Rosh Hashanah, Yom HaDin and Guantanamo Bay

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Wednesday, November 19, 2008

It’s time for words to lead the peace process

By Judea Pearl

Let us be frank: The current stalemate is ideological, not physical, and it hangs on two major contentions: "historical right" and "justice," which must be wrestled with in words before we can expect any substantive movement on the ground.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

A clash of two birthdays

By Judea Pearl

In sharp contrast to the birthdayof Kuntar, next month will witness another birthday celebration closerto my heart: the birthday of our late son, Daniel Pearl, who would have turned 45 on Oct. 10

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Al-Jazeera and the glorification of barbarity

By Judea Pearl

The focus of my attention naturally turned to Al-Jazeera because, with its outreach of 50 million viewers from Morocco to the Persian Gulf, this pan-Arab satellite channel is considered the conscience and future of the Arab world.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Israel @ 60: Confronting denial

By Judea Pearl

Each year, in preparation for Israel's birthday, newspaper editors feel an uncontrolled urge, a divine calling in fact, to invite Arab writers to tell us why Israel should not exist.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

History disproves myth that founding Zionists were naive

By Judea Pearl

We are often told, mostly by anti-Israel propagandists, that the early Zionists' attitude toward the indigenous Arab population in Palestine was laden with ignorance, naivete, denial, contempt, abuse and outright oppression. Afif Safieh, the PLO representative to the United States, tells audiences on campus after campus: "[Palestinians] have suffered three successive denials -- a denial of their mere physical existence, a denial of their national rights and, the most morally disturbing, a denied recognition of their pain and suffering."

Thursday, January 17, 2008

A culture of violence or a cult of the superficial?

By Judea Pearl

When The Journal asked me to write a note about the murder of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, I initially declined. I did not feel I had anything insightful or original to add to the dozens of gloomy and desperate articles we have been receiving by Pakistanis and Western analysts in the wake of that horrible tragedy.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Chanukah— the pink elephant of Annapolis

By Judea Pearl

I spent the last week of November in Israel and watched the Annapolis show unfold through the lens of Israeli TV. As expected, everyone in Israel watched that show with both nervous curiosity and cynical dismissal.

But the event that truly captured the public imagination and managed to elevate people's spirit above the mundane was one that occurred 200 miles away from Annapolis, in a place called Lake Success, and it took place 60 years ago, Nov. 29, 1947.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Saudi king’s gift should fulfill ‘contract with humanity’

By Judea Pearl

We are in receipt of a refreshing piece of news from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia via the New York Times:

"On a marshy peninsula 50 miles from this Red Sea port, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is staking $12.5 billion on a gargantuan bid to catch up with the West in science and technology."

This is not some humdrum investment. King Abdullah University for Science and Technology will create one of the world's 10 most endowed science centers and, if it also manages to create an environment of academic freedom, might well be what the Arab world needs at this juncture of history.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

In Quest for Meaning

By Judea Pearl

Man is a meaning-seeking animal. Hardly a second goes by in which our mind does not stop its routine activities to ponder the meaning of the input it receives from our senses or from its own activities.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

You have the right to feel offended

By Judea Pearl

A conference organized by the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute in Jerusalem last month dealt with anti-Israel attacks in the United States that constitute, according to organizers, a "long-term threat" to Israel's standing.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

‘A Mighty Heart’ needs moral clarity

By Judea Pearl

The political lesson of Russell's paradox is that there is no such thing as unqualified tolerance. Ultimately, one must be able to expound intolerance of certain groups or ideologies without surrendering the moral high ground normally linked to tolerance and inclusivity.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Why ‘peace camps’ do not make peace

By Judea Pearl

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Yom Ha’Atzmaut 2007: What Israel means to me

By Judea Pearl

I was born in Tel Aviv, in 1936, and, quite naturally, my feelings toward Israel are suffused with the love, pride, memories, music and aromas that nourish and sustain all natives of any country. Yet, remarkably, as the years pass, I discover that these same feelings towards Israel are echoed by people everywhere, including many who have never set foot in that country.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Benefits bolster the case for reciprocity

By Judea Pearl

The past few months saw rising temperatures of accusations and counteraccusations among sections of the Jewish community. Leftist Jews criticized Israel,
professor Alvin Rosenfeld criticized anti-Zionist Jews, the American Jewish Committee (AJCommittee) published Rosenfeld's article, Rob Eshman criticized Rosenfeld ("Shutting Jewish Mouths," Feb. 16) and Jewish Journal readers criticized Eshman (Letters, Feb. 23).

Thursday, February 8, 2007

A meaningful peace plan

By Judea Pearl

We are constantly being told that the ball of peace lies entirely in Israel's court, because Palestinians have no control over their destiny and Israel's economy is so much stronger. It ain't necessarily so.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Palestinian remarks generate cheer and gloom

By Judea Pearl

Moreover, now that Hamas is recognized as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, Hamas' official stance toward Israel has given Western observers a crisp and reliable thermometer to gauge the Palestinian vision of peace, many times more reliable than the ambiguous polls and speeches we have been reading about in the past.

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Shoah Denial Conference: Damage Assessment

By Judea Pearl

Why is Ahmadinejad pursuing this foolish crusade against the Holocaust? After all, even he must know that the Holocaust is one of the most documented events in human history and, hence, that denying its reality or even questioning its magnitude and significance is likely to end up in embarrassment. Why then is he so insistent?

Thursday, March 16, 2006

For Ilan, a Eulogy

By Judea Pearl

This week marks the shloshim, the 30th day following the death of Ilan Halimi, murdered by French anti-Semites in a Paris suburb.

Thursday, September 22, 2005

What Musharraf Should Say to Jews

By Judea Pearl

Dialogue between Jews and Muslims is a necessary step toward easing world tension, and we are therefore pleased that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has addressed the American Jewish Congress last weekend in New York.

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Clash of Ideas Should Be Addressed

By Judea Pearl

The age of terror, it seems, has sprouted an era of dialogue. A host of conferences designed to bring together East and West are cropping up everywhere.

Never before, perhaps, have so many talked so optimistically about so serious a problem. But behind all the words is one unspoken disagreement that may imperil any chance for progress.

My direct encounter with this optimism took place at a high-profile get-together, the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar, in mid-April. Organized by the Qatar government and the Brookings Institution, the conference was packed with more than 150 scholars and leaders from all sides who diligently discussed both the needs and the means for achieving democracy, reforms and renaissance in the Muslim world. Strikingly, there was hardly a Muslim speaker who did not tie the implementation of such reforms to progress toward settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Thursday, June 9, 2005

Formula Could Combat Campus Racism

By Judea Pearl

Jewish students are currently subjected to an unprecedented assault on their identity as Jews. And we, the Jewish faculty on campus, have let those students down. We have failed to equip them with effective tools to fight back this assault.

We can reverse this trend.

Thursday, September 5, 2002

Sense From Senselessness

By Judea Pearl

What follows is an edited version of a speech that Judea Pearl, the father of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, delivered upon accepting an award on his son's behalf from the Los Angeles Press Club on June 22, 2002.