THE DISGRACE OF HONOR KILLINGS

Honor Killers of Sister Seek Clemency for 'Family Grief' (IRIS)

Remember the old joke about the definition of chutzpa? A young man who murdered his parents then sought mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan. This story is quite similar:

The Haifa District Court on Wednesday sentenced two brothers to life in prison for murdering their sister in what was termed an "honor killing."

The two brothers, 40-year-old Anwar Salameh and Hassan Salameh, 37, were convicted of conspiring to commit a crime, kidnapping with intent to murder, and premeditated murder.

The murder occurred in December 2005, when the victim was 21. The two defendants, residents of the village of Mrar, conspired to kill their sister after they discovered she had a secret romantic relationship, defying them. They viewed their sister's behavior as harming the family's honor and consequently planned to convince her to join them on a trip somewhere and then kill her.

Anwar Salameh said to the judges that "the penalty is a little severe for us; we received a very serious punishment. I ask you to take into consideration our situation? My family is bereaved."

The Disgrace of Honor Killings

DAVID HAZONY - (Contentions)

Israeli news agencies have been awash with new reports of Arab women being assaulted or murdered by members of their own family. “Family honor,” they call it.

Among many Palestinians and in much of the Arab world, when a woman enters a relationship with someone whom her family does not approve of, she takes her life into her hands. Recently we learned of a 19-year-old from the Israeli-Arab town of Naura, who sustained two gunshot wounds to her head and played dead until paramedics arrived, as she listened to her brother getting congratulated by his family. Then there was Nadi Abu-Amr, who was kidnapped and murdered by her three brothers and her uncle in November 2007. Her crime? She refused to marry the man she was engaged to. According to one of the suspects, she was “slaughtered” because she “deserved to die.”

And today’s Haaretz reports that Sara Abu-Ghanem, age 40, from the mixed Jewish-Arab city of Ramla, miraculously sustained only light injuries to her head and neck when an unidentified assailant opened fire on her. Abu-Ghanem, whose crime was falling in love with a Jewish man, is part of an extended family in which 9 women have been murdered in recent years. A week ago, Kamil Abu-Ghanem was sentenced to 16 years in prison for murdering his sister Hamda. But this happened only after 20 of the family’s women defied the men’s orders and testified to police about the killings.

There is no clearer indicator of a “clash of civilizations” than the prevalence of honor killings in the Arab world. With all due respect to pluralism, universalism, and respect for the Other, here is a piece of intolerance that can unite all of us, left and right, liberal and conservative. The idea that one’s relationships are one’s own business is a cornerstone of liberal thinking. That a disapproved-of relationship justifies murder — that one should take pride in killing one’s own sister because of it — well, that’s just way, way outside the pale of anything we Westerners can handle. Honor killings are so shocking to even the most tolerant among us, that one wonders why the West has failed to express its moral outrage.

One problem with honor killings is that they are not easily confined into a single religious sub-sect, and to raise the issue may be to defame a whole culture or civilization, and Westerners haven’t been into that lately. Whatever George Bush was able to achieve by not blaming terrorism on Islam broadly defined, he can never do with honor killings in the Arab world. This is exactly the kind of phenomenon that Western diplomacy cannot handle, for it suggests so great a cultural gap—a moral gap—as to bring an end to the compromise and the compulsive smoothing-over that seems to be a prerequisite for a long career at State.

A close aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert once caused a stir when he suggested that the Palestinians will get their state only when they “become Finns.” Liberals do not like statements like that, because it reeks of prejudice, generalization, even racism. But what is one to do with a culture that celebrates the butchering of its family members? That treats women as literal slaves?

And more uncomfortably still: Is the West really doing a good deed by empowering such a culture with statehood?

ISRAELI ARAB SHOOTS SISTER IN HONOR KILLING ATTEMPT

Brother shoots sister in suspected 'honor killing' attempt (Haaretz)
A 24-year-old resident of Kfar Naura shot his sister, seriously wounding her, in a suspected 'honor killing' late Monday night.

Afula police received a call around midnight reporting gunfire in the Israeli-Arab village. Magen David Adom paramedics who reached the house found the sister, 20, seriously wounded and took her to Haemek hospital in Afula.

A short while after, the brother turned himself in to police, admitting he was responsible for the shooting. He maintained that his divorced sister was befriending men, and so he therefore shot her, thinking he killed her.

Man shoots sister then congratulated by family (JPost)
A 19-year-old woman from the Israeli-Arab town of Naura in northern Israel was hospitalized in critical condition at the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa Tuesday after being shot twice in the head by her own brother. The suspect shot his sister in order to preserve the "family’s honor," and was warmly congratulated by his family for his actions, according to Afula police investigators.

ISRAELI-ARAB CONVICTED OF "HONOR KILLING"

Israeli Arab jailed for 16 years over 'honor killing' of his sister (HAARETZ)
A Tel Aviv court has sentenced an Israeli Arab man to 16 years in prison for involvement in the murder of his sister in an "honor killing," after several female relatives took the rare step of testifying against him, according to court documents.

Hamda Abu Ghanem was the ninth woman killed in the clan in recent years by men in the family. She was shot in January last year as she slept at her parents' home in a Muslim neighborhood of Ramle, a mixed Jewish-Arab town of 65,000 in central Israel.

PALI WOMEN FACE "HONOR" KILLINGS

As order slides, Palestinian women face honor killings (CSM)
QALQILYA, WEST BANK - All the women in the family say Wafa Wahdan was wonderful.

But her sisters-in-law add that they noticed a few little things. She had changed the way she dressed in the past year to a less conservative style and she sometimes went out for a drive without saying where she was going.

A few weeks ago, the body of the young mother of four was found in a garbage dump east of town. Police arrested two of the woman's male cousins for having trapped Ms. Wahdan and shot her to death, committing the third "honor killing" in Qalqilya last month.

