The Search for Justice

by Nissim Dahan

The following article was brought to my attention recently, about the brutal killing of a man on the promenade of a Tel Aviv beach.

Haaretz
August 17, 2009
“Our father was a man of peace,” says daughter of Tel Aviv murder victim.

Hundreds of people accompanied Leonard Karp, who was brutally beaten to death on the promenade of a Tel Aviv beach Friday night, as he was laid to rest in Petah Tikva on Sunday.

Karp’s daughters, one of which was with him when he was attacked, eulogized their father, saying “our dear father, it is so difficult to say goodbye at such an early stage and with such deep pain. You were the first to arrive at any family event. Today you were described as the life of the party? Everyone agreed with this that you were a man of peace who doesn’t like to fight.”

“It is hard to comprehend that you won’t see us starting our own families,” his daughters said. “We wish that those who do good will receive good in return and that those who do bad will realize that they were wrong, repent and pay the price.”

Karp’s brother, Ya’akov, also spoke at the funeral, telling those in attendance that when their parents died, Leonard became a father to him. “We were two brothers, we shared a soulful love, and now I am alone-what a cruel fate.”

Police have arrested five residents of Jaljulia and two girls, one a minor and the other a soldier, from Petah Tikva. The seven are suspected of attacking Karp and his wife and daughter while the three were sitting on a bench on a promenade along a Tel Aviv beach. Police suspect that the seven were inebriated and that they attacked the family for no apparent reason.

Eye-witness testimonies suggest that the attackers chased Karp, who tried to flee, and beat him ruthlessly. They later dumped his body in the water, where he was found the next morning. The mother and daughter fled in a different direction, and survived.

To be quite honest, at first glance, I didn’t really know what to make of this article. My first instinct was to ask; who were these killers? And by asking “who,” it wasn’t really about who they were individually, or what their names were, but rather; what ethnic or religious group did they belong to? Were they Jews, or Israeli Arabs, or Palestinian Arabs? And when I read over some of the comments by other readers, they pretty much asked the same kinds of questions; what “group” did these kids belong to?

And then I began wondering; why is it so important to know the religion or ethnicity of these kids? An innocent man was murdered. Can’t we just focus on the crime itself, and on the individual perpetrators themselves? Why do we have to relate this murder to the actions and attitudes of a wider religious or ethnic group? Isn’t the killing of an innocent man significant enough to justify our full attention, or do we need to look elsewhere to find meaning in this isolated event.

It occurred to me that to a greater or lesser extent we all carry with us the heavy baggage of our prejudices and biases. And to a certain extent, we need confirmation that we are indeed right in what we happen to believe about other people. So, for example, if we can take the murder of an innocent man, and attribute it to the doings of a larger segment of society, then we could say comfortably that we were right about this or that group, and that this murder proves the point.

If Leonard Karp was murdered by Israeli Arabs, so the thinking goes, we could jump on that as proof that Israeli Arabs are a fifth column in Israel, that they are not loyal Israeli citizens, and that they deserve to be treated differently from Israeli Jews. If Leonard Karp was murdered by Palestinian Arabs, we could jump on that as proof that Israel is under siege by terrorists and that any action needed to stop terrorism is indeed justified. And if the young killers were Jews, we could say that the young generation is hopelessly lost and should be written off as parasites.

Well, how about a slightly different approach? Instead of using a senseless act of murder to cast blame on an entire segment of society, how about casting blame on the perpetrators themselves, based on a close examination of the evidence at hand? Instead of using a senseless act of murder to justify our prejudice and bias toward others, how about asking how we may have all been complicit in the crime by neglecting our duty to maintain social justice and fairness in our society? Instead of trampling on the memory of a good and honest man by using his murder to fuel the fires of hate, how about using his memory to promote justice and love for one another?

We are emotional creatures, so it is not uncommon for us to allow our emotions to get the better of us. But emotions, as worthwhile as they are in and of themselves, are not likely to bring about justice. The work of bringing justice is hard and tedious, and it requires the focus of cool and calculating minds. Justice may require us to blame others, but more often than not, it requires us to look at ourselves, and to ask of ourselves what we could be doing to improve the lives of others, so that they would be less likely to go astray. So in our quest for justice, maybe it is less important to ask of the criminal; what group are you a part of, then to ask of ourselves; what could we have done to make him part of us.