This week marks the sixth anniversary of the brutal beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, and today’s WSJ carries a moving piece by his father:

I am often asked why Danny’s death has touched so many people and why he, of all victims of terror, is so often singled out as an icon of the troubled journey of the 21st century… After all, 30 other journalists were killed in 2002, and 118 journalists have been killed in Iraq alone since that war began.
The shocking element in Danny’s murder was that he was killed, not for what he wrote or planned to write, but for what he represented – America, modernity, openness, pluralism, curiosity, dialogue, fairness, objectivity, freedom of inquiry, truth and respect for all people. In short, each and every one of us was targeted in Karachi in January of 2002.

Judea Pearl, a professor at UCLA, also has harsh things to say about the way many Western journalists have aided and abetted the terrorists with inflammatory and inaccurate anti-Western reporting:

One of the things that saddens me most is that the press and media have had an active, perhaps even major role in fermenting hate and inhumanity. It was not religious fanaticism alone.
This was first brought to my attention by the Pakistani Consul General who came to offer condolences at our home in California. When we spoke about the anti-Semitic element in Danny’s murder she said: “What can you expect of these people who never saw a Jew in their lives and who have been exposed, day and night, to televised images of Israeli soldiers targeting and killing Palestinian children.”
At the time, it was not clear whether she was trying to exonerate Pakistan from responsibility for Danny’s murder, or to pass on the responsibility to European and Arab media for their persistent de-humanization of Jews, Americans and Israelis. The answer was unveiled in 2004, when a friend told me that photos of Muhammad Al Dura were used as background in the video tape of Danny’s murder.
Al Dura, readers may recall, is the 12-year-old Palestinian boy who allegedly died from Israeli bullets in Gaza in September of 2001. As we now know, the whole scene is very likely to have been a fraud, choreographed by stringers and cameramen of France 2, the official news channel of France. France 2 aired the tape repeatedly and distributed it all over the world to anyone who needed an excuse to ratchet up anger or violence, among them Danny’s killers.

For years, many observers have accused France 2, of having blood on its hands over the al-Dura case. (Al-Dura was also cited by Osama Bin-Laden in his first post-9/11 propaganda video.) But word reaches me from Paris that Nicolas Sarkozy is finally considering removing the staff at the channel that have played such a damaging role. They previously enjoyed the political protection of Jacques Chirac. A court case against France 2 over the incident continues.