Today is the first anniversary of Daniel Pearl's murder. Meryl muses on some of the implications of this senseless crime and links to the comments of others, as well, including those of Judea Pearl, Danny's father. Judith at Kesher Talk mentions some of the ways Daniel Pearl is being remembered and will continue to be remembered in the coming days. More information can be found at the Daniel Pearl Foundation website.
Anniversaries (yahrzeits, as we call them when it's a death that is being remembered) are a time for looking backward, but also for looking forward. Has the world community, in its shock and revulsion over Daniel Pearl's murder, taken steps to assure that such vile behavior won't be tolerated in the future? Hardly. Just a few days ago, I came across this article (translated from the Hebrew by the Israel Government Press Office):
Al-Raya, the publication of the Islamic Jihad, printed a threatening article against Zev Schiff. Ronen Bergman received information that a terrorist organization knows which restaurants he frequents. Yoram Binur was accused of collaborating with the Zionist enemy, and the ISA
increased security around another journalist's home. This is how Palestinian terrorist organizations are attempting to tame the Israeli watchdogs of democracy. A phenomenon.
The article describes in frightening detail some of the elaborate schemes that have been employed to influence and intimidate the reporting of Israeli journalists. Threats of kidnapping, murder and harm to family members, backed up by evidence of access, are common.
Yoram Binur, Channel Two's reporter for Arab affairs sounds much more disturbed from the growing and apparent tendency. "The fact the Israeli journalists, along with academic researchers dealing with the Palestinian issue, are being threatened, is very frightening," he says. "There is a serious danger here that jeopardizes the freedom of expression in Israel. It is a very serious situation that must not be tolerated. The offensive intervention of terrorist organizations, with the intention of threatening and influencing the words of Israeli reporters, is crossing a red line. There is clear evidence of the terrorist cells' abilities to threaten and carry out their threats. If Israeli journalists become threatened on a regular basis, that breaks
the consensus that existed here for years. We must not belittle their military capabilities. They have shown us more than once just what they are capable of. The activists sent out on these missions carry them out with all the loyalty and professionalism of the elite commando unit."
But here is perhaps the most chilling part of all. According to Binur, the palestinians have come to regard Israeli journalists as their champions over the years. The Israeli media was (and in some cases remains) notoriously left-leaning in its spin on the news up until the palestinians rejected the Camp David proposals and launched the current "intifada." Now, says Binur,
Israeli journalists have been considered during recent years as cooperating with the establishment, a kind of messenger of the Zionist regime. In the opinion of everyone in the Territories, the Israeli press has been recruited on behalf of the government.
So now, unless they start to toe the line, these journalists are to be considered "collaborators," traitors deserving of a death sentence, to be judged, sentenced and executed by palestinian terrorist thugs. Destined to meet the same fate as that meted out to Daniel Pearl one year ago today?
Heaven forbid.
