The wife of an Israeli man murdered by a knife-wielding attacker has said Zack Polanski’s promotion of a convicted terrorist is “despicable”.
Images circulated on social media this week showing the Green Party leader wearing a football-style shirt bearing the slogan “Free Marwan” - a reference to Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian political figure serving five life sentences in Israel for his role in orchestrating terror attacks between 2001 and 2002.
Miriam Fuld, whose husband Ari was murdered in a 2018 stabbing attack near the Gush Etzion Junction by 17-year-old terrorist Khalil Jabarin, told the JC that Polanski was “despicable” for supporting Barghouti, adding that she was not surprised by his behaviour.
“What reality have we reached where evil prevails?” she added, referring to Polanski’s defence of Barghouti’s murderous actions.
“I lost everything, and somehow there are people who hate me for it,” she continued. “It seems the attitude is that everyone’s lives matter – but those rules don’t apply when it comes to Israel or the Jews.”
“My husband’s killer is now 24 years old and a free man,” Fuld said.
Jabarin was released last year as part of a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas to secure the release of Israeli hostages from Gaza.
“He is viewed as a hero by the Palestinian Authority for murdering Jews, and his family has been receiving a monthly stipend for years under its ‘pay-for-slay’ programme,” she said.
That initiative compensates terrorists and their families through monthly stipends for carrying out attacks targeting Israelis.
Other terror victims voiced strong criticism of Polanski.
Sarri Singer, who survived a 2003 suicide bombing in Jerusalem and later founded Strength to Strength, an organisation supporting victims of terrorism around the world, said seeing Polanski wear a shirt calling for Barghouti’s release was “deeply, deeply painful”.
“When someone associated with terrorism is elevated as a hero, those of us who live through the consequences of the attacks are forced to watch our trauma debated, minimised and ignored,” she said.
To Singer, the support for Barghouti reflects a willingness to excuse or downplay terrorism when it is framed as part of the Palestinian national struggle.
“If we normalise those links to terrorism, like Marwan Barghouti, we risk teaching young people that violence against innocent civilians is justified if they agree with the cause,” she said.
The T-shirt, she added, was “a reminder that many people in the world are willing to overlook the human cost of terrorism when the victims are Jews.”
Singer said those attitudes had become increasingly pronounced in Britain, a country she has visited regularly since 2010 to support victims of terror, including at last year’s events marking the 20th anniversary of the 7/7 bombing attacks.
“Every shirt and every banner and every sign of glorification that I see coming out of the UK sends a message about whose pain matters and whose pain doesn’t,” she said, adding that such displays feed a climate in which antisemitic attacks can occur.
The result, she said, is that Britain has “become a place where I’m worried and scared just by being a Jew walking in the streets. I’ve never had that before.”
Tal Hartuv, a British-Israeli survivor of a 2010 terror attack near Jerusalem in which her friend Kristine Luken was murdered, said Polanski's support for Barghouti filled her with "a pure cold rage."
“Those glorifying this terrorist, such as Polanski, have not experienced the injustice I have - my attempted murder for being a Jew,” she said.
That injustice was compounded, she said, when Iyad Hassan Hussein Fatafta, one of the men convicted in the stabbing attack that killed Luken and nearly killed Hartuv, was freed as part of the Gaza hostage-ceasefire deal in October 2025, under which Israel released nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
“Polanski’s easy cause is a fad, a bandwagon to jump onto,” Hartuv said. “If he really believes that by championing those who murder Jews is what will make others admire him, he is deluded.”
His “unctuous grovelling,” she added, “invokes in me a pure cold rage that doesn’t even begin to describe my contempt.”
The uproar comes after Polanski signed a letter calling for British-Israelis who served in the IDF to be put on a list by British authorities and a "secondary screening" process for travellers arriving in the UK from Tel Aviv.
Writing about Polanski’s decision to wear the “Free Marwan” T-shirt, pro-Israel activist Heidi Bachram wrote on X: “What the hell is @ZackPolanski doing wearing a shirt to free the Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti who murdered 5 civilians. This is TOO FAR.”
Bachram's husband's relatives were murdered and taken hostage by Hamas.
Responding, Polanski defended his support for Barghouti.
He wrote: “Good. Let's talk about Marwan Barghouti. Imprisoned for 25 years. An inter-Parliamentary Union report found he was not given a fair trial. Nelson Mandela: ‘What is happening to Barghouti is exactly the same as what happened to me.’ Free Marwan.”
But Polanski was met with fierce criticism.
Dave Rich, policy director at the Community Security Trust (CST), commented on X: “Barghouti was acquitted of most charges (but still convicted of some) which suggests he got a fair trial.
“And there's no proof Mandela ever said that. But why let facts get in the way when there's a convicted terrorist to support?”
The quotation cited by Polanski originates from comments attributed to Nelson Mandela by Barghouti's lawyer, Khader Shkirat, in 2002.
According to reports at the time, Shkirat quoted Mandela as saying: “What is happening to Barghouti is exactly the same as what happened to me. The government tried to de-legitimise the African National Congress and its armed struggle by putting me on trial.”
Barghouti, a former elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, has been held in Israeli prisons since his arrest in Ramallah in 2002.
Israeli authorities accused him of orchestrating attacks that killed five civilians, and he was convicted on terrorism charges by an Israeli court. He was acquitted of 21 counts of murder in 33 other attacks, due to a lack of evidence.
He was also a founding member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a Fatah-aligned coalition of Palestinian armed groups that was involved in the October 7 massacre.
Currently serving five life sentences, Barghouti has become a symbolic leader for some pro-Palestinian activists.
On Saturday, his son Aarab Barghouti was invited to the stage at Barcelona’s Primavera Sounds by Damon Albarn’s band Gorillaz.
During a speech to open the Gorillaz set, he told the festival crowd: “My father is one of 10,000 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, but for millions of Palestinians he represents something that Israel cannot imprison: hope.
“Freedom won in South Africa, in Ireland, and in Algeria, because people like you refused to look away, refused to give up. So keep fighting for Palestine, for Gaza, and for justice.”
Mawran Barghouti has consistently maintained his innocence and argued that the court which tried him was illegitimate.
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