Ironically, since his captors charged him with being an agent of
the American Empire and of Zionism, Pearl was not afraid to file reports
contradicting the claims of the State Department or the Pentagon or even of
the mad dogs on the Journal's editorial pages, whose ravings fulfill on a
weekly basis the most paranoid expectations of a Muslim fanatic.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page wrote, the day after news
of Pearl's death was confirmed, that it showed "evil" was still stalking the
world, "evil" being the current term of art for "awfulness beyond our
comprehension." Now, these editorial writers have spent years writing urgent
advisories to whatever U.S. president happens to be in power that the most
extreme reactionary forces in Israel must be given unconditional backing. It
would take any Islamic fanatic about 15 minutes in a clips library to
demonstrate that if bombs are to be dropped on Palestinians, peace overtures
shunned, just settlement rejected, then the Wall Street Journal's editorial
page is on board.
Might it not have occurred to Pearl's editors, those who
assigned him to South Asia, that the fact that he was an Israeli citizen
might have put him in extra peril, given the fact that he was seeking to
contact an extremely dangerous crowd of Muslim terrorists in Karachi? The
fact of his citizenship only emerged after his death, in a report, Feb. 24,
in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, by Yossi Melman:
"Professor Yehuda Pearl, father of murdered Wall Street Journal
reporter Daniel Pearl, has told Ha'aretz that he fears that making public
his son's Israeli citizenship could adversely affect investigative efforts
by Pakistani police to apprehend the killers and track down the murdered
reporter's body. In a telephone conversation from his Los Angeles residence,
Professor Pearl expressed regret and anger over the revelation by the
Israeli media of his family's 'Israeli connection.' The U.S. media, which
was aware of the information, complied with the family's request not to make
it public." Then Melman concluded with this minor bombshell: "The American
media was asked to comply with this request after information was obtained
that confirmed reports that the 38-year-old reporter was dead."
This notwithstanding, it seems to me almost certain that those
Pakistani terrorists would have killed any reporter for a U.S. news
organization who had the ill fortune to seek an interview at that particular
time. Robert Fisk, of the London Independent, who has made more effort than
almost any western reporter to present the Muslim point of view, was nearly
beaten to death by Afghans in a frontier town a few weeks ago. (The Wall
Street Journal editorial page may now be having second thoughts about the
headline with which it welcomed Fisk's near-fatal beating: "Hate-Me Crimes:
A self-loathing multiculturalist gets his due.")
Fisk wrote in the wake of Pearl's murder about one reason why
journalists are becoming more exposed to attack:
"When the Palestinians evacuated Beirut in 1982, I noticed that
several French reporters were wearing Palestinian kuffiah scarves. Israeli
reporters turned up in occupied southern Lebanon with pistols. Then in the
1991 Gulf War, American and British television reporters started dressing up
in military costumes, appearing on screen -- complete with helmets and
military camouflage fatigues -- as if they were members of the 82nd Airborne
or the Hussars ... What on earth was CNN's Walter Rodgers doing in U.S.
Marine costume at the American camp outside Kandahar? Mercifully, someone
told him to take it off after his first broadcast. Then Geraldo Rivera of
Fox News arrived in Jalalabad with a gun. He fully intended, he said, to
kill Osama bin Laden. It was the last straw. The reporter had now become
combatant.
"Can we do better? I think so. It's not that reporters in
military costume -- Rodgers in his silly Marine helmet, Rivera clowning
around with a gun, or even me in my gas cape a decade ago -- helped to kill
Daniel Pearl. He was murdered by vicious men. But we are all of us --
dressing up in combatant's clothes or adopting the national dress of
people -- helping to erode the shield of neutrality and decency, which saved
our lives in the past. If we don't stop now, how can we protest when next
our colleagues are seized by ruthless men who claim we are spies?"
Pearl's style was totally alien to the bloodthirsty rantings of
his editorial colleagues. He sent excellent dispatches questioning the
claims of the Clinton administration that it had been justified in the 1998
destruction via cruise missile of the El Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries
plant in the Sudan. Again, he and fellow WSJ reporter Robert Block entered
some effective reservations about allegations of Serbian genocide in Kosovo.
Leave the last, beautiful words to Daniel Pearl's widow:
"Revenge would be easy, but it is far more valuable in my
opinion to address this problem of terrorism with enough honesty to question
our own responsibility as nations and as individuals for the rise of
terrorism. My own courage arises from two facts. One is that throughout this
ordeal I have been surrounded by people of amazing value. This helps me
trust that humanism ultimately will prevail.
"My other hope now -- in my seventh month of pregnancy -- is
that I will be able to tell our son that his father carried the flag to end
terrorism, raising an unprecedented demand among people from all countries
not for revenge but for the values we all share: love, compassion,
friendship and citizenship far transcending the so-called clash of
civilizations."
Alexander Cockburn is coeditor with Jeffrey St Clair of the
muckraking
newsletter CounterPunch. To find out more about Alexander Cockburn and read
features by other columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate
Web page at
www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2002 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC
