DON'T FREE BARGHOUTI

Mandela He Ain't (BACKSPIN)
According to Toronto Star correspondent Oakland Ross, there's only way Israel can demonstrate its sincerity for peace:

"I would be very surprised if they release him," says Tamar Hermann, director of the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University. "That would be a big move. Releasing him would have signalled that Israel is serious (about peace)."

By the same token, failure to release the 48-year-old Barghouti would suggest that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is not serious about reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians, or not now.

Releasing Barghouti would definitely send a signal to the Palestinians; how the competing Fatah-Hamas leaders would interpret it is anyone's guess; Ross' fallacy is that keeping Barghouti behind bars means that Israel is not serious about peace.

So why does the Star's reporter think that freeing Barghouti is the benchmark for Israeli intentions? Probably because Ross views Barghouti as the second coming of Nelson Mandela:

Many say comparisons with Nelson Mandela are exaggerated, but the parallels do exist.

Like the hero of South Africa's long struggle against white rule, Barghouti joined an established liberation organization and soon began to inveigh against its older leaders' complacency and corruption.

Like Mandela, his initial political credibility arose from his involvement in street-level politics.

Like Mandela, Barghouti was soon captured by a more powerful enemy, charged and convicted of violent crimes and locked away.

Seized by Israeli forces in April 2002, he was convicted and sentenced two years later and has remained behind bars ever since.

Although Mandela headed Umkhonto we Sizwe, the so-called "armed wing" of the African National Congress, he never attacked civilians. As South African journalist Benny Pogrund wrote:

The armed struggle was founded on two fundamental principles: First, violence should not be directed against civilians but against property and military targets. This derived from the ANC’s history of non-violent protest, and its belief in the principle of non-violent political action to effect change as preached and practised by Mahatma Gandhi in fighting British rule in India....

Second, not killing whites was a pragmatic strategy aimed at keeping the door open for them to change. The argument was that violent and indiscriminate attacks would so frighten whites about their future that their determination to resist change would be deepened. Giving this approach even greater depth was the fact that whites were members of the ANC, and some occupied high leadership positions, alongside black, colored and Asian South Africans.

Unlike Mandela, Barghouti was convicted in a civilian court, for his involvement in the murder of five Israelis. (He was charged with murdering 30 more). He may be an influential and expressive "firebrand." But Barghouti is still a terrorist.