The Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism – by Bari Weiss – Common Sense with Bari Weiss
As I am sure everyone who has ever gotten this award has felt just like I do: more than a little embarrassed. Daniel Pearl displayed courage beyond measure. Me? I have to have the strength to be ratioed on Twitter and disinvited from some parties in Brooklyn. If I display one-thousandth of his courage over the course of my life I will consider myself a success.
But before I became a journalist like he was, Daniel Pearl his life and his death meant something else to me. And that was that he was a Jew.
The barbarians that murdered him believed that that was a mark of shame. But to me and to the whole marvelous Pearl clan it is a badge of honor.
I was raised by parents, who happen to be here tonight, who inculcated that in me. And so, when I was at the New York Times, the paper I used to work for, and a colleague asked if I was writing about the Jews again, I was taken a little bit back.
I wrote, and I write, about many things. But, well, the answer to this colleague was yes: I was indeed writing about the Jews again.
Those darn Jews. Always dying for freedom somewhere.