To equate an anti-apartheid hero with a mass murderer is to recast the truth.
Let Marwan Barghouti, now imprisoned in Israel, go free. He is the Palestinian Nelson Mandela. He will bring peace to Israelis and Palestinians.
That’s the point in a letter that an external faculty member at Israel’s Reichman University has written to President Trump.
The author of the letter, former Israeli diplomat Alon Liel, says that Barghouti is viewed by many as “the most prominent Palestinian leader of our generation” and that he possesses a unique ability to unite the Palestinian people.
“The release of Marwan Barghouti could influence Palestinians and Israelis in a manner similar to the impact of Nelson Mandela’s release some 35 years ago,” wrote Liel to Trump.
To Liel, Barghouti has become in the eyes of his supporters “a symbol of his people’s hopes for freedom, dignity and reconciliation.”
Given’s Marwan Barghouti’s rap sheet, “freedom, dignity and reconciliation” under his leadership would spell another outburst of Palestinian terrorism, a la October 7.
Note:
• Nelson Mandela was never convicted of murder or any other violent crime. He was imprisoned because he opposed apartheid.
• Marwan Barghouti, in contrast, is a mass murderer, serving five life sentences plus 40 years in Israel.
• There are no reports that the voluble Barghouti has expressed any remorse for the murders he committed.
Barghouti is a founder of the Palestinian Fatah movement, which was a chief organizer of the 2000-05 second Intifada, during which Palestinians murdered 1,000 Israelis in terrorist attacks in restaurants, on buses, in city streets and elsewhere.
Barghouti was personally responsible for the murder of four Israelis and a Greek abbot.
To mention Barghouti and Mandela in the same sentence is to disgrace Mandela’s memory and his titanic achievement in leading the end of apartheid in South Africa. “Reconciliation” under Marwan Barghouti would mean the elimination of Israel and Israelis.
© IJN 2026
