We are proud to announce that Tzlil Berko has been appointed as an IPT Fellow.

Daniel Pearl - Undated - Image Credit: Getty Images/Staff

We all remember where we were on "Black Saturday," the devilish terror attack conducted by Hamas-ISIS against Israeli civilians on October 7th. Innocent babies were beheaded, small children tortured in front of their handcuffed parents, young women raped, and entire families burned alive Evidence on Display at Israel's Forensic Pathology Center Confirms Hamas' Atrocities.

More than 200 Israeli citizens were kidnapped into Gaza by Hamas-ISIS and other so-called "innocent Gazans": babies, children, women, men, and elderly Holocaust survivors - 59 of whom are still held there today, enduring unspeakable hell.

LET MY PEOPLE GO 🎗️🎗️🎗️🎗️🎗️🎗️🎗️

Image Source: StandWithUs

I received the news while in Los Angeles, during Shabbat dinner. Because of the time difference, it was still Friday evening. We had just finished Kiddush and were sitting in a beautiful Sukkah for the holiday of Sukkot. The evening was peaceful, surrounded by Jewish heritage and memory - including incredible artifacts like letters from Ben Gurion, brought by the esteemed collector and my dear friend, Prof. Judea Pearl.

Prof. Pearl - one of the world's leading experts in AI, computer science, philosophy, and statistics - is also the father of the late American journalist Daniel Pearl ז"ל, who was kidnapped and beheaded by al-Qaeda in 2002. His execution was filmed and released by his murderers.

Daniel Pearl, a Jewish-American journalist, was killed in 2002 by a Pakistani terrorist who was affiliated with al-Qaeda. https://t.co/511f2X2vae

— The Jerusalem Post (@Jerusalem_Post) May 8, 2025

Image Credit: Author

In his hands, Prof. Pearl held an original copy of the 1898 Paris daily L'Aurore - the very edition in which Émile Zola published his historic piece "J'Accuse...!" ("I Accuse...!")

Zola's words defended Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer falsely accused of treason, and exposed the deep-rooted antisemitism that plagued French society.

That paper - a symbol of justice and moral courage - rested in the hands of a father who lost his son to modern-day Nazis.

And about an hour, give or take, after this photo was taken, we all received the news: Hamas-ISIS, alongside thousands of so-called "innocent Gazans," had invaded Israel in a coordinated act of genocide against the Jewish people, in the Jewish state.

Sitting across from Prof. Pearl when getting this horrible news about barbaric Hamas-ISIS terrorists beheading babies in Israel and executing civilians in a mass-terror attack, was of course painful, but also surreal. He became pensive, as if reliving his son's executions by the same evil forces, all belonging to the same deadly, dangerous, radical Islamist Jihadist movement threatening the entire free world:

The Muslim Brotherhood

The Muslim Brotherhood seeks to conquer the free world and establish a global Islamic caliphate under Sharia law, just like in Iran. This is the source of the evil that continues to spread across borders, and yet many in the West are too blind, and/or too antisemitic, to acknowledge it.

They're too busy obsessing over Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East (in contrast to the 57 Muslim countries and 22 Arab countries, none of which are democratic - a fact both astonishing and revealing).

Israel has done more to prevent civilian casualties in war than any military in history — above & beyond what international law requires & more than the US did in its wars in Iraq & Afghanistan -- setting a standard that will be both hard & potentially problematic to repeat. 🧵

— John Spencer (@SpencerGuard) May 4, 2024

Last Thursday, news arrived: the terrorist responsible for Daniel Pearl's murder was finally eliminated.

There is no comfort for the loss of a son, especially when murdered by monsters. But perhaps knowing that the killer was finally brought to justice brings a measure of peace to a pain that will never fully heal.

Daniel's Last Words - Our Eternal Will to Live By

I'll close this post with Daniel Pearl's final words before he was beheaded by the same barbaric monsters we are still fighting today:

"My father's Jewish, my mother's Jewish, I'm Jewish."

And so I say:

I'm proud to be Jewish.
I'm proud of my country, Israel.
We will fight. And with God's help, we will win.
Good will overcome evil.

The Jewish people are here to stay, in their land, forever.

Image Credit: Author

Two dear friends and proud Jews - Prof. Pearl and me. AM Israel Chai!

Support my work: buy me a coffee link. L'chaim!

IPT Fellow Tzlil Berko is an experienced security consultant and entrepreneur. She is also an avid writer of poetry, song lyrics, short stories, scripts, and more. Tzlil has played a major role in conceiving and writing with her parents, Drs. Anat and Reuven Berko, a TV psychological thriller and a family melodrama that draws on Dr. Anat Berko's books and the family's remarkable personal story. She is currently completing her thesis on the potential relationship and influence between terrorism and the Metaverse.

Follow Tzlil on Substack and on X @BerkoTzlil

Copyright ©2025. Investigative Project on Terrorism. All rights reserved.