Why is Hollywood campaigning to free convicted murderer Marwan Barghouti? - opinion

With millions facing hunger and displacement in Sudan, dissidents enduring prison and torture in Iran, and thousands of political prisoners languishing in Myanmar’s jails, the world is hardly suffering from a shortage of worthy humanitarian causes.

Yet some of the biggest names in the movie business have decided that what the world really needs is the release of Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian terrorist and convicted murderer serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison.

More than 20 actors associated with Marvel films have joined the “Free Marwan” campaign demanding his release, including Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, and Cate Blanchett.

After years of pretending to save the world while wearing capes, armor, and assorted forms of spandex, these Marvel veterans have settled on a new real-life mission: securing the freedom of a man convicted of directing terrorist attacks that killed innocent people.

The celebrities say they are concerned about Barghouti’s imprisonment and alleged mistreatment, while the campaign they have joined portrays his trial as illegitimate and politically motivated.

Barghouti convicted of five murders

The trouble is that Barghouti is not in prison because Israel objected to his politics.

In 2004, the Tel Aviv District Court convicted him of five murders stemming from three terrorist attacks, as well as attempted murder and membership in a terrorist organization. He was sentenced to five consecutive life terms plus 40 years.

The attempted-murder conviction involved a failed car-bomb attack near Jerusalem’s Malha Mall.

Nor was Barghouti some peripheral political figure who happened to get swept up in the violence of the Second Intifada.

He was one of Fatah’s most powerful leaders in Judea and Samaria, headed its Tanzim terror group, and, the court found, exercised authority over the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which carried out suicide bombings and shooting attacks.

The judges ruled that Barghouti issued orders to kill through the Brigades and found that he supplied terrorist field units with money and weapons through close associates.

The consequences were brutal. A January 2002 shooting near Givat Ze’ev, the judges concluded, was carried out on Barghouti’s instructions. The victim, Yoela Chen, a mother of two, had stopped at a gas station while on her way to a family wedding. Gunmen opened fire on their car, killing Chen and wounding her aunt.

Barghouti was also convicted for his role in the June 2001 murder of Father Georgios Tsibouktzakis, a Greek Orthodox monk from St. George’s Monastery in Wadi Kelt, who was shot while driving on the Jerusalem-Ma’aleh Adumim road.

And Barghouti also authorized the March 2002 terrorist attack at Tel Aviv’s Seafood Market restaurant, where the gunman opened fire on diners. Yosef Habi, 52, of Herzliya, and Eli Dahan, 53, of Lod, were killed, as was Salim Barakat, a 33-year-old Druze police officer from Yarka who confronted the attacker. Thirty-five others were wounded.

Hollywood has long specialized in suspending disbelief. But asking us to suspend it about Barghouti’s five murder convictions may be its most ambitious production yet.

The “Free Marwan” campaign portrays Barghouti as a symbol of Palestinian unity, and some supporters have gone so far as to compare him to Nelson Mandela.

Mandela is, of course, an enormously useful name when trying to turn a prison sentence into a halo.

But there is another inconvenient detail about Barghouti’s trial.

The same court that convicted him of murder found there was insufficient evidence to prove his guilt in another 21 deaths included in the indictment.

That sits rather awkwardly with the campaign’s contention that his trial was illegitimate and politically motivated. If the judges had been intent on convicting Barghouti of everything placed before them, they chose a remarkably inefficient way to do so.

Yet more than 200 figures from the worlds of culture and entertainment have reportedly backed the campaign.

Apparently, a Screen Actors Guild card now doubles as a graduate degree in counterterrorism.

Actors, of course, are perfectly entitled to express political opinions, and some may genuinely believe they are advancing the cause of peace. But when the victims are Israelis, something curious happens to their vocabulary.

Terrorism is recast as “resistance.” A convicted murderer becomes a “political prisoner.” And discussion of his punishment proceeds with surprisingly little attention paid to the five people whose murders put him behind bars.

Before Cumberbatch, Ruffalo, and their colleagues lend their names to Barghouti’s cause, they might undertake an exercise familiar to every actor preparing for a role.

Read the verdict. Read what Barghouti was convicted of doing.

It will not require a stunt double.

Then they can decide whether the great injustice in this story is really that Marwan Barghouti remains behind bars.

The movie business knows better than most how easily a story can be framed so that one character appears heroic and another villainous.

But this is not a movie.

Five innocent people were murdered, and Barghouti was convicted of directing or authorizing the attacks that killed them.

No amount of star power can change that.

The writer served as deputy communications director under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.