WSWS on Pearl Brad DeLong <jbdelong at uclink.berkeley.edu>
>It used to be that when Jews were killed for sport, people said that
>they were the victims of their own authorities' and ancestors'
>crimes. Now at least they say that they are the victims of the United
>States's policies.
>
>I suppose that this is progress--of a sort.
>
>
>^^^^^^^^
>
>CB: I think in this case the author is probably thinking about all
>the people the U.S. military has murdered...
Then the author is being mendacious, isn't he? The statement his killers made Danny Pearl read wasn't "I am an American", was it? It was "I am a Jew."
^^^^^^^
CB:
My guess is that Pearl was killed both because he was an American and a Jew, given that the Arab/Islamic terrorists various' statements seem to point to both the terrorist actions of the U.S. and Israel as the motive for their terrorist retaliations. I don't know whether he would have been killed if he had been a Jew from Spain or some other country that is not heavily involved in the Middle East/Central Asian war.
>From the standpoint of the killers, it was already known by all that he was an American. By having him make the statement, they probably thought that they were making a public attack on Israel as well as the U.S.