” It worked so well in Iraq, for example. I am from all over and I get to see the fruits of US/Zionist strategies including the ruins of Iraq, Syria and Libya. The endgame is the balkanization of the Arab world entirely. Israel — a population less than New York City — will police these hundreds of millions of people in the name of freedom.
I think that the term/concept ‘Democracy’ is a sham. It’s what they tell you before you vote and then the ensuing actions turn the governments into psuedo-Democracy or ‘fascism lite’ with a democratically elected leader{sic} who uses his executive power to do what he wants done.
Akin to N’s ‘The New Idolatry’.
“The fact that Barghouti was able to smuggle the “incendiary” (to the Israelis) letter from a tightly guarded prison has to be terribly embarrassing to them.”
This is not the first time the writings of Marwan Barghouthi have been smuggled from prison: his latest book on peaceful resistance was smuggled out page by page and so was his doctor degree.
Joseph Dana wrote a very insightful and long article about Marwan Barghouthi three years ago, including an interview with his wife. Marwan Barghouthi spent three years in solitary confinement in a cell measuring 1 by 1,5 meter.
“Page by page, Marwan Barghouti’s anti-war tome walked out of prison”
“His doctorate, like the recent book, was smuggled out of jail one page at a time and took years to complete.”
http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/books/page-by-page-marwan-barghoutis-anti-war-tome-walked-out-of-prison#page1
After Mandela’s court case Amnesty International could not take him on as a prisoner of conscience (the only status recognised then by AI) because his was not a case of non-violent resistance. Though the South African Vitas probably heartily approved the decision caused a lot of soul searching within Amnesty International and its then Secretary General, Peter Benenson, declared:
‘We recognize, with great sympathy, that where a Government has shown itself contemptuous of the Rule of Law and impervious to peaceful persuasion, that those to whom it has denied full human rights as set out in the United Nations Declaration, may feel or find themselves forced into a position in which the only road to freedom is violence. Such people, though they cannot qualify for adoption as Prisoners of Conscience within the definition of Amnesty International, can be, and often are, our active concern on humanitarian grounds.’
Amnesty’s website further says:
“If Nelson Mandela’s case was to arise today, we would call for him to be released on the grounds that he had not been given a fair trial – an area we have worked on since 1964. Unjust systems cannot deliver just verdicts or sentences, and the apartheid system founded on racism did not give Nelson Mandela a fair trial, nor could it have done.”
To me the relevance of both these statements to Barghouti’s case is obvious.
“Unjust systems cannot deliver just verdicts or sentences”
And where may there be a ‘just system’?.
The whole sentence sounds ‘oxymoronic’ to me.
A piece from Jacobin magazine on the trial of Rasmea Odeh: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/11/enforcing-apartheid/ .
I hope that makes the hasbarists who comment on this site spit with rage.
There is no evidence that Ms Odeh was raped in prison in 1969, or that she confessed to a crime she didn’t commit. That’s why Judge Drain kept out the PTSD defense. He couldn’t move the trial to Israel, could he?
If there are grounds for an appeal, ie, judicial error, than her defense should file an appeal.
Strelnikov, does Ms Odeh have a legal defense fund? Maybe you should post the info. That might help her along.
I would think that imprisonment by Israel would be interpreted as a sign of character and decency, a positive recommendation for entry into the “land of the free.” Instead, Israeli war criminals come and go as they like, many even relocate to the US.
@ Vita: When hasbarists tell you “there is no evidence that…” one’s automatic response is: gee, I guess that means there’s plenty of evidence.
This subject is OFF-TOPIC. Do not continue it in this thread.
Hi,
In the light of M Marwan Barghouthi’s original declaration to his people, I cannot say he’s « Calling for Armed Resistance ». Here are his own words, from Point 3 (the single occurrence of “arms” in the declaration):
Point 3. « […] comes through the continuation of the process of national reconciliation […] adherence to the option of the comprehensive resistance* and with the rifle […] »
* this term he repeats 3-4 times in its declaration.
M Barghouthi’s original declaration in Arabic (مروان البرغوثي: يجب اعادة الاعتبار لخيار المقاومة) is available here on Maan News:
http://www.maannews.net/arb/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=739044&MARK=%D9%85%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%86%20%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A8%D8%B1%D8%BA%D9%88%D8%AB%D9%8A
/me add Kuddos to your commitment Richard.
M Barghouthi’s declaration should first be assessed from the perspectives of International law. As Ms Samah Jabr wrote, « After all, without the right to remain alive, to be safe from attack, to defend oneself against attack, the other rights become meaningless. Fundamental to that right is exercising the right of self-defense. » (The Palestinian Resistance: Its Legitimate Right and the Moral Duty. 2003)
Salute.