Agence France-Press, a global news service to which many publications (including Breitbart News) subscribe, whitewashed the crimes of jailed Palestinian activist Marwan Barghouti on Friday, in publishing his tribute to the late South African leader Nelson Mandela. Nowhere in AFP’s article did it mention the fact that Barghuti was convicted of murder in connection with three terrorist attacks against civilians, including one inside Israel.
Instead, the AFP notes that since his imprisonment, “Barghuti has since said he never supported attacks on civilians inside Israel and in recent years has thrown his support behind peaceful resistance.” It also failed to note that more than a thousand Israelis, most of them civilians, lost their lives in the second intifada that Barghouti helped lead. Rather, the AFP gave Barghouti a platform to associate himself with the iconic Mandela.
The late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat also likened himself to Mandela–without noting that Mandela gave up the “armed struggle” shortly after negotiations began, and was willing to compromise his more radical goals in order to achieve democracy. Though Mandela turned to violence in his struggle against apartheid, he was never involved in the kind of mass murder that characterized Arafat’s most of career and Barghouti’s ill-fated intifada.
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