Over 13 Honor Killings in Two Months in Palestine
By Kawther Salam • Mar 11th, 2010 at 22:22 • Category: Kawther's Choice
Seven women were killed in the Palestinian territories because of "honor killings” in the first month of the year 2010. These news were released by Palestinian human rights organizations interested in women's issues, but according to my sources, this statistic was falsified and the real number of women who were murdered, only in the cities of Ramallah and Hebron since the beginning of the year 2010 has exceeded 13. The sources confirm that these seven women, who were registered in the statistics of human rights organizations as victims of “honor killing”, were left in public streets and in fields after being killed and there was no chance for the perpetrators to hide the crime. (note the image is not a Palestinian Woman).
My journalistic sources stated that other murdered women were taken by their criminal relatives, the perpetrators, to hospitals where these crimes were registered as natural death and other fabricated reasons. In all these cases, the Palestinian Authority covered up the crimes because of the interference of the relatives of the victims, who work in the institutions of the Palestinian National Authority and its security systems.
These dangerous statements about the victims of “honor killings” under the Palestinian 
National Authority have set a record of “honor killings” when compared with what happened under the Israeli occupation and before Abbas.
The Palestinians believe that the reason for the high numbers of “honor killings” has to do with the policies of the Palestinian Authority and the exploitation of the women who work in its institutions, women who are abused sexually by superiors and co-workers, putting their lives in big danger due to the tradition of honor killings in traditional Palestinian society.
The Palestinian newspapers report only one or two miserable sentences about such crimes. Al-Quds, the largest newspaper, usually publishes reports such as the following examples: "In the town of Tubas, a woman (A-KH) of age 36 was found murdered under mysterious circumstances, the body was found near the squatter colonist Mikhola near Tubas"; "In Tarqumiya near Hebron, a woman (K-A) of age 24 was found dead under mysterious circumstances"; "The body of D-S of age 37 from the village of Burkin near Jenin was found in a well"; "The woman (W-G) from Hebron was found dead, the preliminary investigations show that she killed herself".
The Palestinian Authority applies the Jordanian Penal Code in the West Bank towns. The Jordanian law is considered as a discriminatory law, it reduces the penalty for the murderer when he perpetrates his crime under the pretext of "issues of honor".
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas promised last year that he would change this shameless law by the International Women's Day of 2010. But it is seems to be that President Abbas has swallowed his words, as he didn’t change the law. The International Women's Day passed and there were over 13 women murdered in Palestine under the presence of the PA. Abbas and friends just don't care.
Kawther Salam is a Palestinian journalist. She had a career of over 20 years working for various newspapers and TV stations in Palestine. She forced to live in the Exile in Vienna since 2002.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by Kalimakhus: reading: Over 13 Honor Killings in Two Months in #Palestine http://tinyurl.com/yjg6z7g…
Kawther you are a brave reporter.
This is a scandal and a humanitarian disaster. Where are Amnesty International, the UN Human Rights Commission and the UN Secretary General?
The media have devoted thousands of column inches to the assassination of a terrorist and murderer in Dubai. Perhaps if they turned their attention to investigating the deaths of these 13 poor women, they might be doing humanity a much better service.
The fact that this is happening under Abbas and he is doing nothing to stop it is very concerning. Shaking hands with world leaders in endless photo opportunity shots obviously leaves him no time to take every possible step to stop and outlaw this barbaric and pernicious practice.
I hope you maintain the courage to follow up on this article.
Nothing to be proud of. It shows the PA is incapable of having law and order that protects citizen and women rights and their only concern are the rights and safety of Israeli settlers and soldiers. The Zionist war gangs knew “honor” as a weak point in Arab and Muslim societies and made a good use of it to drive tens of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in advance of the Zionist terrorist’s gangs. One has to wonder why after 45 years of the PLO existence it failed to have its own civil and criminal laws and continues to apply Jordanian laws in the West Bank and Egyptian laws in Gaza. What kind of government is this? Where is Hanan Ashrawi from all of this? Or did she give up every thing up once she joined the PLO executive committee? Where are the women groups and civil societies from all of this? It seems the honor of an “Arab” lies in between women legs. Great.
[...] than 13 women have died in "honor killings" since the start of 2010, reports Palestine Think Tank's Kawther [...]
[...] Read more here: Palestine Think Tank » Kawther's Choice » Over 13 Honor Killings … [...]
