Pamela Geller put it succinctly: “Pearl was beheaded because of Islamic anti-semitism and violent jihadi doctrine. Freedom of the press had nothing to do with it.” And the incomparable Melanie Phillips has more: “What Daniel Pearl’s decapitation means to Barack Obama,” from The Spectator, May 22 (thanks to Inexion):
Even given Obama’s ever more terrifying and lethal performance in office, his comments about the jihadi murder of Daniel Pearl, and in front of Daniel’s bereaved family, are simply astounding. This is what Obama said:
‘Obviously, the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is.’
Daniel Pearl was not murdered because he was a journalist. He was decapitated because he was an American Jew. Khalid Sheikh Mohamed cut off his head in an act of unimaginable barbarism, which was videoed in order to incite other Muslims to similar acts of barbarism and to destroy the will of the west to defend itself. But in signing the Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Act, Obama came up with the remarkable statement that the significance of Daniel Pearl’s murder was merely that
it reminded us of how valuable a free press is.
Any decent and rational person would think that the significance of Daniel Pearl’s murder was actually that the west is up against a psychopathic death cult which has a particular aim of killing Jews and destroying America. But not the American President. In front of the Pearl family, Obama couldn’t even bring himself to say Daniel was murdered. And ‘one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination’??