TOMORROW WILL BE THE ANNIVERSARY OF DANNY PEARL’S MURDER. Today, his father observes:

In a world governed by reason and leadership, one would expect world leaders to immediately denounce such racist calls before they become an epidemic. However, President Bush was the only world leader to acknowledge the connection between Danny’s murder and the rise of anti-Semitism: “We reject the ancient evil of anti-Semitism whether it is practiced by the killers of Daniel Pearl or by those who burn synagogues in France.” No European head of state rose to John F. Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” with the morally equivalent statement “Today, I am a Jew.”

Not surprisingly, our unguided world has seen an alarming rise of anti-Semitic activity in the past year. Tens of millions of Muslims have become unshakably convinced that Jews were responsible for the Sept. 11 attack. Egypt’s state-controlled television aired a 30-part program based on the notorious anti-Semitic book “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” and Egyptians were fed another fantasy, that Jews are plotting to take over the world. Syria’s defense minister, Mustafa Tlas, released the eighth edition of his book, “The Matzah of Zion,” in which he accuses Jews of using the blood of Christians to bake matzah for Passover. And on the sideline, while these flames of hatred were consuming sizable chunks of the world’s population, traditionally vocal champions of antiracism remained silent.

Silent, and increasingly discredited.

UPDATE: Here, courtesy of reader Gregory S. Taylor, is a link to the Daniel Pearl foundation.