The arab leaders have done nothing real to stop the practice of honour killing around the arab world, they dont give a damn about the rights women have been given by God himself. Dont expect the PA to make any positive change as they are simply an offshot of the rest of the arab puppet dictator regimes hence they only make changes that will benefit themselves or their reputation. If Joe biden would tell Abbas to change the law then he would do it to show him he is a good puppet or to be seen as a moderate and not because he actually cares.
What is needed is not only a law change but a huge campaign against the honour killings in the villages in the Arab world as not much will change before the mentality that can be found in arab/Pakistani/Indian/Albanian/Turkish/Kurdish/other areas changes.
[...] Over 13 Honor Killings in Two Months in Palestine (6) [...]
Peter, A recent movie "right or wrong" released in India openly supported honor killing and there is no protest about it from Westerners, Their eyes only opens when some one from Muslim country does it.
First of all Its cultural thing , not religious, honor killings goes on in many places in Asia in many non Muslim countries.
Posting on my Facebook Page Re. this Article
The murder of 13 women in Hebron and Ramalah since new year for sexually motivated reasons highlights how the euphemism 'Honour Killing's', is being used to justify a campaign of sexual oppression against Islamic women.
It brings into focus the need for a balanced discussion on universal norms where sex crime is concerned. The conversation needs to address issues such as 'Honour killing's', Female Genital Mutilation, Forced marriage and restrictive dress codes with a view to determining what constitutes the breach of a human right and what is a matter of legitimate variation in the civil code – or social norms – of different societies. Clearly murder, mutilation and rape constitute breaches of an individuals human rights whereas dress codes, marriage custom and educational standards may constitute legtimate variations in social norms and developmental standards.
Feminism will impact on the Islamic world as a standing challenge, much as consumerism impacted on the East Bloc – which is not to justify rampant consumerism or compare it with feminism. Clearly when a legitimate universal social norm is raised in one culture those affected by restrictions in the opposing culture will agitate for change making feminism perhaps the strongest lever of change across the Islamic world in the century ahead.
On the other hand the Wests descent into a pornographic culture is being used to justify the sexual exploitation both of women and the young. The lowering of the sexual age of consent is effectively being used to justify the rape and sexual exploitation of children and young adults in the West, while sexual liberation in its wider sense is resulting in the feminisation of poverty, the proliferation of sexually transmitted diseases, and of unwanted pregnancies leaving women foisted with the moral dilemmas arising from the internal contradictions of the liberal sexual agenda.
We are well into a negative feedback loop in terms of the consequences of sexual liberalism in the West yet the danger is that establishment forces rather than setting about our ironing out the wrinkles in our own moral universe will highlight regressive sexual norms in the Islamic world by way of exploiting the degree of separation to further legitimise the Orwellian Zionist war agenda that plagues our time.
The challenge for Anti-War activists is to promote progressive change within the Islamic world whilst also addressing the excesses in western culture carefully avoiding the divide and conquer tactics implied in the manipulation of the issue.
It seems to me the middle way is preferable in this instance: the progressive Feminisation of Islam alongside the reigning in of Wests culture of sexual hedonism. Perhaps the West could start by getting Google to delete the 500M pages of web-porn in exchange for Islamic nations outlawing 'Honour Killings', – chance would be a fine thing.
WOW – Another propaganda crap to demean Muslims and Arabs. What about the 3000-5000 White Christian women sold into sex-slavery each year? What about 100,000 new women added yearly into USA sprawing sex industry? What about 25000 bride burned alive in India each year? What about the sex abuse of minors by the priests and rabbis?
No sir don't talk about those things because that's happeing in the "civilized world" which has been celebrating International Women's Day since 1975.
Interestingly, the women’s right activists include many Islamophobes like Crypto-Jew, French President Sarkozy, Zionist Jews Daniel Pipes and Bernard-Henri Levy, who defending his fellow Jew Roman Polanski in the rape of a 13-year-old girl last year on the stupid assertion that the rape happened 32-year-ago and since Polanaki is the so-called “holocaust survivor”, he has already suffered for his and fellow Jews’ crimes as Jesus did for the Christians!
Two interesting articles were published related to the international Women's Day. One is written by Agustin Velloso, titled With a veil on their heads and a blindfold on our eyes (Warning: The writer has used some Israeli porn pictures to prove his point) – and the other article is written by Shobha Shukla, titled A pat on women\’s back.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2010/03/24/veiled-vs-the-%e2%80%98liberated-women/
Shaukat, are you saying Honour killings don't exist? Thank god they are rare and there are those trying to stop it, but they do exist.