Newsweek Gives Op-Ed To Wife Of Palestinian Terrorist Lamenting Her Husband’s Hunger Strike. He Got Caught Eating Cookies.
In a slap in the face to the Jewish victims of Palestinian terrorism, Newsweek has given a platform to the wife of a convicted murderer. On Thursday, the American news outlet published an op-ed by Fadwa Barghouti, the spouse of Marwan Barghouti, who “was convicted on five counts of murder for the deaths of four Israelis and a Greek monk, as well as attempted murder, conspiracy to murder, and membership of a terrorist organization,” according to the BBC.Melanie Phillips: Trump reframes the Middle East war zone
While Newsweek has yet to publish sympathetic editorials by the friends, family, and loved ones of like-minded "freedom fighters" Ted Bundy, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, or the Manchester bomber Salman Abedi, the publication chose to honor Fadwa Barghouti with a piece entitled, “My Husband Is Starving In An Israeli Jail – We’ll Be Reunited When Palestine Is Free.”
If you take the op-ed at face-value, it comes off as an emotional, nearly elegiac plea to her supposedly heroic husband’s inhumane Israeli captors. To say that Fadwa’s article is grossly misleading would be a profound understatement.
The op-ed is riddled with fabrications and omissions of truth.
First of all, Fadwa’s husband, Marwan, isn’t starving. Far from it. In fact, he’s munching on cookies and candy even as he claims to be carrying out a hunger strike.
As The Daily Wire reported earlier this month, “Israel … released a video allegedly showing [Marwan Barghouti] the leader of an internationally-publicized Palestinian hunger strike, eating cookies and candy in his prison cell.”
The Palestinians will also have got the message loud and clear. Trump called for a resolution of the Palestinian issue, not for a Palestinian state. Standing next to Abbas, Trump linked Palestinian behavior to the Islamic terrorist attack in Manchester this week.Anne Bayefsky: A Council America Shouldn't Keep
“Peace can never take root,” he said, “in an environment where violence is tolerated, funded and even rewarded.”
In other words, while pointedly commending Abbas for working toward peace “in good faith,” Trump has now set him a bar so high – renouncing the war against Israel – that Abbas will never clear it.
Abbas understands Trump is taking the ground from beneath his feet. The conflict, he claimed, was not about religion but occupation. Put aside the fact that, for Abbas, the whole of Israel is “occupied” land. He knows that reframing the Palestinian issue as a religious war is deadly to that cause.
A few speeches, of course, don’t make a policy. How Trump now acts in the Middle East, and particularly toward Iran, remains to be seen. His presidency itself could crash and burn either from his temperamental flaws or the rolling coup being mounted against him in Washington. And his team contains individuals who are clearly not on the same foreign policy page.
Trump has stamped his authority abroad. Now he has to save his presidency at home and overcome his personal frailties to become the statesman of which his trip has given us the first real signs.
On Thursday a U.S. Senate subcommittee will meet to 'assess' the Human Rights Council. Reconsidering U.S. membership and walking away-now-is the right choice. Successive White Houses have tried and failed to correct the entrenched anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias of the council (and commission) for decades Simply put, the Lilliputians have more votes.
The council has condemned Israel more than any of the other 192 U.N. states, notwithstanding 500,000 dead in Syria, starvation and mass torture in North Korea, and systematic, deadly oppression in Iran. Saudi Arabia and China have used their seats on the council to avoid condemnation altogether. Under a sanctions resolution adopted in March 2016, the council is creating a database of companies that 'directly or indirectly' do business with Israeli settlements. The blacklist is intended to be expansive: Even an ATM in Arab-claimed territory could be enough to land a bank and its business associates on this database. The blacklist threatens to tarnish business reputations, make companies targets for lawfare in European and U.S. courts, and provide fuel for the boycott-and-divestment machinery on college campuses and elsewhere. Meanwhile, the council has no boycott policy for the world's most ruthless regimes.
When Donald Trump became president, the U.S. did not promptly resign from the council but instead attended the March 2017 session. During this meeting, the resolution creating the Israel blacklist was reconfirmed over American objection. Then the U.S. was outvoted on 12 of 15 resolutions and backed into joining the consensus on various other resolutions, including one on 'cultural diversity' cosponsored by the likes of North Korea.
As the Senate subcommittee meets, it will hear the familiar refrain echoed whenever American blank checks to the U.N. are questioned: fight the good fight from the inside; don't cede the territory to enemies; the sole alternative is self-defeating isolationism.
But the answer is straightforward. Belonging to, and paying for, the U.N. Human Rights Council legitimizes those fighting to delegitimize Israel. Equal rights for some cannot be built on unequal rights for Jews. Reform from the inside has failed. America should choose its own partners and methods for making the world a better place. That's real leadership."