Ed Koch’s Headstone, Words From Daniel Pearl

Ed Koch thought about his final resting place, famously worrying that his body might end up somewhere besides Manhattan. He also weighed with great care the inscription on his headstone, which was placed at Manhattan’s Trinity Church Cemetery in 2009 (the only place in Manhattan with gravesites available).

The grave marker is inscribed with words spoken by Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl before he was killed by militants in Pakistan: “My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish.”

The former three-term mayor of New York, who died Friday, explained the selection in a 2012 interview with the Journal. “Well, that’s me, too,” he said of Mr. Pearl’s last words.

“I think that statement is as important as the most holy of all statements in Jewish ritual,” Koch said. “I think that every Saturday, we ought to say, ‘My father’s a Jew, my mother was a Jew, and I’m a Jew,’ with great pride.”
The headstone also includes the most familiar Jewish prayer, in English and Hebrew, known as the Shma: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” And this epitaph:

He was fiercely proud of his Jewish faith. He fiercely defended the City of New York, and he fiercely loved its people. Above all, he loved his country, the United States of America, in whose armed forces he served in World War II.

Koch, who described himself as a secular Jew, used his office in City Hall as a bully pulpit to advocate for foreign policies — particularly those supportive of Israel — and continued to do so for decades after he left public office.
In 2011, he helped a Republican congressman get elected in New York as rebuke to the Democratic Party’s stance on Israel. He described anti-Semitism around the world as a serious concern for him.
“There’s so many people who are anti-Semitic today,” he said in the interview. “There are Jews who are uncomfortable announcing that they are Jew… I’m proud of the word ‘Jew.’ And that I am a Jew. And that’s why think we should say it every Saturday.”

Judea Pearl: 'Anti-Zionism is the worst form of racism'

Judea Pearl, the father of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl HY"D (May God avenge his blood), surprised his listeners at the Simon Wiesenthal Center on Monday night with a scathing indictment of anti-Zionism.

Pearl, father of slain reporter Daniel Pearl, used the annual lecture on the “state of anti-Semitism” to upend conventional thinking, and argue that anti-Zionism is a strain of hate that is far more dangerous to Jews than anti-Semitism.

He called anti-Zionism, which he defined as the denial of Israel’s right to exist in the family of nations, as “the worst form of racism.” Unlike anti-Semitism, he said, it carries a measure of social acceptance, and it “hides itself in the cloak of political debate.”

Those who think anti-Semitism, especially as it colors debate about Israel in the United States, is the greater danger are mistaken, Pearl told the crowd in his opening address on Monday night. Jews, he said, have become experts at fighting anti-Semitism, likening it to a disease in which “the antibodies are known.”

“Anti-Zionism is worse. It is harder to fight. It comes in a camouflage that allows it to penetrate vital tissue undetected,” he said. Then he paused briefly and added, “Like at our universities.”

...

Pearl, who was born in Tel Aviv, speaks with an Israeli accent that sometimes makes it hard to understand his exact words. But there is no mistaking his passionate defense of Israel and his belief in the Jews’ historical connection to the land. Asked about those who criticized Israeli government’s policies, he answered that he thought anti-Zionism often was lurking beneath their words.

In his speech, Pearl called anti-Zionism “morally appalling and strategically harder to fight.

“Anti-Zionism targets the most vulnerable part of the Jewish people, the 6 million people of Israel. It condemns them to eternal statelessness in a very bad neighborhood,” he said.

He encouraged the use of the r-word, to call out as “racists” those who deny Israel’s right to exist.

“First, they are stunned. Then the debate shifts … into our core issue,” which is that they are denying the Jewish people that which is granted to other nations.

In a question handed up from the audience, Pearl was asked what he thought about Jews who say they are anti-Zionists. “That’s easy,” he responded. “It’s a ticket for social acceptance.”

Martin Luther King held similar views, and for what it's worth, I must say that I agree with Dr. Pearl as well. Look at the rhetoric coming out of the Arab Muslim world today. There's no difference between anti-Zionist and anti-Semite, except that being an 'anti-Zionist' is a socially more acceptable cover.

