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Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
PEARL WAS ISRAELI CITIZEN
MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 2/23/2002:
We now learn that Daniel Pearl, the kidnapped and killed Wall Street
Journal reporter, was an Israeli citizen. It seems he was reporting for
years on extraordinarily controversial subjects for an extremely
controversial pro-Israeli publication, but apparently neither he nor the
publication ever revealed this highly compromising fact to readers. What
more may we learn next?
As uusual, the courageous and tireless journalist who is such a credit
to his profession, Robert Fisk, asks many of the necessary questions and
points fingers where they deserve to be pointed. Fisk's article was written
before the revelation today that Pearl was an Israeli. "Where did we go
wrong" Fisk rightly asks...and gives some of the important answers.
PEARL'S FATHER: 'ISRAELI CONNECTION' COULD HINDER INVESTIGATION
By Yossi Melman
[Ha'aretz - 24 February] 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. 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.
Professor Pearl went on to say that he had not viewed the videotape in which
his son's murder was documented and has no intention of doing so. He was told
of his son's death Thursday by U.S. government officials after they had
viewed the videotape and were convinced of its authenticity.
According to assessments presented to Professor Pearl, his son was killed ten
days after being kidnapped on January 23. The date of his death is based on
experts' viewing of the videotape and was determined according to the length
of Pearl's beard, as seen on the tape.
Pakistani police investigators said Saturday that Pearl's murderers never
meant to release him. The Pakistani police warned foreign organizations in
the country that they should be careful due to the fact that Pearl's
kidnapping may be part of a more far-reaching terrorist plot. They also
reported that the man who delivered the videotape documenting Pearl's murder
was arrested for questioning in Karachi, located in southern Pakistan.
The State Department said the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan had received evidence
Thursday that Pearl was dead. Spokesman Richard Boucher provided no details
on the evidence, although Pakistani authorities said that the videotape
indicated he had been murdered by the Islamic extremists who kidnapped him a
month ago.
Pearl, born in Princeton, New Jersey, died at the age of 38. He worked as a
reporter for the Wall Street Journal for twelve years. His last job was to
report from Afghanistan and Pakistan on the U.S. war against terror.
On Thursday, Fahad Naseem, one of three men accused of involvement in the
kidnapping, said Pearl was abducted because he was a Jew working against
Islam.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf vowed Friday to leave no stone unturned
in hunting the killers of Pearl and declared war on all terrorists in
Pakistan.
In a national television address on Friday night, Musharraf said all
resources would be thrown into finding the executioners of the Wall Street
Journal reporter.
"I can assure my countrymen that we will not leave any stone unturned to
bring all these people involved in this murder to justice and set an example
of them for other such people who may be thinking of such acts in the
future," Musharraf declared, vowing to wipe out all extremist groups.
"I think our resolve increases with such acts to move more strongly against
all such terrorist people and those organizations which perpetrate such
terrorism. To move against them and liquidate them entirely from our
country," he said.
JOURNALISTS ARE NOW TARGETS - BUT WHO IS TO BLAME FOR THIS?
By Robert Fisk
[The Independent - 23 February 2002]: The murder of Daniel Pearl of The
Wall Street Journals was as revolting as it was outrageous. But why was he
killed? Because he was a Westerner, a "Kaffir"? Because he was an American?
Or because he was a journalist? And if he was killed because he was a
reporter what has happened to the protection which we in our craft used to
enjoy?
In Pakistan and Afghanistan, we can be seen as Kaffirs, as unbelievers. Our
faces, our hair, even our spectacles, mark us out as Westerners. The Muslim
cleric who wished to talk to me in an Afghan refugee village outside Peshawar
last October was stopped by a man who pointed at me and asked: "Why are you
taking this Kaffir into our mosque?'' Weeks later, a crowd of Afghan
refugees, grief-stricken at the slaughter of their relatives in a US B-52
bomber air raid, tried to kill me because they thought I was an American.
But over the past quarter century I have witnessed the slow, painful,
dangerous erosion of respect for our work. We used to risk our lives in wars
– we still do – but journalists were rarely deliberate targets. We were
impartial witnesses to conflict, often the only witnesses, the first writers
of history. Even the nastiest militias understood this. "Protect him, look
after him, he is a journalist,'' I recall a Palestinian guerrilla ordering
his men when I entered the burning Lebanese town of Bhamdoun in 1983.
But in Lebanon, in Algeria and then in Bosnia, the protection began to
disintegrate. Reporters in Beirut were taken hostage – the Associated Press's
Terry Anderson disappeared for almost seven years – while Algerian
journalists were hunted down and beheaded by Islamist groups throughout the
Nineties. Olivier Quemener, a French cameraman, was cruelly shot down in the
Casbah area of Algiers as his wounded colleague lay weeping by his side.
Pasting "TV" stickers on your car in Sarajevo was as much an invitation to
the Serb snipers above the city to shoot at journalists as it was a
protection.
Where did we go wrong? I suspect the rot started in Vietnam. Reporters have
identified themselves with armies for decades. In both World Wars,
journalists worked in uniform. Dropping behind enemy lines with US commandos
did not spare an AP reporter from a Nazi firing squad. But these were
countries in open conflict, reporters whose nations had officially declared
war. Wearing a uniform enabled journalists to claim the protection of the
Geneva Convention; in civilian clothes they could be shot as spies. It was in
Vietnam that reporters started wearing uniforms and carrying weapons – and
shooting those weapons at America's enemies – even though their country was
not officially at war and even when they could have carried out their duties
without wearing soldiers' clothes. In Vietnam, reporters were murdered
because they were reporters.
This odd habit of journalists to be part of the story, to play an almost
theatrical role in wars, slowly took hold. When the Palestinians evacuated
Beirut in 1982, I noticed that several French reporters were wearing
Palestiniankuffiah 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. One American journalist
even arrived in boots camouflaged with painted leaves although a glance at
any desert suggests that this would not have served much purpose. In the
Kurdish flight into the mountains of northern Iraq more reporters could be
found wearing Kurdish clothes. In Pakistan and Afghanistan last year, the
same phenomenon occurred, Reporters in Peshawar could be seen wearing Pushtun
hats. Why? No one could ever supply me with an explanation. What on earth was
CNN's Walter Rodgers doing in US 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.
Perhaps we no longer care about our profession. Maybe we're all to quick to
demean our own jobs, to sneer at each other, to adopt the ridiculous title of
"hacks" when we should regard the job as foreign correspondent as a decent,
honourable profession. I was astounded last December when an American
newspaper headline announced that I had deserved the beating I received at
the hands of that Afghan crowd. I had almost died but the article, by Mark
Steyn, carried a headline that a "multiculturalist (me) gets his due''. My
sin, of course, was to explain that the crowd had lost relatives in America's
B-52 raids, that I would have done the same in their place. That shameful,
unethical headline, I should add, appeared in Daniel Pearl's own newspaper,
The Wall Street Journal.
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?
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