On the day he was murdered, Khairi Alkam, 51, rose long before dawn so he could pray at Al Aqsa mosque before walking to his job at a construction site in the Jewish half of Jerusalem.
It was a routine the Arab laborer followed every day of his working life, until he was surprised that morning by an assailant who plunged a knife into his back as he strolled into the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Meah Shearim.
Bleeding to death on the curb, Alkam, the father of nine, was the first of two people believed killed by a suspected “serial stabber.”
Police suspect the assailant is an ultra-nationalist Jew who has attacked nine Arabs in Jerusalem over the last two years because they are Arab.
“This is terrorism,” said Dalal Alkam, the victim’s widow. “My husband never did anything wrong to anyone.”
Now the Israeli government officially agrees. In a precedent-setting case, the government this month awarded Alkam’s Palestinian family $162,000 in compensation for being victims of a terrorist attack by a Jew.
The decision was applauded as perhaps a small building block to peace, an example of what some Israelis argue is the nation’s more sympathetic treatment of Arabs in some cases in recent years.
Yet it came only after a long and arduous process that showed just how sensitive Israel remains to the question of Jewish terrorism.
It is not the first time Israel has paid money to Palestinians victimized by Israeli violence. The state voluntarily paid small compensation awards to victims’ families after the 1994 machine-gun massacre of Muslim worshippers in Hebron. During the intifada uprising, it compensated victims of misbehavior by soldiers in response to negligence lawsuits.
The Alkams were compensated under Israel’s 1970 terror victims law, which previously was used only to compensate the victims of bus-bombings and other attacks by Palestinian radicals.
Even so, while Israelis quickly label any such act by Palestinians as “terrorist,” the police and media prefer “serial stabber” for this crime. One Jewish group is trying to block the payment. And the government stopped short of changing the law to make Arab victims of terror attacks automatically eligible, instead setting up a committee in the Defense Ministry to make special awards in certain cases.
“It’s out of goodwill, not because the law requires it,” said Shlomo Lecker, an Israeli civil rights attorney who represents the Alkams. “There’s still a ways to go to talk about equality.”
The May 1998 murder of Alkam was met with outrage by Arabs and Jews. Former Israeli President Ezer Weizman condemned it as “a murder by cowards.”
The knifing was the sixth arbitrary attack against Arabs in Meah Shearim in a three-month stretch. Since then, three other attacks have occurred, including the stabbing death of a city garbage collector walking to work in the Abu Tor neighborhood last year.
No one has been arrested, but police believe the attacks are linked and perpetrated by an extremist Jew. One suspected motive is revenge for attacks on Israelis. Victims testified that the perpetrator dressed like an Orthodox Jew and left knives at several of the scenes.
It was not the first incident of Jewish terrorism. In addition to the work of the Jewish underground against the British before Israel was created, the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the 1994 Hebron massacre by Baruch Goldstein, who killed 31 Arabs, are among more recent examples.
But when the Alkams submitted an application for victim compensation under the 1970 law, it was rejected by the National Insurance Institute. Their attorney, Lecker, appealed to a higher court.
One problem, Lecker said, was that the culprit was never apprehended, so the crime’s motive was uncertain. The second problem was that the 1970 law defines terrorism as a hostile act by individuals and groups acting against the state of Israel, which legally excludes acts by Jews.
“It can only be the act of an enemy,” said an Israeli Justice Department spokeswoman.
After Jewish extremists allegedly burned the apartment of three Arab women in Jerusalem in 1998, Israeli officials began exploring other ways to grant the victims compensation. Ultimately, they set up the Defense Ministry committee to evaluate each case, and it was that committee that decided to make the award to the Alkams.
Civil rights lawyers still would like to see the Justice Department and Knesset, or parliament, change the law to allow the same right to compensation for all terror victims. They argue that Jewish terrorism also works against the peaceful goals of the state.
Palestinian lawyers said the award should not necessarily be seen as a precedent, because the government may have set up the special committee just to rid itself of “nuisance” claims without having to accept any legal liability.
“I’m sure they handled it as an extraordinary case,” said Hussein Abu Hussein, a civil rights lawyer who deals with compensation issues. “There is no basis of equality between occupier and occupied.”
Lawmakers say the legislation reads as it does because three decades ago Israelis did not expect Jewish terrorism to be a problem. While few would object to making individual amends, right-wing parliament members said they have reservations about sending a message that Jewish terror acts are as big a problem as Palestinian terror attacks.
In Meah Shearim, on Shmuel Hanavi Street where Alkam died, few if any residents begrudged his family a right to be compensated. Some cautioned that overall the state should be wary about where the money will end up.
“You never know what the Arab family is like, if the uncles or cousins are into anti-Israel activities,” said Aaron, a kosher meat inspector. “The government must see that that [compensation] money is not used against Israel.”
Meanwhile, an organization named Victims of Arab Terror International is trying to prevent the payment from ever being made, claiming the award was illegal because the crime is unsolved. The group says the government “libeled” all Jews by assuming that a Jew was the stabber.
“This was done to gain favor with the Arab world,” said Shifra Hoffman, head of the group.
Across town and a seemingly world away in Atur, the Alkam family was ambivalent about the money.
Dalal, the widow, said the family had appealed to the government mostly to pressure police to find the culprit. The family remains bitter that he is still on the loose.
Before he died, Khairi Alkam earned $1,000 a month doing odd jobs on construction sites, so the compensation is the equivalent of 13 years of work.
Dalal Alkam acknowledges the compensation is a victory of sorts for Palestinians living in Israel. But, pulling her arms around her as if chilled, she said it only goes so far in dulling her family’s pain.
“I always said, `There are good Jews and bad Jews, just like there are good Arabs and bad Arabs,'” Alkam said. “The Jews always thought themselves innocent and that only the Arabs were terrorists. I only wish that the guy who did this, his kids will live the same as mine, without a father.”