Civil trial attorney Baruch Cohen meets UCLA professor Judea Pearl, father of WSJ slain reporter Daniel Pearl at Stand With Us event at the Federation

Khalid Sheik Mohammed killed U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl, report finds

A recently completed investigation of the killing of Daniel Pearl in Pakistan nine years ago makes public new evidence that a senior al-Qaeda operative executed the Wall Street Journal reporter.
Khalid Sheik Mohammed -- the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, who is being held at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- said at a military hearing in 2007 that he killed Pearl. But there have been lingering doubts about his involvement, and the United States has not charged him with the crime.
According to the new report, which was prepared by faculty members and students at Georgetown University, U.S. officials have concluded that vascular technology, or vein matching, shows that the hand of the unseen man who killed Pearl on video is that of Mohammed. The report also says Mohammed told the FBI that a senior al-Qaeda operative advised him to take control of Pearl from his original kidnappers.
The 31,000-word report, published in conjunction with the Center for Public Integrity at www.publicintegrity.org, is among the most complete and graphic accounts of Pearl's death. The 3 1/2-year investigation, called the Pearl Project, was led by Asra Q. Nomani, a former colleague of Pearl's at the Journal, and Barbara Feinman Todd, director of the journalism program at Georgetown.
Pearl, 38, was kidnapped on Jan. 23, 2002, while investigating alleged connections between a radical Pakistani cleric and Richard Reid, who had attempted to detonate a bomb hidden in his shoe on a transatlantic flight in December 2001.
Pearl was duped into thinking that he was heading to an interview with the cleric when he was seized by a group of militants organized by Omar Sheik, a British-educated Pakistani, who is in prison for Pearl's kidnapping and murder, as are three accomplices. At the time he was orchestrating Pearl's abduction, the United States was pressing Pakistan for Sheik's extradition.
The report concludes that while Sheik set the kidnapping in motion, the group was uncertain about its ultimate goals and, at one point, appeared to consider releasing Pearl. According to the report, Mohammed told FBI interrogators at Guantanamo Bay that he received a call from Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian and a senior figure in al-Qaeda.
Adel "says, 'Listen, he's been kidnapped. These people don't know what to do with him. They want to know if we want him,' " Mohammed told the FBI, according to the report, which is based on hundreds of interviews as well as court records, FBI reports, and Pearl's e-mails and personal notes. Adel "thought this was an opportunity. We can take advantage of it. He said he wanted to make sure it's an Al Qaeda thing."
The report said it is still unclear how Adel, who remains at large, was able to direct Mohammed to the kidnappers.
The report said Mohammed and two others arrived at the compound on the outskirts of Karachi, where Pearl was being held. According to the report, some U.S. and Pakistani officials think the accomplices were Mohammed's nephews, including Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, who is also being held at Guantanamo Bay.
Mohammed slashed Pearl's throat, killing him, but one of his accomplices failed to operate the video camera, which they had brought to capture the murder for propaganda purposes. Mohammed restaged the killing, this time decapitating Pearl, according to the report. He then dismembered Pearl's body, and it was buried on the compound. Guards washed the bloody floor and then prayed, foreheads to the ground, on the same surface where their prisoner had just been killed, the report said.
The report said that 27 men, including guards and drivers, played a part in the kidnapping and murder, and that 14 remain free in Pakistan. Mohammed has not been charged with Pearl's murder, in part because he first confessed while in CIA custody, where he was waterboarded 183 times. Prosecutors fear that his treatment at the hands of the agency could compromise any case, the report said.
Mohammed told the FBI that he wanted to exploit the murder for propaganda. But the report also quoted a former chief military prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay as saying that "one of the high value detainees told interrogators that Osama bin Laden was angry that [Mohammed] had slaughtered Pearl so publicly and brutally, arguing that the murder brought unnecessary attention on the network."