The open letter, promoted by the “Free Marwan” campaign and highlighted by left-wing outlets including the Guardian, calls on the United Nations and “governments of the world” to “actively seek the release of Marwan Barghouti from Israeli prison,” claiming he has endured “violent mistreatment and denial of legal rights whilst imprisoned” and arguing his freedom is key to reviving a Palestinian statehood process.
Signatories include a long list of writers, actors, musicians, and media personalities — among them novelists Margaret Atwood, Philip Pullman, Zadie Smith, actors Sir Ian McKellen, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton, Josh O’Connor, and Mark Ruffalo, broadcaster Gary Lineker, billionaire Sir Richard Branson, and musicians Sting, Paul Simon, Annie Lennox, and Brian Eno, as well as Stephen Fry and others from the British and American entertainment worlds.
The text describes Barghouti as “the most popular Palestinian leader” and claims his 2004 conviction followed a “deeply flawed” trial condemned by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, insisting Israel’s refusal to release him — including in recent prisoner swaps — is driven not by security concerns but by fear of the influence he might wield in uniting Palestinian factions and building “momentum to a two-state solution.”
Campaign organizers explicitly model their effort on the cultural movement that helped secure Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, even citing a 2002 remark attributed to Mandela that “what is happening to Barghouti is the same as what happened to me,” and quoting supporters who say his release “would mark a turning point in this long struggle and bring much-needed hope to all of us.”
In reality, Barghouti is a longtime Fatah strongman from the West Bank — Fatah being the dominant party in the Palestinian Authority — who rose through Yasser Arafat’s movement, headed Fatah in the West Bank, led its Tanzim militia, and was widely reported to have served as a founding commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah’s terror arm that carried out numerous shootings and bombings against Israelis during the Second Intifada.
In 2004, an Israeli court convicted Barghouti on five counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.
Judges found him responsible for a June 2001 drive-by shooting that killed a Greek Orthodox monk on the road between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim, a January 2002 shooting at a gas station near Jerusalem in which an Israeli was murdered, and a March 2002 attack at Tel Aviv’s Seafood Market restaurant where three people were murdered, as well as a failed suicide bombing outside a Jerusalem mall.
The court also held Barghouti morally responsible for additional attacks carried out by cells under his command and sentenced him to five consecutive life terms plus additional years.
Israeli officials and security analysts have long identified him as one of the principal architects of the Second Intifada’s terror campaign that left more than 1,000 Israelis dead in shootings, bombings, and other attacks deliberately targeting civilians.
Israel’s Channel 12’s chief political correspondent Amit Segal responded to the Hollywood petition in a sharply worded post on X, warning that the signatories are whitewashing Barghouti’s record.
“Marwan Barghouti is a cold-blooded mass murderer, responsible for the brutal deaths of dozens of Israelis,” Segal wrote, calling comparisons to Mandela “a grotesque insult to history and humanity.”
“His hands are soaked with the blood of innocents: wedding guests murdered in January 2002, families slaughtered at a restaurant in March 2002, and others,” he added, charging that celebrities like Mark Ruffalo, Sting, Naomi Klein, Richard Branson, and Ian McKellen “aren’t applauding a freedom fighter” but instead “sanitizing the crimes of a serial killer.”
Media watchdog HonestReporting likewise responded in an X thread on Thursday, linking to its earlier in-depth backgrounder on Barghouti and warning that the “Palestinian Nelson Mandela” branding is a media construct that erases his years of terrorism and incitement.
The group traced his trajectory from joining Fatah as a teenager, to being jailed by Israel in his youth for involvement in terror, to leading Tanzim and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and heading an umbrella framework of armed factions responsible for much of the Second Intifada’s violence.
HonestReporting noted that while Barghouti at times nodded toward a two-state outcome, he has repeatedly championed “resistance in all its forms,” urged boycotts of Israel, and demanded that the Palestinian Authority halt security coordination with the Jewish state — moves analysts say would fuel further terror attacks.
As late as December 2023, after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, Barghouti smuggled out a message calling on Palestinians in the West Bank, including members of the PA security forces, to join the “resistance” and turn their weapons on Israel.
The terrorist’s name has surfaced repeatedly in high-stakes negotiations.
Hamas demanded his release in the October hostage-prisoner swap that saw Israel free 1,968 Palestinian detainees in exchange for the last 20 living Israeli hostages — many of those freed being hardened terrorists serving long or multiple life sentences — but Jerusalem refused to add Barghouti to the list.
His wife, Fadwa, has spent years lobbying governments and international organizations to press for his freedom, arguing he alone can unite rival factions and lead a renewed peace process.
The effort to recast Barghouti as a misunderstood political prisoner, however, is not new.
In 2017, the New York Times came under fire for publishing a Barghouti op-ed that initially identified him only as “a Palestinian leader and parliamentarian,” failing to tell readers he was a convicted terror leader serving multiple life terms.
Only after public outcry — including criticism from Israeli officials and American Jewish groups — did the paper append an editor’s note belatedly acknowledging that Barghouti had been convicted on five counts of murder and membership in a terrorist organization.
The new “Free Marwan” letter also comes against the backdrop of a broader Hollywood campaign targeting Israel since October 7.
In early September, roughly 1,200 actors and film professionals — including Ruffalo, Swinton, Cynthia Nixon, Javier Bardem, Adam McKay, and others — signed a separate pledge urging a boycott of Israeli film institutions they accused of being “complicit” in “war crimes” and “genocide” in Gaza.
Later that month, a different group of more than 1,200 entertainment industry figures signed a counter-letter rejecting that boycott as “lies dressed up as justice” that “weaponized” artists’ names and amplified antisemitic propaganda while shielding Hamas from blame.
That counter-letter, detailed by Breitbart News in September, urged colleagues who want peace to “call for the immediate release of the remaining hostages” — who at that time were still being held in Gaza — support filmmakers who create dialogue across communities, and “stand against Hamas” rather than blacklisting Israeli cultural institutions.
Now, many of the original boycott signatories are lending their names to a campaign centered not on film institutions but on a convicted terror commander whose brigades gunned down worshipers, commuters, and families at restaurants — and whose record is being recast by Western celebrities as a Mandela-style struggle for “freedom and dignity” rather than a bloody Second Intifada legacy that most Israelis have not forgotten.
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jklein@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
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