Anti-Semitism rife among terrorists 
 
A Boston Herald editorial 
Saturday, February 23, 2002
 
In their anguish over the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Dan Pearl in Pakistan, Americans may overlook a key motive: an anti-Semitism that matches that of the Nazis for vileness. 
 
Accounts of the videotape of his death agree that just before he was killed, he said, ``I am a Jew.'' He was Jewish, and it's a sure bet that he was forced to say these words. 
 
The apparently peripheral suspects in custody in Pakistan have said Pearl's kidnappers set out to capture not just an American, but an American who was also a Jew. The first e-mails from the kidnappers claimed Pearl was a spy for the CIA, but then switched to claim that he was a spy for the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency - convincing evidence, we think, of the anti-Semitic obsession of his kidnappers. (There's not a shred of evidence that Pearl was a spy for anybody, and his career at the Journal simply does not fit such an accusation.) 
 
America is plagued by fools like Ted Turner, who claim that terrorism is caused by poverty. ``The reason that the World Trade Center got hit is because there are a lot of people living in abject poverty out there who don't have any hope for a better life,'' Turner said in a speech at Brown University Feb. 11, in defiance of the fact that all the hijackers came from very prosperous families. We're just waiting for some lefties to claim that Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by poor people - you might say a mugging for the man's wallet. 
 
Terrorism cannot live without the nourishment of hatred, and hatred of
anti-Semitism can grow in defiance of all reason. It has nothing to do with poverty and never did. The idea that the world's 14 million Jews have any connection with the problems of Pakistan, 97 percent of whose 145 million people are Muslim, normally would be laughable, but this is not a subject for humor. 
 
Pakistan is not the only country and the Middle East not the only region in the world infected by anti-Semitism. It flourishes in Europe, despite that continent's awful history. The ambassador of France (not much ``abject poverty'' there) to Britain recently referred to Israel using as an adjective a vulgar term for excrement. 
 
Pearl was killed the day after the State Department announced a new U.S. policy on hostages pledging U.S. efforts to apprehend kidnappers even if concessions were made to secure releases. In other words, the government says it will not close the books. The first act under that new policy should be for a federal grand jury immediately to return indictments against the suspects in custody in Pakistan, to give the U.S. government a legal claim if for some reason Pakistan cannot bring them to justice. 
 
A decent reporter, a kind and generous man beloved by his colleagues, about to become a father, has been cruelly murdered for no reason but to satisfy one of the oldest hatreds on earth. Our hearts go out to his family.
Americans can be under no illusions of what they are up against.