Sarah Whalen, Arab News

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana, 30 April 2004 — How many times can a politician use the word “Jew” or “Jewish” in a sentence? Even once gets attention.

US President Bush squeezed three such references into his April 13th prime time news conference. And for squeezing “Jews” and “Christians” and “Muslims” and “theocratic terror” all into one sentence, well, the courting of American Jewish voters for the upcoming presidential election is officially off and running. Of course, Bush must compete with Democratic candidate John Kerry, recently “outed” as being of Jewish descent. But the Jewish vote is miniscule.

The real prize is what goes with it — Jewish money, Jewish editorial support, and Jewish insider schmooze. Ordinarily, these go to the Democrat.

But Bush is determined to muster some Jewish muscle for himself.

And so he lumped together radical Muslims from Bali to Baghdad as identical “terrorist servants” of an “ideology of murder.”

And their targets?

You name it.

“A free and independent Iraq.”

“America.”

“Our way of life.”

“Us.” (presemably as in “US”).

“The West.”

“Civilization”, “Freedom.”

“Liberty.”

“Security.”

“Every Muslim who desires peace.”

“Christians.” And, oh yes, “Jews.”

And Israelis — “children on buses in Jerusalem.” But Bush also swears “none of these (terrorist) actions (is) the work of a religion.” Because Muslims also vote. Bush’s blurring falls alongside Mariane Pearl’s demand for a tax-free $1-2 million payment, originally limited to 9/11 victims who gave up their right to sue the airlines whose planes were hijacked in return for a share of taxpayer-provided funds.

But unlike the hapless 9/11 victims, Mariane’s husband, Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl, avidly courted his killers.

Danny vanished in Pakistan on Jan. 23, 2002, and was murdered well after 9/11, while engaged in a Quixotic and ill-advised, wholly voluntary quest to “meet” some Al-Qaeda terrorist killers face-to-face.

Be careful what you wish for. Bush wants vengeance, Mariane wants money.

Why should we give either? Mariane and her lawyer, Robert Kelner, claim: “The victims of 9/11 were killed because they worked at the World Trade Center, a symbol of American capitalism.

Danny Pearl was killed because he worked for The Wall Street Journal, which (they) consider a consummate symbol of American capitalism.”

Both Mariane, of Jewish descent, and Attorney Kelner, Jewish, appeared on countless television programs trumpeting their cause.

And never, not once, did either ever say that Muslim terrorists killed Danny because he was Jewish. But Bush does. Bush claims the “young reporter’s” throat was “cut...for being a Jew.” Are being an “American,” a “capitalist,” or a “Jew,” all now mutually, irrevocably interconnected? Absurdly, Bush then linked Al-Qaeda attacks to “the killing of 241 Marines in Beirut,” a 1983 action undertaken by the US in support of Israeli positions, that occurred when Osama Bin Laden was actually helping the CIA defeat the Soviet Union’s illegal invasion of Afghanistan. Bush’s fantastic speech linked dots that could never be connected with genuine facts.

But in an election year, Israel....America....Beirut....Iraq....what’s the difference? Mariane and her lawyer doubt she will get the 9/11 money if Danny was killed because he was Jewish.

Funny thing.

Bush is afraid that he won’t get money and the kind of support that not even money can buy if Danny wasn’t killed because he was Jewish. Did Danny’s killers cut his throat because he was Jewish?

They reportedly said so.

Zionists want this to prove the US must defend Israel at any price, on the theory that Muslims want to “exterminate” Jews, Americans, and capitalists.

Like they did to Danny, who represented all these things.

But to embrace either line of rhetoric, one must first, like reading a novel or watching a movie, suspend one’s disbelief.

Because for Muslims, whether rabid fundamentalists or those “not against us” (as Bush refers to them), the issue is not Jews or Judaism, but Zionism. If Osama Bin Laden had aimed to kill only Jews, he would have dispatched planes elsewhere.

But what largely incenses Muslims all over the world should trouble everyone — Israel’s power to compel obedience from the most powerful nation on earth. Danny Pearl was killed not for “being” Jewish, but for what “Jewish” has come to mean, rightly or wrongly, in a part of the world that sympathizes and suffers with those the Israelis have dispossessed from land, from culture, from civil rights. Danny was killed not by powerful actors in service of some evil ideology, but by those powerless before Zionism, an ideology that sacrifices Palestinians for “freedom” and “security” — buzzwords Bush used no less than 22 times in his pre-press conference speech.

Bush’s bowing to Sharon and junking the “road map” is but yet another betrayal of Palestinians, of every 9/11 victim, Danny Pearl, and of every Jew and American who wants to live in peace with the Middle East.

— Sarah Whalen is an expert in Islamic law and taught law at Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans, Louisiana.