Former Israeli diplomat and university professor compares Palestinian terrorist who masterminded deadly attacks on Israelis to Nelson Mandela, pushes petition calling on President Trump to pressure Israel to free him.
By World Israel News Staff
A far-left Israeli university professor and former diplomat accidentally made headlines Sunday after he mistakenly emailed students a draft of a petition calling on academics to lobby world leaders, including President Donald Trump, to pressure Israel to release a terrorist mastermind.
Recently, Alon Liel, a former Israeli Ambassador to South Africa and international relations scholar who teaches at Reichman University, called on fellow faculty members to back a letter calling for the release of a terrorist touted as a possible successor to Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
The letter calls for international pressure on Israel to free Marwan Barghouti, the 66-year-old Fatah terrorist arrested in 2002 in connection with a string of deadly attacks that left dozens of people dead.
Two years after his capture, Barghouti was convicted of five of the murders and sentenced to life in prison. Some critics of Israel have questioned some aspects of Barghouti’s trial, though no serious doubts have been raised regarding his role in commanding terror cells responsible for deadly attacks on Israelis.
A petition launched by Barghouti’s wife, part of her Free Marwan campaign, has in recent months secured 200 signatories, including a number of prominent writes, actors, musicians, and businesspeople.
“As an American president committed to advancing peace around the world, we call on you to demand the release of Marwan Barghouti as a necessary step toward renewing meaningful peace talks,” the letter reads in part.
Despite being a convicted mass-murderer, the petition compares Barghouti to Nelson Mandela, suggesting he could be a unifying force for Palestinian Authority residents if released.
Polling of Palestinian Arabs regularly shows Barghouti would be a leading contender for chairman of the Palestinian Authority if he we released.
Liel, a member of the radical left-wing group B’Tselem who has also served as the director-general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Economy and was an adviser to then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak, recently penned an email with the petition attached, encouraging his peers at Reichman University to sign the letter.
“Please see the attached letter to Trump calling for the release of Marwan Barghouti,” Liel wrote. “Anyone who is willing to sign on can let me know in a reply email.”
However, when Liel sent the email out en masse to his colleagues, he accidentally also sent it to students.
The university responded to the faux pas with a statement calling the email to students “inappropriate,” and noting that a review had been conducted.
However, administrators said they did not plan to take action against Liel.
“The university’s principled position is that it is inappropriate for a lecturer to approach students with a proposal to sign any political petition,” the university said, according to Israel Hayom.
“A review found that the lecturer, who teaches as an external faculty member, did not send the petition through a student mailing list of Reichman University. Beyond that, the university does not intervene in the personal views of lecturers expressed outside their academic activity at the university.”
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