Hillel Holds Memorial for Daniel Pearl

Date: March 6, 2002 By Dawn Fuller Contact: Dawn Fuller Phone: (513) 556-1823 Archive: General News The wailing of the noon civil defense sirens March 6 began a somber UC service in memory of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. The service was held at Hillel Jewish Student Center on Clifton Avenue. Rabbi Abie Ingber lit the candle that burned beneath a photo of the Wall Street Journal reporter at the front of the student sanctuary. He briefly described Pearl's life from his youth to when he began his job in 1990 at the Wall Street Journal, serving the Washington, London and Paris Bureaus. "He was called an outstanding colleague, a great reporter and a dear friend. Leaving behind his pregnant wife and fellow journalist, Mariane, he was the 10th reporter to die in the coverage in the war on terrorism." In the weeks after Pearl was kidnapped in Pakistan on Jan. 23, reports of his condition fluctuated between hope and despair. His death was confirmed in February after his kidnappers videotaped his execution. "The video of the murder none of us would ever want to see," said Ingber. "The kidnappers decapitated him after they made him pronounce his Jewishness. Daniel Pearl was murdered because he was an American, because he worked for a paper dedicated to truth and freedom of speech, and because he was a Jew. "Our country has known this kind of murder before. We will not stand idly by while gentle souls are murdered. We will not stand idly by and let a Jew be decapitated." The service included music by College-Conservatory of Music cellist Deborah Netanel, reflections from Greg Hand, Vice President of UC Public Relations and Jeanette McClellan, editor of The News Record, UC's student-run newspaper, and poetry read by Noga Mailiniak, Israeli Emissary, Jewish Federation of Cincinnati, and Marguerite Feibelman. McClellan called Pearl a "soldier of truth," and said journalists will continue to seek the truth, regardless of the risk to themselves. Hand, who started his career in newspaper, said the job of the journalist was to ask why. He said that in the context of the university community, all scholars ask why and that Daniel Pearl's death shows the business of asking why is "not a matter of curiosity, but a matter of life and death." As Ingber ended the service, he asked that visitors light a Hillel memorial candle for Pearl and for the nine victims killed by a suicide bomber outside a Jerusalem synagogue last Saturday. Ingber also asked those in attendance to come back to Hillel at 5:45 Friday, to line up and provide a "security presence" for students attending Friday service. "Your presence outside our synagogue will show our student community that Jews walking out of, or into synagogues, do not walk alone."