THE BEST (CONVICTED MASS MURDERER) OF HIS GENERATION

THE NEW YORK TIMES CONTINUES ITS PUBLIC RELATIONS CAMPAIGN FOR MARWAN BARGHOUTI, CANDIDATE FOR PALESTINIAN "PRESIDENT" AND CONVICTED MASS-MURDERER OF JEWS

An Anti-Israeli Terrorist Who's "Among the Best of His Generation"
Sunday's NYT story by Steven Erlanger from Israel is headlined, "A Possible Partner, Viewed Warily in Israel." The story's cut-out line: "A jailed Palestinian politician is admired, but with reservations." And the front-page teaser on the same man reads: "Marwan Barghouti, the 45-year-old Palestinian politician and presidential candidate who sits in an Israeli jail, has both admirers and detractors in Israel."

None of those bits gives a hint that Barghouti is a convicted anti-Israeli terrorist.

The opening sentence to Erlanger's actual story further polishes Barghouti's reputation: "Marwan Barghouti, the 45-year-old Palestinian politician and presidential candidate who sits in an Israeli jail, is widely considered to be among the best of his generation: charming, articulate and intelligent, even if a bit of a showboat. Many Israelis regard Mr. Barghouti, fluent in Hebrew and English, as a future Palestinian leader. But his record is a complicated one, even his Israeli admirers agree. As Israelis contemplate whether Mr. Barghouti might be a man they could work with in the post-Arafat era, his past would seem to put him beyond the pale, at least for a current set of Israeli and American leaders who vow to combat terrorism and demand a Palestinian leadership that disavows it. In May, Mr. Barghouti was convicted in an Israeli court on five counts of murder, one of attempted murder, conspiracy to murder, and activity and membership in a terrorist organization. He was sentenced to five life sentences, plus 40 years for five murders. Mr. Barghouti did little to contest his trial, called it a political show and insisted that he was always a political leader, not a military one."

Erlanger does give some Israelis space to denounce Barghouti: "But there are also a number of prominent Israelis who know Mr. Barghouti well who say they are deeply troubled by his turn toward violence against Israeli soldiers and civilians as a tactic of the Palestinian struggle for an independent state. Yossi Beilin is a prominent Israeli politician of the left, a central figure in every serious negotiation with the Palestinians in the past 15 years. Mr. Beilin deeply believes in a final settlement that would create a Palestinian state on nearly all of the West Bank and Gaza. But Mr. Beilin says he has lost respect for Mr. Barghouti, who privately threatened violence against Israel in May 2000, as President Clinton's peace initiative was failing. Mr. Barghouti also was a prime instigator of the intifada, which began a few months later and has cost more than 4,000 lives on both sides -- nearly three-quarters of them Palestinian."

Erlanger's soft story follows in the steps of fellow Middle East reporter Greg Myre's gloss of Barghouti's terrorist conviction from last Thursday, which waited until the 22nd paragraph to discuss the reason Barghouti was in prison.