But I find it hard to look him straight in the eyes and say: You did not die in vain.

This week marks the seventh anniversary of the murder of our son, former Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. My wife Ruth and I wonder: Would Danny have believed that today's world emerged after his tragedy?

Reuters/Corbis

Jimmy Carter.

The answer does not come easily. Danny was an optimist, a true believer in the goodness of mankind. Yet he was also a realist, and would not let idealism bend the harshness of facts.

Neither he, nor the millions who were shocked by his murder, could have possibly predicted that seven years later his abductor, Omar Saeed Sheikh, according to several South Asian reports, would be planning terror acts from the safety of a Pakistani jail. Or that his murderer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now in Guantanamo, would proudly boast of his murder in a military tribunal in March 2007 to the cheers of sympathetic jihadi supporters. Or that this ideology of barbarism would be celebrated in European and American universities, fueling rally after rally for Hamas, Hezbollah and other heroes of "the resistance." Or that another kidnapped young man, Israeli Gilad Shalit, would spend his 950th day of captivity with no Red Cross visitation while world leaders seriously debate whether his kidnappers deserve international recognition.

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No. Those around the world who mourned for Danny in 2002 genuinely hoped that Danny's murder would be a turning point in the history of man's inhumanity to man, and that the targeting of innocents to transmit political messages would quickly become, like slavery and human sacrifice, an embarrassing relic of a bygone era.

But somehow, barbarism, often cloaked in the language of "resistance," has gained acceptance in the most elite circles of our society. The words "war on terror" cannot be uttered today without fear of offense. Civilized society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to be disgusted by evil.

I believe it all started with well-meaning analysts, who in their zeal to find creative solutions to terror decided that terror is not a real enemy, but a tactic. Thus the basic engine that propels acts of terrorism -- the ideological license to elevate one's grievances above the norms of civilized society -- was wished away in favor of seemingly more manageable "tactical" considerations.

This mentality of surrender then worked its way through politicians like the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. In July 2005 he told Sky News that suicide bombing is almost man's second nature. "In an unfair balance, that's what people use," explained Mr. Livingstone.

But the clearest endorsement of terror as a legitimate instrument of political bargaining came from former President Jimmy Carter. In his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," Mr. Carter appeals to the sponsors of suicide bombing. "It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Road-map for Peace are accepted by Israel." Acts of terror, according to Mr. Carter, are no longer taboo, but effective tools for terrorists to address perceived injustices.

Mr. Carter's logic has become the dominant paradigm in rationalizing terror. When asked what Israel should do to stop Hamas's rockets aimed at innocent civilians, the Syrian first lady, Asma Al-Assad, did not hesitate for a moment in her response: "They should end the occupation." In other words, terror must earn a dividend before it is stopped.

The media have played a major role in handing terrorism this victory of acceptability. Qatari-based Al Jazeera television, for example, is still providing Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi hours of free air time each week to spew his hateful interpretation of the Koran, authorize suicide bombing, and call for jihad against Jews and Americans.

Then came the August 2008 birthday of Samir Kuntar, the unrepentant killer who, in 1979, smashed the head of a four-year-old Israeli girl with his rifle after killing her father before her eyes. Al Jazeera elevated Kuntar to heroic heights with orchestras, fireworks and sword dances, presenting him to 50 million viewers as Arab society's role model. No mainstream Western media outlet dared to expose Al Jazeera efforts to warp its young viewers into the likes of Kuntar. Al Jazeera's management continues to receive royal treatment in all major press clubs.

Some American pundits and TV anchors didn't seem much different from Al Jazeera in their analysis of the recent war in Gaza. Bill Moyers was quick to lend Hamas legitimacy as a "resistance" movement, together with honorary membership in PBS's imaginary "cycle of violence." In his Jan. 9 TV show, Mr. Moyers explained to his viewers that "each [side] greases the cycle of violence, as one man's terrorism becomes another's resistance to oppression." He then stated -- without blushing -- that for readers of the Hebrew Bible "God-soaked violence became genetically coded." The "cycle of violence" platitude allows analysts to empower terror with the guise of reciprocity, and, amazingly, indict terror's victims for violence as immutable as DNA.

In Today's Opinion Journal

 

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

• Dodd's Peek-A-Boo Disclosure
• Nationalize This
• Motley Paint Crew

 

TODAY'S COLUMNISTS

• Global View: Iraq Is Obama's Mideast Pillar 
  – Bret Stephens
• Main Street: Congress's Phony War on Torture 
  – William McGurn

 

COMMENTARY

• What Other Financial Crises Tell Us 
  – Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff
• How to Value Toxic Bank Assets 
  – Robert C. Pozen

When we ask ourselves what it is about the American psyche that enables genocidal organizations like Hamas -- the charter of which would offend every neuron in our brains -- to become tolerated in public discourse, we should take a hard look at our universities and the way they are currently being manipulated by terrorist sympathizers.

