By ADI NAGARY
James Foley, Steven Sotloff and Daniel Pearl were all great journalists who risked their lives to report the truth overseas in the Middle East. It is quite unfortunate that they were kidnapped and beheaded, videotaped for the world to see their demise.
As a young adult pursuing journalism as a career, this specific chain of events terrifies me. But it’s not the way they were executed that horrifies me; it’s the time difference between the deaths.
Pearl’s death was a big surprise to everyone at the time. Not only did the way Pearl was killed shock the world in 2002, but, it was the first time it ever happened to an American journalist, someone who was in fact completely innocent.
“It was understood even to extreme elements that you don’t touch a journalist, that you will pay, but that myth has been broken,” Judea Pearl, Daniel Pearl’s father, said in a 2012 interview with The Washington Post. “Now they look at the journalist as an agent of a foreign body.”
Daniel Pearl’s death was back in 2002 at the hands of al-Queda. Now 12 years later, a second death of the same variety occurs, to an ill-fated freelance journalist James Foley. And then, no more than two weeks later, a third death follows, this time to man named Steven Sotloff, an Israeli-American journalist.
The time lapse between the first and second death compared to the one between the second and third death, are completely different. This is what worries me the most.
The beheadings are becoming more rapid, and these groups don’t seem to be stopping.
At the end of the Sotloff video, the killer threatens the life of British aide worker that is being held captive. His name is David Haines. On Sept. 13, ISIS released a video showing the beheading of Haines.
While I hoped and dreamt that David made it back home safe, I’m a realist in these types of situations. There have been writers who have walked away safely from a terrorist group kidnapping, but ISIS seems very determined to make their point heard.
The fact of the matter is that we cannot let the Islamic State achieve its goals, especially if they continue the brutal slaying of our journalists and innocents. The United States of America has lost three bright lives far too early, all in terrible ways, but these deaths become vain the moment we stop fighting for our ideals.
