Daniel Pearl’s Father on Ed Koch

Ed Koch used the last dying words of Daniel Pearl on his tombstone:

My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am Jewish

Judea Pearl recalls he had asked Koch to contribute to a book on being Jewish. “We commissioned many prominent Jews to reflect on what the phrase "I am Jewish" meant to them, and Koch was one of the 300 people we asked. Koch sent in an essay mainly expressing anger about the terrorists—how they act against civilized society, and how they should be dealt with. It was about our world and how we got into this war, and we felt it didn't fit the theme.” Koch, like Gulliani, remained furious and defiant as Judea Pearl reminds us:

Koch, as I said, was very angry about Islamist terror, and I think using these words was very purposeful on his part: a way of reminding us that our enemy is not 19 misguided lunatics, but a whole ideology that fosters anti-Western fanaticism and elevates itself above the norms of civilized society. In a time where political correctness was at its peak, perhaps it was productive for Ed Koch to remind New Yorkers that our real enemy is not Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, but the ideology on which he grew and that is being passed on to his children, emboldened and intensified by the hour. That is our real enemy.