A supporter grieves at the scene of Benezir Bhutto’s murder.

Libération, France

Those Who Murdered

Pearl and Massoud,

Killed Bhutto as Well

“It is a woman, first of all, that they have killed. A beautiful woman. ... the exact opposite of those shamed women - hidden and damned creatures of Satan, who are the only type of women tolerated by those apostles of a world without women.”

By Bernard Henry Lévy*

Translated By James Jacobson

December 28, 2007

France - Liberation - Original Article (English)

It is a woman, first of all, that they have killed.

A beautiful woman.

A visible woman - an even conspicuously, dramatically visible woman. A woman for whom it was a point of honor not only to hold meetings in one of the most dangerous countries in the world, but to do it with her face uncovered – the exact opposite of those shamed women, hidden and damned creatures of Satan, who are the only women tolerated by those apostles of a world without women.

With Daniel Pearl, they killed a Jew.

With commander Massoud [of the Afghan Northern Alliance ] , they killed a moderate Muslim, a literate man and a free spirit. With Salman Rushdie , they tried for years to kill a man who dared to say that being human sometimes means to choose one’s destiny.

Well with BB, Benazir Bhutto, they killed a bit of all of this. But they also killed a woman, this woman, who was an intolerable provocation. It was the radiance of her unveiled face, nude, defenseless and magnificently eloquent - they killed her, because it was this woman, because it was her face - at once powerless and with a force that can’t be replicated, because she lived her destiny as a woman who refused the looming curse, according to these new fascists who call themselves jihadists - against the human face of all women; thus they killed the one who was the very embodiment of the hope, spirit and will of democracy, not only in Pakistan, but in the lands of Islam in general.

Pervez Musharraf was a counterfeit adversary of al-Qaeda. He pretended to fight them while he played his double game with his occult alliances - his way of keeping his stock of terrorists under his elbow and releasing them one by one in dribs and drabs, all according to the needs of the alliance with his great and complicated American friend - he did their bidding under the table.

Benazir, if she had won, what can one say? If she had lived, simply lived, she wouldn’t have ceased saying at the risk of her own life, her very being, her very presence, that she was their resolute, absolute, irreconcilable adversary; for these people she was a threat - more than just a political one, an ontological one; she would have left them nowhere to hide. They knew this and they killed her.

I am reminded of an afternoon on December 2002 in London, when I investigated the death of Daniel Pearl - and therefore this powder keg, the rear-base for al-Qaeda, even though the forward base was already in Pakistan; Pearl was beautiful, yes; and incredibly courageous in his will to return - whatever the cost - to that country which had already uprooted Benezir’s two young brothers and her father in events redolent with the air of a Shakespearian tragedy. [All were killed under suspicious circumstances during Benazir Bhutto’s two terms as Pakistan President].

I see again her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto , thirty-five years old, just prior to the liberation of Bangladesh and the explosion of Pakistan where he was already Prime Minister - I remember him again as he was, ignorant of the destiny that awaited him, elegant, refined, Pakistani and an Anglophile, a Muslim and Westerner, living at a cultural crossroads, a successful and natural child of two great cultural lineages – nobody imagined then that so many forces would so quickly move to oppose him.

These people were the salt of the Pakistani earth.

They were people who could prevent not only that country, but that part of the world from descending into chaos.

Benazir Bhutto is dead and it’s a bit like September 9th, 2001, the day of Massoud’s death. I cannot help but wonder about the grim scenario that her assassins inevitably had in their minds. I cannot prevent myself from wondering what gigantic event, another thunderclap - it may be the prelude for.

The best way to respond is to act, and to act quickly. The best way - the only way - to respond to this new and terrible challenge is to immediately endow the event with all of the symbolic importance it warrants.

In the next few days Mrs. Bhutto will be buried in this martyr country that, more than ever, is Pakistan. Angela Merkel, George Bush, Gordon Brown and others should be there to accompany her on this ultimate voyage.

It is important that our president, Nicolas Sarkozy, consents to interrupt his vacation in order to express faith in democracy and law at the heart of this furnace, where a religion gone mad has become increasingly criminal and where – as he imprudently said a few days ago – the hope of people is fading.

Behind the remains of this great lady, as it was in the past behind those of Anwar al-Sadat or Yitzhak Rabin, there should be present the greatest possible number of heads of government and State, making her funeral a silent demonstration of the world’s adherence to the values of democracy and peace.

But Benazir Bhutto was neither a head of state, nor of government? That’s true. But she was much more. She was a symbol.  And henceforward she will be a standard. Behind her name will now stand all of those who refuse to mourn the death of freedom in the land of Islam. Behind her shroud must stand all of those who still believe that liberty will prevail in Islam, and that the beneficent genius of the Enlightenment will prevail over fanaticism and crime. 

*Bernard Henry Lévy is a philosopher and director of Rule of the Game magazine. He is also a shareholder and a member of the supervisory board of Libération.

ALSO FROM THIS AUTHOR:

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zietung, Germany

Modern America Through the

Eyes of a Frenchman: A Talk

With Bernard Henry Levy …

http://www.worldmeets.us/frankfurterallgemeine000005.shtml

Click for French Version