In 1947, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall chartered a plane to Washington with Danny Kaye, Gene Kelly, and other movie stars. Calling themselves the Committee for the First Amendment, they protested what they saw as Congress trampling on civil liberties in its hunt for communists in Hollywood. You can debate their politics, but at least they believed they were defending the Constitution, not campaigning for anyone’s favorite terrorist.
Fast-forward to 2025.
More than 200 actors, musicians, and writers have now signed an open letter calling on Israel to free Marwan Barghouti, a Fatah leader serving five life sentences plus 40 years for his role in terror attacks during the Second Intifada.
The signatories include a glittering roster: Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Ruffalo, Tilda Swinton, Ian McKellen, Javier Bardem, Margaret Atwood, and a lineup of rock legends and cultural icons. Some come from Jewish backgrounds or have made a career out of speaking against antisemitism and bigotry.
Yet here they are, attaching their names to a campaign built on a false analogy: Marwan Barghouti as Nelson Mandela.
Barghouti's crimes
Let’s be clear about who they are championing.
Barghouti is not in prison because of his op-eds or his speeches. He is a longtime Fatah leader who, during the Second Intifada, played a leading role in organizing and directing terrorist attacks. An Israeli civilian court convicted him of five counts of murder, one count of attempted murder, and membership in a terrorist organization in connection with a series of shootings and bombings that killed Israeli civilians and a Greek Orthodox monk. For this record, he received five consecutive life sentences, plus 40 years.
Attacks linked to him included the murder of that monk on a West Bank road, a roadside shooting near the community of Givat Ze’ev, and the 2002 Seafood Market attack in Tel Aviv, where diners were gunned down as they ate.
This is not a case of a dissident jailed for pamphlets and protests. These were deliberate attacks on civilians: people in cars, people in restaurants, and people walking through their lives with the terrible misfortune of being in the crosshairs of those who regard Jewish civilian life as expendable.
Yet the celebrity petition describes Barghouti as a “political leader” and “Palestine’s Mandela,” a unifying figure whose release is supposedly a prerequisite for peace. The crimes fade into the background; the carefully crafted narrative takes center stage. Barghouti was not imprisoned for advocating negotiations or compromise. He was convicted for organizing and authorizing lethal attacks on ordinary people.
Whitewashing terrorism
There is a chasm between protesting an overreaching state and whitewashing premeditated murder.
Back to Bogart for a moment. When he and Bacall flew to Washington in 1947, their stated cause was simple: Congress was abusing its power, trampling the First Amendment, and conducting show trials in the House Un-American Activities Committee. They insisted that they were not defending Communism; they were defending due process and the right to hold unpopular views. They were pushing back against blacklists and “guilt by association,” not signing on to free convicted terrorists.
Today's star-studded “Free Marwan” campaign is the mirror image.
The open letter speaks in vague terms of “grave concern” for Barghouti’s treatment in prison and calls his trial “deeply flawed.” It praises him as a unifying figure and implies that his release is the key to peace. Most signatories, from Oscar winners to rock legends, likely never read the indictment, the verdict, or even a plain-English summary of the attacks. They appear to have accepted a carefully curated narrative that scrubs away the victims and leaves only the symbolism: Barghouti as the necessary Palestinian peacemaker and Israel as the villain blocking “Palestine’s Mandela.”
So, with a few strokes of the pen, they transform families blown apart in restaurants and on highways into mere background noise in a morality play where the only truly important character is the “political prisoner.”
It is especially galling when celebrities rooted in Jewish communities join this cause. They would never dream of signing a petition to free the mastermind of a church shooting in Charleston or the organizer of an attack on a nightclub in their own city. Yet when the targets are Jews in a Tel Aviv seafood restaurant or a monk on a West Bank road, suddenly the killer is rebranded as a visionary statesman whose imprisonment is the real obstacle to peace.
Hollywood's mistake
What’s happening here isn’t courage à la Bogart and Bacall. It is moral vanity at a safe distance. They enjoy the full protection of free speech, and they use it to launder the reputation of a man convicted of terror murders.
Celebrities, like everyone else, have the right to speak. But the rest of us have the right – indeed, the duty – to ask basic questions: Did you read why he is serving five life sentences? Have you learned the names of the people who never came home because of attacks he helped organize?
Bogart ultimately tried to walk back his foray into politics, insisting, “I’m no communist.” Today’s Hollywood activists may someday offer their own version: “I didn’t mean to support terrorism; I just signed a letter.”
Yet, the record will remain. Humphrey Bogart went to Washington to protest what he believed was an abuse of civil liberties. This generation of stars has gone to bat for a man convicted of murdering civilians, insisting that the price of “peace” is his release.
They are free to speak. We are free to remember that, when it came time to choose a cause, they chose the terrorist over his victims.
The writer is an attorney and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is author of A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror, now available in an expanded paperback edition on Amazon, and is president of the Religious Zionists of America-Mizrachi.