Kamala Harris, Donald Trump - Don’t Wait Until Election Day: Commit to Bring Khalid Sheikh Muhammed to Justice for Daniel Pearl's Murder
Americans cheered last month when journalist Evan Gershkovich came home.
The son of Soviet-born Jewish emigrants, Gershkovich earned awards for his international reporting and, due to his expertise and fluency in Russian, wrote on Russian issues for The Wall Street Journal.
In March 2023, the Russian Federal Security Service arrested the correspondent on wrongful charges of espionage, the first time an American journalist was arrested on such charges since the Cold War.
On Aug. 1 of this year, America and her allies finalized the largest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history. The United States traded an innocent journalist for Russian criminals, including an assassin.
With the 24/7 news cycle bombarding our collective consciousness, Gershkovich’s story of suffering and ultimate release will soon fade from memory.
But let's not forget, there is the story of another Wall Street Jornal journalist, for whom the final chapter has yet to be written.
Daniel Pearl was a respected investigative reporter on assignment for The Wall Street Journal. Twenty-three years before Gershkovich’s arrest, a militant group linked to al-Qaida kidnapped Pearl.
One year later, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), who would emerge as the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, tortured and murdered Pearl.
The video of Daniel’s "confession" that he was a Jew, and a Zionist, as well as his horrific beheading circulated globally.
Later, Mohammed gleefully confessed to Pearl’s murder and dismemberment.
Unbelievably, this crime goes unprosecuted despite the fact Mohammed is in the custody of America. For all intents and purposes, beyond Daniel Pearl’s immediate family, his murder was all but forgotten.
Recently, KSM was back in the news. Indeed, a plea deal was announced on July 31 that guaranteed KSM no more than three lifetimes served in prison for unleashing the mass murder of nearly 3,000 innocent souls on Sept. 11, 2001.
Thankfully, less than 48 hours later, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin rightly canceled the plea deal. It’s not clear if he will ever be tried and sentenced to death for 9/11 and under whose jurisdiction.
Neither the indictment nor plea deal appears to have included KSM’s hands-on murder of Daniel Pearl. It seems almost no one is talking about bringing Mohammed to justice for the craven murder of this brilliant journalist, son, husband, and father.
Evan Gershkovich was reunited with family, friends, and colleagues because The Wall Street Journal refused to allow the world to forsake and forget an innocent man.
His plight ignited the compassion of the American people and the attention of the president of the United States.
As the Talmud teaches: a single life saved is an entire universe redeemed.
But what would constitute justice for The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Pearl, and why, in our troubled world, should the case of one man be pursued a quarter of a century later?
In Deuteronomy, we read the oft-quoted and oft-misappropriated phrase: "Justice, justice you shall pursue."
Why does justice appear twice?
- Perhaps it serves as emphasis.
- Perhaps it reminds us that the pursuit of justice ought to be relentless, that justice is not only a destination but a journey, and sometimes that journey can take a very long time down a road full of barriers and detours.
When the two of us think about the pursuit of justice, we think of our personal inspiration, Simon Wiesenthal.
A victim of the Nazis during the Holocaust, Mr. Wiesenthal lost 89 members of his family during the Shoah.
But after being freed by U.S. soldiers in May 1945, Wiesenthal never actually left the Holocaust. He devoted the rest of his life to bringing to justice to the murderers of his family and six million other Jews.
Someone once asked Mr. Wiesenthal when he would stop pursuing Nazis.
When was enough, enough?
He rightfully answered, "Never" because "the Nazis almost succeeded in erasing the very concept of justice from the world altogether."
"For me," Mr. Wiesenthal added, "every single trial of a Nazi war criminal serves as a warning to future generations that tomorrow’s murderers would ultimately be held accountable."
It's unclear if KSM will ultimately stand trial for the horrific mass murders of 9/11.
But that legal Gordian Knot cannot allow Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to escape the full weight of justice for Danny Pearl’s beheading.
With the clocking running out on President Biden’s term, we call on both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump to pledge to immediately and publicly pursue justice once and for all for Daniel Pearl and his family.
- It's time to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
- It's time to wipe the smirk off the face of this butcher who beheaded and cut to pieces a young Jewish Journalist whose last words were, "I am a Jew."
Dr. Judea Pearl, a renowned scientist and human rights activist, established The Daniel Pearl Foundation and the Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism.
In an amazing act of solidarity, this year it was bestowed on Evan Gershkovich.
For the rest of us, if we want to live in a just society — we must act justly.
G-d admonished Cain — "The blood of your (innocent) brother screams out from the ground."
Isn’t it time Daniel Pearl’s silent screams pierce our deadly apathy?
A quote attributed to one of history’s worst mass murderers, Joseph Stalin, declared, "The death of one person is a tragedy; the death of one million is a statistic."
Shedding the glaring light of truth on KSM’s savage murder of one man will help strengthen the rule of law and help ensure that the victims of 9/11 will be remembered as more than just a statistic.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper is the Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Rev. Johnnie Moore is the president of The Congress of Christian Leaders. They both served on the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom.
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