Steve Malzberg
Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2002

Last Monday and Tuesday I was in Atlanta hosting CNN's "TalkBack Live." The show airs from 3-4 p.m. Eastern time Monday-Friday. It was great, and I'm proud to say that it went very well.

I have been a guest on the show many times over the past four years or so, which added to my excitement. The staff of the show couldn't have been any nicer to me.

I felt at home from the time I walked into the pre-show meeting on Monday morning until I departed CNN headquarters after Tuesday's show. Everyone was great, and I look forward to working with them again as both a guest and a guest host.

On Friday the world learned that Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl was dead. By Friday night the reports started to leak out that Pearl was killed not only because he was an American, but also mostly because he was a Jew.

According to this week's edition of Newsweek, the much-talked-about videotape that proves he is dead has Pearl saying, "My father is a Jew, my mother is a Jew, and I am a Jew." Pearl is also quoted as saying, "America will bear the consequences of our government's unconditional support for Israel."

The magazine quotes those familiar with the videotape now in the FBI's possession as saying, "Pearl's throat is then suddenly slit with a knife. A hand is shown holding his severed head. The tape cuts to his captors repeatedly stabbing his lifeless body. Pearl's head is then shown lying on a pile of newspapers as a message scrolls in the foreground: 'If our demands aren't met, there will be more scenes like this.'"

The scum who kidnapped Pearl and did this to him are, according to Newsweek, members of a fiercely anti-Semitic Islamic terrorist group called Jaish-e-Mohammed. Reports in the New York Post indicate that Pearl was lured to his captors via e-mail, with promises of an interview with some terrorist leader with possible links to bin Laden.

Still other reports state that they were looking for a Jew. Well, they found one – a Jew who held duel citizenship in the U.S. and Israel, a Jew whose wife is expecting their first child.

It's just another chapter in what has become a religious war that the Islamic fundamentalists have taken up against all who are not of their faith, especially Jews.

As I write this, Pakistan has three suspects in custody and are searching for many more. The United States is considering what our next move should be. We have no extradition treaty with Pakistan, but several options are on the table.

"I hope the U.S. will be as determined with requests for their extradition, and bring them to justice, as it was with fighting al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan," said Raanan Gissin, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, on my WABC radio show.

"I think you can't make any compromises with terrorists and particularly these kinds of terrorist groups who have embarked on a campaign to annihilate part of the human race," he continued.

Gissin made it perfectly clear that the Jewish state reserves the right to assure that justice is done to those who killed Danny Pearl.

"I think the fact that Danny Pearl, his last words before they cut his throat 'I am a Jew,' stands as a testament to what we are facing and the kind of genocide that these kinds of terrorist groups are going to inflict on us and anyone else who is within the category of being a Jew."

Gissin says that category includes Americans.

Sharon's spokesman added, "We [Israel] will make certain that anyone who takes the life of a Jew anywhere in the world will not be exonerated. And you can rest assured that although it may take a long time and although it may not be immediate, that those who murdered Daniel Pearl will not be exonerated. Our long arm will reach them."

Strong words, but Israel has done things of this nature in the past. It hunted down, one by one, the surviving terrorists who slaughtered the Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich in 1972. It took many years, but only one remains alive.

It also pulled off the July 4, 1976, raid on Entebbe and the recent raid of the Iranian ship loaded with 50 tons of weapons headed to the PLO, not to mention the many targeted killings of Palestinian terrorists who plague Israel today.

Back to Daniel Pearl. Some have tried to blame him for taking risks and acting foolishly. John Fund of the Wall Street Journal told me on WABC that Pearl was very careful and told the U.S. authorities exactly what he was doing on the day he disappeared. He also said that Pearl helped write the book that guided Journal employees on how to handle themselves while working overseas.

There is fear among some that the previously mentioned graphic videotape made by Pearl's captors will wind up on the Internet or, worse still, on some TV station.

I hope it IS shown to the public – just as in my last column I talked about the video tribute to New York radio's part in the coverage of Sept. 11, and how I felt it should be shown on ALL TV stations at least once a month, to help keep the nation's resolve strong.

I feel just as strongly about the Pearl tape.

As the days, weeks and months go by without a second attack on our soil, we must be given a look at the attack perpetrated upon all of us in America, Jew and non-Jew alike.

That attack was the barbaric slaughter of Daniel Pearl. The only way we can fully understand the kind of subhuman enemies that we are up against in this war on terror is to force ourselves to sit and watch what they would do to every one of us, women and children included, if only they could.

Let me leave you with a note about baby killer Andrea Yates. There is no doubt that she is not mentally well. In fact, she's very ill. But being mentally ill is not a license to kill your five kids. If it is, then let's take the kids away from every mother who is mentally ill.

Of course that can't happen, and the same liberals who are screaming that Yates is not guilty because she's ill would fight against the above suggestion.

The question, the only question the jury needs to decide, is whether Yates was sane or insane at the time she drowned her children. That's the only question to be considered in this case to decide her guilt or innocence.

(Her more generalized mental health will come into play in the penalty phase of the trial, where the death penalty will be considered.)

If Yates was insane, and therefore not guilty by reason of insanity, then how and why:

1. Did she plan this months in advance?

2. Did she ignore the "voices" that told her to kill the kids with a knife, deciding that it would be too bloody?

3. Did she wait until her husband left for work?

4. Did she carry out five separate murders of five struggling kids, drowning them one at a time as they each fought her until their last ounce of life was taken from them?

5. Did she line up the bodies on a bed and call 911, asking for the police to come to the house?

6. Did she phone her husband at work and tell him that he had better come home?

If you are not yet convinced, here's a question: If she was insane, why only during that time? She didn't kill her kids during all the years that she was mentally ill.

In fact, she home-schooled them, fed them, cleaned them and loved them. So, if it's her mental illness, her hormones, her psychosis that she has had for years that led her to kill, why on that premeditated day at that premeditated time?

I believe that Andrea Yates was not insane, and I believe that the jury of eight women and four men will find likewise. As for the death penalty, I believe that the jury will then be influenced by her overall mental status and sentence her to life in prison.

Until next time, stay safe.

Steve Malzberg is a talk host on 77WABC News Talk Radio (www.wabcradio.com) in New York City, where he can be heard from 6-9 p.m. and 9-11 p.m. solo weeknights Eastern time. He was recently named one of radio's Top 100 Hosts by Talkers magazine.

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