(JTA) — James Foley and Steven Sotloff, American journalists who were killed by ISIS, were honored with an award in memory of the murdered Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl.
The ADL Daniel Pearl Award was presented to the parents of Foley and Sotloff last Friday during the organization’s National Executive Committee meeting in Palm Beach, Fla.
Foley, an Illinois native, was killed in Syria in August after being held hostage by the Islamist State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, for nearly two years. He was captured while reporting in Syria, near the Turkish border. He had worked in northern Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
Sotloff, a Florida native who held dual U.S.-Israel citizenship, was killed in early September after being kidnapped a month earlier by ISIS while working in Syria. He had worked for media outlets such as Time magazine, The Jerusalem Post, The National Interest, Media Line, World Affairs and Foreign Policy, notably covering the Arab Spring. His friends and family made efforts to remove references on the Internet to the fact that he was Jewish, had dual citizenship and had studied in Israel.
Pearl was a Wall Street Journal reporter who was abducted and killed in Pakistan in February 2002 while pursuing a story about international terrorism.
“In many ways, James and Steven followed in Danny’s footsteps,” Abraham Foxman, ADL national director, said in presenting the awards. “It was their thirst for knowledge, their quest for answers, their interest in understanding more deeply that impelled them into journalism.”
Foxman added that rather than being interested in the “big stories” that would advance their careers, “They were more interested in the people behind the stories, in finding the humanity behind the headlines.”