Justification for murder?

By Fiamma Nirenstein

Just before they slit his throat, reporter Daniel Pearl, obviously against his will, looked into the camera of his Pakistani torturers and said, “My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am a Jew.” He was also forced to declare that he was American – another great crime. But mostly, he was forced to claim that he was Jewish, a horrific iniquity with a centuries-long tradition.

There are a good many of us Jewish journalists in the Middle East. Sometimes, when I am sitting barefoot on a carpet in some mosque or another, interviewing a Hamas representative for example, I wonder what mere psychological and, in the worst of cases, practical reactions there would be if they asked me about my religion. Identity and name have indeed made a difference, many times, for me and for the dozens of colleagues who quietly go about doing their job, just like me.

In their e-mails, Pearl’s kidnappers accused him of being “a spy for Mossad” along with being American. His unhappy father pleaded with the Israeli reporter who interviewed him in the States to leave out the fact that the family (scientists born in Israel, although Pearl only had an American passport) had anything to do with Israel because otherwise “not even his body will be found.” Daniel’s religion was low profile throughout the kidnapping.

The background against which Pearl was forced to give his assassins a good reason for killing him by saying, “I am a Jew,” is a new occurrence urgently needing to be exposed. It is the same anti-Semitic hatred found in schools, on television and in the papers throughout the Islamic world. Jews are drawn with all the negative stereotypes, old and new.

Egyptian papers publish the “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” in installments and the television turns it into a series. All over the Middle East, Jews have been turned into hooked-nose cartoons with fistfuls of dollars in their bloodied claws, mouths dripping with Palestinian blood. They are colonialist-imperialists, thirsty for Arab blood, filthy creatures with only dubious claims of belonging to the nations of the world.

Reporter Daniel Pearl was killed in this setting: An American, and a Jew, he deserved everything he got. If a Nazi at Auschwitz had filmed a Jew like Pearl in the midst of his physical and moral suffering – if he had forced him to say, “My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am a Jew,” before sending him to his death – that video would be shown in schools everywhere to explain racism, and demonstrate the horror of anti-Semitism.

It is Pearl’s just due, today, for the world’s journalistic community to present a public expos? of the anti-Semitism found in extremist Islamic organizations and the vast public opinion they control and influence. There is anti-Semitism in the Muslim world, and it threatens all the democratic community.

Fiamma Nirenstein

Fiamma Nirenstein was born in Florence and lives in Jerusalem as a foreign correspondent and a columnist for Il Giornale and Panorama in Italy. Holding a doctorate in modern history, she is the author of several books about the Middle East and other subjects. Read more of Fiamma Nirenstein's articles here.