Wahdan's brutal murder devastated her husband and immediate family, who say that the rumor mill's tales of Wahdan having an affair were untrue. But regardless of their veracity, suspicion alone can be enough to get a woman killed by distant relatives looking to "cleanse" the family honor when there is talk of an illicit relationship.

According to local organizations, such murders have risen in the Palestinian territories to nearly 50 this year – a fact that many here blame on the absence of any true law and order, which allows individuals to enforce their own version of justice. Palestinians here say the image of an ever-weaker Palestinian Authority has increased after Hamas's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in June, making this local vigilantism harder to combat.

Particularly galling to many here is the fact that a man who admits to murdering a female relative for reasons of honor can be sentenced to as little as six months in jail. Palestinians say that policy is based on an old Jordanian law, which still holds in the West Bank: Article 341 considers murder a legitimate act of defense when the killer acts "in defense of his life or his honor."

HOLLYWOOD EDITS OUT HONOR KILLING, LEAVES IN ANTI-SEMITISM

Hollywood takes honor killing out of movie; leaves in anti-semitism (Elder of Zyion)

An amazing article from Debbie Schlussel: The Muslim Honor Killing Hollywood Doesn't Want You to See (Anti-Semitic Scenes Remain).

As Robert Avrech points out, Hollywood producers don't have to worry about being killed when they bash Jews or Christians. The crude Muslim version of censorship - claim "Islamophobia" while subtly hinting that violence may happen to break out and threaten the set or the producer - works quite well, even in America.

GAZA: WHERE KILLING OF WOMEN IS EASY

Gaza: Where Murder of Women Is Easy - Kevin Peraino
At 10 p.m., Yehia Abu Moghaseb, a Gaza gravedigger, watched several men lift three large bundles wrapped in black plastic from the back of a car and carelessly dropped them into freshly dug pits lined with cinderblocks at the Martyrs' Cemetery in Wadi Salgah. They shoveled a few scoops of sand on top, before driving off. "There's no police," he recalled later, so Abu Moghaseb asked a neighbor to call the Hamas-controlled "Executive Force."

When a doctor tore open the black body bags, inside were three young women, two of them still in their teens. Two of the girls had been stabbed repeatedly in the chest; the third had her throat cut. Abu Moghaseb explained that the murders had been honor killings, which are becoming increasingly common in lawless Gaza. "There is a very clear increase in the killing of women," says Issam Younis, the director of Gaza City's Al Mezan Center for Human Rights. (Newsweek)

"HONOR" KILLINGS OF 3 SISTERS IN GAZA

Muslims murder their women - in Gaza and in London (JNW)
Three young women were found dead and buried in a shallow grave in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip Sunday. Nahed (16), Suha (19) and Lina Hija (22) had all died from multiple stab wounds in suspected "honor killings."

While Muslim Arabs often kill women suspected of having "improper" relations with men - not
necessarily sexual relations - this is the first time, according to the Associated Press, that three sisters have been killed at the same time.

The "Palestinian" Hamas terror group that took control of Gaza last month has said it will "investigate" the crimes. But like many Islamist groups in the Middle East Hamas, which embraces murder as acceptable behavior in many circumstances, is believed to sanction these kinds of killings.

By contrast, England's Old Bailey Court Friday doled out life sentences to three British Muslim men who carried out a brutal rape and "honor" killing of a Kurdish woman in the UK last year. An earlier Reuters report quoted the chilling words of one of the killers who expressed his delight at the manner in which he tortured and killed 20-year-old Banaz Mahmud for choosing the "wrong" boyfriend. The guilty men included Mahmud's father and an uncle.

PALESTINIAN "HONOR KILLINGS" INCREASING

Palestinian NGOs: "Honor Killings" Increasing (Maan News-PA)
A forum of Palestinian organizations that fight violence against women published a report on Monday about so-called "honor killings" during the period 2004-2006. During this period the number of women killed increased from 14 to 32, with the ages of the victims ranging from 12 to 85. Of the 32 victims, 30 of the murdered girls were Muslim. In 17 cases, the perpetrators were brothers, while in 5 cases, fathers killed their own daughters.

THE HUNTED WOMEN OF GAZA

Hunted Women of Gaza - Martin Chulov (The Australian)
Eight women were murdered across Gaza during a ten-day stretch this month; all had been accused of immoral behavior. So-called honor killings have been carried out in Gaza in the past, but women have never before been hunted down so blatantly.

THIS IS WHAT RACHEL CORRIE WAS FIGHTING FOR.

3 PALESTINIAN "HONOR" KILLINGS IN 24 HOURS

Three Palestinian Honor Killings in 24 Hours (LGF)
People keep talking about giving the Palestinians a state, but in truth, they already have one—a society that sanctions and breeds murderers: Gazans upset by three suspected ‘honor killings’.

Three Palestinian women have been murdered in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, Palestinian Authority security officials and local residents said.

The bodies of the women were discovered early Tuesday in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. The motive for the killings remained unclear. One of the victims, a 35-year-old mother of four, was found near the beach. She had been shot at least 13 times in different parts of her body, said a PA security official.

The other two women were killed separately and their bullet-riddled bodies were discovered late Monday.

The security official said he did not rule out the possibility that the three women were killed by male relatives in the context of what is known as “honor killings.” Such killings are not unusual among Palestinians and many Arab countries. At least 25 women are murdered every year in the West Bank and Gaza Strip for “bringing shame” on their male relatives.

Meanwhile, the Ma’an news service is whitewashing the English versions of their reports for consumption by gullible foreigners, while peddling genocide and incitement to murder in Arabic: Hate terminology in Arabic sanitized in English translations by Palestinian news service.