Free Who Killed Daniel Pearl by Bernard-Henri Lévy Page B

same one, I don’t remember, when he asked, “If I married outside of my faith, what would you say?”
    He was thinking about Mariane, remembers Ruth. He loved her so much! She made him so happy! And he was so sure that they had the real faith, the two of them, which was the faith of the heart! And that bar mitzvah photo at the Wailing Wall, kippa , prayer shawl, holding the Torah, bigger than he is, that pure light flashing from his eyes.
    And those questions that he asked us, recalls Judea, his mother and me, especially his mother, about our families and our roots. How are you Jewish, how am I? Obviously it fascinated him. And there was the way he would call from wherever he was in the world every time there was a bombing in Israel to ask about his grandmother Tova and his cousins in Tel-Aviv.
    And Israeli? I asked then. I read in France that he was American but also Israeli, dual citizenship—the French sometimes call it double allégeance —is there any truth to that? Judea hesitated. Well . . . I’m the one who has an Israeli passport, and naturally so does Ruth. So it depends how you look at it. From the Israeli point of view, because his mother and father are Israeli, he was too, automatically, in a certain way. But he never thought about it. Neither did we. The only trace of it was when he was three, and he was listed on Ruth’s Israeli passport. But does that make you an Israeli?
    And politically? I continued. What were his politics? Was he very critical of his country? Anti-American?
    Judea laughed at that. Maybe I hadn’t expressed myself correctly. Maybe I was wrong to say “anti-American.” Because for the first time in the three hours we have been talking, Judea bursts out laughing, yes, hearty laughter—and just as well, in fact, it makes me happy.
    Anti-American, you said? Are you joking? Who told you such nonsense? You’re not going to tell me that’s why he’s popular in France and Europe! On the contrary, he loved his country. He was proud to be an American citizen. He knew all the names and biographies of the presidents from when he was a little kid. Do you know why he wanted to call his son Adam? He found out right before he got kidnapped that it was going to be a boy, and he and Mariane decided to call him Adam. And it was because of John Quincy Adams, sixth president of the United States, a fervent abolitionist, who fought against slavery. It’s true there was the ecumenical angle, OK. There was the idea that it was a name that could be said in all languages and all religions. But it was also a tribute to a great president who was also a great American. Danny, I assure you, was passionately American. Much more than I am, for instance. I’m still a damn Israeli immigrant.
    And apart from that? Besides being proud to be American? About Israel? The Palestinians? What were his fundamental thoughts about Israel and the Palestinians?
    Judea hesitates again. I realize—he realizes—that he doesn’t really know much about it.
    He loved the Jewish people, for sure. Deeply loved Israel. Was inwardly appalled when he witnessed the country being caricatured and stigmatized: He knew Israelis hate war, that they drag their feet when they have to do their stints in the reserves. He had cousins there and he knew they cried in their tanks when they went out on operations. But he also loved justice. He refused to have to choose between Israel and justice. And so, a partisan of two states—does that satisfy you?
    The root of the problem, Judea continues to insist, is that Danny didn’t have ideas, no positions or opinions, because he was a journalist before anything else. You couldn’t expect him to get involved or be a militant for any cause. You couldn’t hope that he would take sides for the Jews, or for the Palestinians—the Jews are right because . . . the Palestinians have a point because . . . The role of the journalist,