By Iqbal Jassat
What should be a celebratory moment for South Africa to proudly congratulate President Cyril Ramaphosa for being the first sitting head of state to sign an international petition demanding the release of Palestinian prisoner Marwan Barghouti, has shockingly but not surprisingly been mocked in a local Zionist paper.
Framed as a lead article in the Jewish Report under the abusive title “Ramaphosa signs support for convicted terrorist”, the writer Tali Feinberg, gives her pro-Israel bias away by leaning on a number of “soundbites” by persons known for their Zionist leanings.
The first one is Benji Shulman described as Executive Director of the Middle East Africa Research Institute, but whose ties to the SA Zionist Federation (SAZF), though not disclosed, is well known.
In 2019 he was honoured by the SAZF as the “prime defender and promoter” of Israel, reported The Citizen.
Shulman however is correct to point out that Ramaphosa’s support of Barghouti goes back to the time he was deputy president. Back in 2017, along with a number of Cabinet ministers, Ramaphosa embarked on a 24-hour hunger strike in solidarity with Barghouti and fellow Palestinian detainees held by Israel.
Shulman’s gripe arises from what he disputes: the comparison of Barghouti to Nelson Mandela.
While being silent on Barghouti’s victimisation as a high profile political leader akin to Mandela’s stature, Shulman’s vain attempt to profile him as a “terrorist” is boringly redundant.
Indeed the talking points he advances are no different to what the apartheid regime of Israel routinely roll out.
The regime of genocidaires who over the last 2 to 3 years have killed thousands upon thousands in Gaza, bombed schools, universities, hospitals, mosques and churches, displaced the entire population now forced into paltry tents without access to water, health care and continue to face bombs and bullets, embody the full meaning and practice of terrorism.
To slander Barghouti as a terrorist is to reject him with disdain and scorn – undeserving of sympathy. Precisely the playbook used by the National Party and its white supremacist clique including loyal supporters of Israel, who framed Mandela as a terrorist.
It is therefore unconscionable and wholly unreasonable to cast Barghouti as a mindless violent person without the context of legitimate resistance to Israeli state terrorism.
His struggle for Palestinian liberation echoed Mandela’s long walk to freedom embodied in long painful periods of armed struggle.
Far from “haunting” the campaign to free Barghouti, as suggested by Shulman, it is an imperative grounded in human rights to secure his freedom.
And in an effort to entrench Feinberg’s agenda, Ray Hartley is quoted dismissing Ramaphosa’s stance as “unwise” and “partisan”.
As usual the old discredited alarmist rhetoric about aggravating “an already strained relationship with the United States” is used to frame a moral cause in capitalist garbage.
Instead of demanding of Ramaphosa to “ask himself why he is the first head of state to sign this”, Hartley ought to question the moral cowardice of western leaders who enable Israel to defy international laws with impunity.
The latest example of Zionist piracy in international waters to raid, plunder and arrest humanitarian volunteers on the Gaza Sumud Flotilla, is case in point.
As expected, false charges of “terrorism” against civilian activists follows Israel’s cruel pattern of using baseless security allegations to justify violent repression of Palestinians and those in solidarity with them in the Flotilla.
Feinberg further draws comments from the Democratic Alliance spokesperson on international relations and cooperation, Ryan Smith, who in typical DA-style of hypocrisy, resorts to WhatAboutism.
Unconvincingly he detracts from the harsh conditions of Barghouti’s decades in Israel’s torturous jail by turning attention to Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Uganda and Iran. By doing so, Smith elevates evasion, not commitment to human rights.
Contrary to the biased views of the SA Zionist Federation, the BBC described Barghouti as the “most prominent Palestinian prisoner” in its April 2026 report on him subjected to physical violence behind bars in Israel.
Arab Barghouti told the BBC he was “shocked and appalled” to hear from his father’s Israeli lawyer that he had been assaulted three times by Israeli prison guards in the past month.
In addition, reports in The Guardian quote Barghouti’s lawyer Ben Marmarelli, who said in a statement after a prison visit that the Palestinian leader faced a “clear pattern of escalating abuse: violence, medical neglect, and treatment that places him at immediate risk” in jail.
Marmarelli said that on 25 March prison guards entered Barghouti’s cell in Megiddo prison with a dog and forced him to the ground where “the dog repeatedly attacked him”. The following day Barghouti was assaulted during a transfer to Ganot prison, and on 8 April guards at that jail beat him severely, left him bleeding for more than two hours and denied requests for medical treatment, he said.
That these facts are omitted in the comments by the SAZF, ought not to surprise anyone familiar with Churlinism as opposed to journalism.
Emma Graham-Harrison in Jerusalem for The Guardian wrote that “Barghouti’s trial for murder was criticised as flawed by legal experts, and Mandela himself reportedly described it as a legal attack on a legitimate political struggle”.
Pic Courtesy: Counterpunch
In 2002, Mandela expressed support for Barghouti during his trial in Israel, stating, “What is happening to Barghouti is exactly the same as what happened to me”.
Mandela compared the situation to his own 1964 trial, noting that the state was attempting to de-legitimize the armed struggle and the leadership of the Palestinian people.
It is thus disingenuous for the Jewish Report to parade a narrative that seeks to distance Mandela from Barghouti’s plight.
Iqbal Jassat
Executive Member
MEDIA REVIEW NETWORK
