Who was Daniel Pearl?

By Maralyn Lois Polak

When I worked for the mainstream media, rumor had it that an editor of mine had once been a “CIA asset” in the Middle East. Though that was never substantiated, he held a series of plum positions at this major metropolitan newspaper, finally running the Review and Opinion section which became infused with his rightward leanings.

Things are seldom what they seem. Skim milk masquerades as cream, two cheerfully disenchanted characters sing in Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta “H.M.S. Pinafore.”

The day the news confirmed kidnapped reporter Daniel Pearl’s awful murder in Pakistan, I thought of my former boss, and how impossible it is to know who anyone really is.

For journalists, the holy grail of the profession is serving as a foreign correspondent, covering a war. Beyond the obviously romantic appeal, it’s a noble tradition – not just for the glorious opportunity of gutsy reporting and great, heart-stopping writing, but more important, you’re an intrepid eyewitness to history, questing to discover “the truth” beneath the roiling, often deceptive surfaces of gritty, cataclysmic world events, large and small. But it can be dangerous, deadly work as well.

The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Pearl was a foreign correspondent, until he was abducted, tortured, videotaped and executed by his captors. Bombay-based, the WSJ’s South Asia bureau chief disappeared Jan. 23 while following the trail of terrorists in Pakistan. Perhaps he was lured into a trap by false information. His kidnapping and subsequent killing was senseless, wanton, cruel and, yes, evil. There can be no rationalization of his death. Just 38, he leaves behind his widow Mariane, 7 months pregnant with a boy.

Initially Pearl’s captors issued e-mail accusations he was a CIA agent. Then they changed their minds and said he was an Israeli agent. His bosses refute both charges. Finally some maggot connected to the miscreants said he was targeted for being “a Jew against Islam.”

The hideously grisly videotape shows Pearl talking, almost as if conducting an interview, when suddenly someone grabs him and slashes his throat. Later, his severed head is shown. Truly barbaric.

His last words may have been something he was forced to say: “I am a Jew. My mother is a Jew.”

“If it had been a politico, or some other representative of Western governments, it would have been easier for [his captors] to make a case – irrational as it would have been – but because it was regular citizen, and a journalist to boot, with no advocacy agenda and a seeming pacifist also, it will not play well, except for the extremes. Anyway, it is sad news,” says Bob, a Southern chef.

Though this hostage situation was hopeless from the get-go, nevertheless one wonders what those alarmingly stylish Karachi police were doing, looking like they just stepped off a fashion runway, what with their askew monogrammed berets, jaunty belted dark sweaters over snazzy open collared shirts, and contrasting trousers?

Paraphrasing The Dead Kennedys, Rich, a California printer, noted, “I dunno … he could have been CIA, he could have been a patsy, he could have been the dead meat that we used to cook up more war fever …”

Those who knew and loved Daniel Pearl recall him as “a gentle soul.” In photographs taken before his abduction, his face has, no, had, such a sweet, open, wholesomely handsome, hauntingly optimistic luminosity … you cannot get that glow out of your mind.

“I’m feeling sick about the murdered journalist; yes, I know that was Pakistan, but the chain of cause and effect is short,” says Anne Adele, Philadelphia editor and lapsed archaeologist. “I guess it’s obvious that you start to care about someone you don’t know if you’ve been praying for them.”

“We grieve with the many who have known him in his life, said a statement on behalf of his family, “and we weep for a world that must reckon with his death.”

Surely it is a world whose engine is irony. The journalist had reportedly told colleagues “he would not travel into Afghanistan to cover the war,” the Washington Post reported, “because he did not want to take such chances with a child on the way.”

Ironically, too, Daniel Pearl – who the Israeli paper Ha’aretz says also held Israeli citizenship – was the son of a man who had emigrated to the United States from Israel in the early 1980s. His university professor father, Judea Pearl, currently director of the Cognitive Systems Laboratory at UCLA, holds an advanced degree in physics and specializes in artificial intelligence and causal reasoning. There is no way he could have predicted this unbearably tragic and gruesome outcome to his son’s exemplary life. No way.

Like the journalist-heroes in the films “Under Fire” or “Circle of Deceit,” Daniel Pearl blurred the line between observer to participant and had become part of his own story: A war correspondent faces torment when the terrors of [the conflict he’s covering] start to reflect upon his personal life.

Certainly, cynics are not the only ones to observe that these days, “the truth” seems to be taken far too lightly in governmental circles. Daniel Pearl lost his life while seeking information undistorted by layers of official communiqu?s and denials, spin and disinformation, propaganda and psy-ops. His sacrifice reminds us that people still die for want of the news. While we may not ever know the full story, we are all diminished by his loss.

Maralyn Lois Polak

Maralyn Lois Polak is a Philadelphia-based journalist, screenwriter, essayist, novelist, editor, spoken-word artist, performance poet and occasional radio personality. With architect Benjamin Nia, she has just completed a short documentary film about the threatened demolition of a historic neighborhood, "MY HOMETOWN: Preservation or Development?" on DVD. She is the author of several books including the collection of literary profiles, "The Writer as Celebrity: Intimate Interviews," and her latest volume of poetry, "The Bologna Sandwich and Other Poems of LOVE and Indigestion." Her books can be ordered by contacting her directly.
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