by Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n
FrontPage Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n Ten years ago this week,\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped by Islamic terrorists in Pakistan, after he had been lured into what he thought was an interview with Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani about the links between al Qaeda and the \u201cshoe bomber\u201d Richard Reid. The shadowy Pakistani group that kidnapped Pearl accused him of being a spy for the CIA, and made several demands, including the release of Pakistani detainees from Guantanamo. Nine days later, Pearl was murdered and beheaded, and on February 21, a video was released called \u201cThe Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl.\u201d The footage showed Pearl\u2019s \u201cconfession\u201d and brutal decapitation, interspersed with images of dead Muslims, George Bush shaking hands with Ariel Sharon, and Palestinians allegedly killed by Israeli Defense Forces, including 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura, whose death was later exposed as a Palestinian fabrication. Later, captured 9\/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would brag to interrogators that he personally had beheaded Pearl. As for his abductor, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, though tried and condemned to death, still lives in a Pakistani jail cell, from which according to some reports he has planned other terrorist attacks.<\/p>\n The killing of Pearl concentrated much of what Andrew McCarthy calls the \u201cwillful blindness\u201d of many in the West to the Islamic roots of the perpetrators\u2019 violence. At the time, most of the media mainly decried Pearl\u2019s death because he was a reporter. Worse yet were the comments that scolded the terrorists for not understanding that American journalists are neutral observers whose impartiality could help them get their story out. As a\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0editorial put it,<\/p>\n The terrible irony of Mr. Pearl\u2019s murder is that he and other independent journalists have been trying to present a detailed and informed portrait of the mindset, motives and grievances of the Islamic fundamentalists in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and the war in Afghanistan. That work will continue despite the killing, but the kidnappers have only undermined their cause by their acts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The professional corruption of the mainstream-media was revealed in this statement, with its claims that journalists are objective (mostly false) and have no loyalties to their own country and people (mostly true), and that the murderers had a legitimate \u201ccause\u201d and \u201cgrievances\u201d (moral idiocy and cowardice).<\/p>\n Most commentary also ignored the Koranic-inspired anti-Semitism of the words Pearl was forced to say in the execution video: \u201cMy name is Daniel Pearl. I am a Jewish American from Encino, California USA. I come from, uh, on my father\u2019s side the family is Zionist. My father\u2019s Jewish, my mother\u2019s Jewish, I\u2019m Jewish. My family follows Judaism. We\u2019ve made numerous family visits to Israel. Back in the town of Bnei Brak there is a street named after my great grandfather Chaim Pearl who is one of the founders of the town.\u201d<\/p>\n The claim that Pearl was a CIA agent was obviously a pretext; his real offense was being a Jew, a race the Koran calls \u201claden with Allah\u2019s anger,\u201d destined to suffer forever \u201cabasement and poverty\u201d and eventually to be transformed into \u201capes and swine.\u201d In emphasizing Pearl\u2019s Jewish ancestry and Zionist connections, the terrorists were conforming to the genocidal ambitions of many Muslims, from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has vowed to \u201cwipe Israel from the map,\u201d to the Muslim Brother affiliate Hamas, whose charter quotes the hadith proclaiming, \u201cThe Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say \u2018O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.\u2019\u201d As for the beheading, that too has its justification in Koran 8.12: \u201cI will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads.\u201d<\/p>\n Then and now, this religiously inspired, rank anti-Semitism is rationalized as a response to Israel\u2019s so-called \u201coccupation\u201d of Muslim lands and oppression of the Palestinians. In 2010, General David Petraeus testified to Congress that the Israeli-Arab conflict \u201cfoments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of US favoritism for Israel.\u201d Rather than Islamic ideology, Petraeus asserted that \u201cArab anger over the Palestinian question\u201d accounts for terrorism: \u201cal Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support.\u201d But Petraeus was simply repeating received wisdom, examples of which are legion, ranging from historian Tony Judt\u2019s claim that European Muslim immigrant anti-Semitic attacks are \u201ca direct outcome of the festering crisis in the Middle East,\u201d to French foreign minister Hubert V\u00e9drine\u2019s assertion that immigrant violence and crime arise from \u201ccompassion for the Palestinians\u201d on the part of Muslims, who \u201cget agitated when they see what is happening.\u201d<\/p>\n