NEW YORK (EJP)—On April 17, The New York Times ran an op-ed by Marwan Barghouti, the Fatah leader jailed in Israel, and described him as “a Palestinian leader and parliamentarian” but failing to mention that he is also a convicted murdered who as the commander of Fatah’s Tanzim paramilitary offshooti was behind the murders of dozens of Israelis.
In his op-ed, Barghouti states that he was first arrested at age 15, then again at age 18, and he alleges physical abuse by Israeli interrogators.
But nowhere does the paper tell readers what he was convicted of doing. Barghouti was convicted in June 2004 of five murders, an Israeli at the Jewish settlement of Givat Zeev in 2002, three people at the Seafood Market restaurant in Tel Aviv the same year and the murder of Greek Orthodox priest he mistook for a rabbi. He was also convicted of one count each of attempted murder and membership in a terrorist organization.
The court ruled that Barghouti was directly responsible for a January 2002 terror attack on a gas station in Givat Zeev in which Israeli Yoela Chen was murdered. The attack, the judges said, was carried out at his direct order in revenge for the assassination of Raed Carmi. Barghouti had admitted his responsibility for this attack.
The attack in which a Greek monk was murdered in Ma’aleh Adumim on June of 2001 was also carried out at the instruction of Barghouti, the judges said.
The former Tanzim leader, the court ruled, also approved the March 2002 attack at Tel Aviv’s Seafood Market restaurant in which three people were murdered, as well as a car bomb attack in Jerusalem.
He was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences and 40 additional years in prison.
Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said the Times’ decision to “print an article by a terrorist without mentioning that he killed Jews in cold blood just because they were Jewish is not freedom of expression but anarchy."
“When a newspaper that considers itself important grants murderers a platform it gives legitimacy and a prize to terror,” she said.
Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid wrote in an op-ed in The Times of Israel that “the attempt by The New York Times ‘’to be balanced’ amuses Barghouti, who understands that this sacred attempt at balance creates equal standing between murderer and murdered, terrorist and victim, lie and truth."