At my own university, UCLA, a symposium last week on human rights turned into a Hamas recruitment rally by a clever academic gimmick. The director of the Center for Near East Studies carefully selected only Israel bashers for the panel, each of whom concluded that the Jewish state is the greatest criminal in human history.

The primary purpose of the event was evident the morning after, when unsuspecting, uninvolved students read an article in the campus newspaper titled, "Scholars say: Israel is in violation of human rights in Gaza," to which the good name of the University of California was attached. This is where Hamas scored its main triumph -- another inch of academic respectability, another inroad into Western minds.

Danny's picture is hanging just in front of me, his warm smile as reassuring as ever. But I find it hard to look him straight in the eyes and say: You did not die in vain.

Mr. Pearl, a professor of computer science at UCLA, is president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, founded in memory of his son to promote cross-cultural understanding.

If God is a Megalomaniac then we have Obama to defeat Him

... God: 97,227,884,743,788,327,474,874,840,098,201,919,398,348,747

... Humans: 164 + 1 (Obama's election)

"Imagine a country ruled by an all-powerful king who has ordered that everyone spends 8 hours a day singing his praises. What words do we use for someone like that? Megalomaniac? A good ruler is one who creates a stable, peaceful and progressive situation within which everyone can be themselves and develop into the best they could be. Yet we have this vision put before us of Jesus ruling a new Earth within which everyone spends 24 hours a day for ever in “eternal ecstatic praise” to him.

So we are to have a new perfect body, we will be brain-washed so that all unapproved thoughts and questions are removed from our brains, and we’ll all think and believe the same and sing God’s praises in perfect harmony. If the choice is between ceasing to exist and being transformed into a singing cyberman, there really isn’t much in it. One would cease to exist as an individual with a human identity in either case.

If God wanted the earth filled with worshipping, obedient, unquestioning, sinless beings, he’d have populated it with angels. What on earth would be the point of creating free-thinking, creative human beings and then mutating selected ones into clones of angels?

Such a vision could only be put forward by people who are control freaks, or who have their “heads in the clouds,” or by ministers who think that the highlight of everyone’s lives is their Sunday services."

Is Your Mouth A Little Weak . . .

When you open it to speak

Are you Smart?

23 days to Valentine's Day

This is the Present that Kooks and Whackjobs Have Been Fighting to Delay

I remember 2001 when Pres. Bush made his announcement on television regarding stem cells. I was in Israel at the time. Nearly 8 years later, think of all the people whose lives could be better, how much farther along research could be, and how much broader the body of human knowledge might span if ignorance, fear, politics and kooks didn't play a role in important national science policy. How foolish they will all look.

fMR-stupid

As if i needed any more reason to always skip fMRI articles:

Samuel Phillips Huntington: April 18, 1927–December 24, 2008

I guess news moves a little more slowly over the holidays. I had no idea Dr. Huntington had died until I opened the Economist today. Below, an excerpt from the commentary article.

I recall my professors spoke of him dismissively, before 09/11 that was. Is optimism inherently dangerous? Are liberalism and culture diametrically opposed?


"Both well and badly. Huntington came as close as anybody to predicting September 11th and the “war on terror” with his strictures about Islam’s “bloody borders”. He also came as close as anybody to predicting America’s agonies in Iraq by pointing out that democracy is the product of very specific cultural processes. His argument that modernisation does not necessarily entail Westernisation also looks prescient: why should the Chinese embrace the American economic model when it seems to produce such economic havoc? And why should authoritarian regimes in the Middle East embrace democratisation when it might mean handing power to Islamists? The master emerges better than his pupil, Mr Fukuyama."

Who Said NY is Rude and Pushy?

CNN reports that Carnegie Hall has made the following offer in an effort to extricate its most decrepit form of furniture …

“Carnegie Hall has offered to pay for the rent-control tenants' relocation expenses and move them to apartments which are "equivalent or better" in the neighborhood. The Hall also is offering to pay the difference in rent to each of those tenants for the rest of their lives.”

A remarkably generous offer from a private foundation; a foundation which embodies no public obligation beyond that of any other private entity.

Any rational person would assume this generous offer precludes the possibility of conflict. However, this rationality fails to account for a significant X factor: the stupefying ego of a 96 year old woman.

"They can pay me $10 million. I'm part of history," she said. "You want to tell me they don't have enough rooms? They have a building of rooms. This place is history, and I think Carnegie, the people running it, I don't think they think about that."

Imagine a resident, any resident, of Beijing telling this same story. When did the founding principal of each individual “created equal” morph into “created special”. This woman is only remarkable because of the place in which she happens to reside. I say send in the New York County Sheriffs to remove her for trespassing.