A cover story in Yedioth Ahronoth last Friday promised a special Israel Prison Service report that would be revealed for the first time and prove that Marwan Barghouti was “sending violent messages from prison.” B., described as a “senior intelligence official in the Israel Prison Service,” was quoted as saying: “He is a kind of Yahya Sinwar, and even more sophisticated.” I was intrigued.
Here is the body of evidence presented in the “revealed” report:
“He emerged from a reality of limited formal education, yet consistently and determinedly chose a path of knowledge, eventually earning advanced degrees. This detail in his biography is not marginal. His early awareness of a world in which knowledge is a privilege creates in him a perception of learning as a means of restoring dignity,” wrote M., from the Israel Prison Service’s “Strategy Division.” The article explained that “the perception that knowledge is a weapon appears throughout the report.” Oh no. Barghouti has figured us out.
Second piece of evidence: “Barghouti was authorized by the Palestinian Authority to award advanced degrees to prisoners studying underground as part of a project known as the ‘Al-Nour Academy’… He awards degrees to his supporters and withholds them from those he disapproves of.” Terrifying. Worse than Sinwar.
The very next sentence in the article explains that the project was shut down 15 years ago. Indeed, a highly current piece of evidence of involvement in terrorism.
It gets even better:
“The document reveals a test questionnaire for students written by Barghouti. The questions… do not deal with theories of nonviolent protest or peace studies, but with the Mossad, the Shin Bet, the history of intelligence, and interrogation methods. Among the questions: ‘What is unique about the Mossad?’; ‘What is the high point in the intelligence-gathering work of a member of the Shin Bet?’; ‘Which heads of the Shin Bet submitted their resignations?’; ‘What event gave the Mossad a worldwide reputation?’; ‘What promises appear in the secret agreement between the Jewish Agency and the Maronite Church?’; ‘Did experience during the Second Intifada prove that targeted killing is one of the important components of electronic espionage by the Hebrew state?’; ‘Is the Shin Bet’s work in the Jewish sector considered more difficult than in the Palestinian sector?’”; and “Present the interrogation methods used by the three Israeli security agencies against Palestinians, and give the best way to deal with them.”
The document concludes that for Barghouti, learning is an “instrument of struggle.”
Barghouti is trying to teach people how to deal with Shin Bet interrogations. What comes next, a handbook? The far right has already done that.
The fourth — quarter — piece of evidence linking Barghouti to terrorism, according to the report, is the statement that “a state does not receive independence, a state takes independence, and for a state to take independence, blood must be spilled.” The statement has been attributed to Barghouti for 35 years. It has nothing to do with his time in prison.
The report and the article are so embarrassing that I began to wonder: Could this actually be Barghouti’s way of laughing at us? After all, there is no better fuel for his international campaign for release. The Prison Service report accuses him of trying to legitimize Hamas. The evidence is his involvement in the Prisoners’ Document, which was jointly produced by Hamas and Fatah in 2006.
The Israel Prison Service has long since become a political tool in the service of Itamar Ben-Gvir. The Prison Service commissioner functions as the minister’s political assistant, allowing him to do as he pleases within the organization, including taking humiliating photographs with Barghouti.
Barghouti is a prisoner serving multiple life sentences who was convicted of involvement in five murders and has spent 24 years in prison. There is no Israeli government capable of releasing him, certainly not outside the context of securing the release of Israeli hostages.
In November, elections were scheduled in the Palestinian Authority for the Legislative Council. This is an opportunity — one forced upon Mahmoud Abbas — to cultivate new leadership in the Palestinian Authority, rather than Hamas. Barghouti could be an important player in developing such leadership.
Let us hope that someone in the security establishment knows how to deal with him with considerably more wisdom than the Prison Service.