Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Two honor killings in Gaza

Arabic media are reporting that a man in northern Gaza beat his 16-year old daughter to death.

The family had buried her on Wednesday claiming she died of natural causes but police exhumed her body a day later and saw that she was beaten.

The reason given was "family problems." The father is divorced.

Also on Thursday, a man stabbed his 19-year old sister to death while she was praying. The reason given was "family honor."

Some 27 women were murdered, apparently for "honor" reasons, in the West  Bank and Gaza in 2013, double the number killed in 2012.

ISRAEL MATZAV: Work accident or honor killing?

A youth in Gaza was killed on Sunday evening, and from reading this report, the question appears to be whether he died in a work accident or as the result of an honor killing.

Hamas police spokesman Ayyub Abu Shaar confirmed that body of 23-year-old Ghazi Jamal Abu Nasser was received at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.

Police are investigating the incident, he added.

Relatives told Ma'an Abu Nasser recently moved from Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza following a dispute with his family and another in the town. 

Decisions, decisions.... 

ELDER OF ZIYON: A new twist on "honor killing," and how it relates to peace

From Ma'an:

Israeli police on Wednesday identified a 19-year-old Palestinian as the main suspect in the murder of a woman from Jerusalem.

Police spokeswoman Luba al-Samari said 19-year-old Mohammad Shweiki was suspected of choking Minas Qasim to death because her family rejected his marriage proposal.

The body of Qasim, 21, was found near a dump in East Jerusalem's al-Eizariya area on May 6, three days after she disappeared on her way home from work. An autopsy revealed the cause of death as strangling.

Police found Qasim's belongings at the suspect's home, including a necklace and her mobile phone, al-Samari said in a statement.

Is there any difference between "family honor" and the "honor" of a spurned beau?

Not really. In both cases, men decide that when they are embarrassed by a woman for whatever reason, she must be killed. Saying it is to defend "honor" is a deflection, but one that gullible observers swallow.

After all, one major reason there is no Palestinian Arab state now is, indeed, "honor."

Compromise, to an extent,  involves swallowing one's pride for the greater good.  Since "everyone knows" that Arabs value their honor more than Israeli Jews, it seems logical to push the Israelis to make concessions while justifying Arab intransigence. It is a cultural thing, and to decry Arab culture seems vaguely colonialist.

The same logic that allows Arab nations to minimize punishments for "honor crimes" allows Western nations to give them a free pass for prioritizing "honor" over peace.

Palestinian ‘Honor Killings’ Rising

A growing collection of Palestinian leaders are acknowledging that the recent rise in “honor killings” and other horrific acts of violence being perpetrated against Palestinian women can only be stemmed by changing the Arab cultural and Islamic propensity of violence toward women.
The latest victim of a Palestinian honor killing was Nancy Zaboun, a 27-year-old mother of three, who, moments after she left a divorce hearing in Bethlehem, was brutally murdered by her husband.
Nancy had been in the process of seeking an early exit from her marriage after having suffered repeated beatings over the course of her ten-year marriage, beatings that often required hospitalization but which never resulted in criminal charges being brought against her husband.
Unfortunately, Nancy Zaboun’s attempt to flee her abusive marriage caused such a stain on her husband’s familial honor that he stabbed her multiple times, a death sentence which tragically has been shared by a long and ever-expanding list of Palestinian women and girls.
In the years between 2007 and 2010, the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights has reported 29 women were killed by family members in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, in the past two years, 25 women have been subjected to honor killings, with 13 women murdered in 2011 and 12 women slain in 2012.
Those victims include: 17-year-old Rofayda Qaoud, whose mother placed a plastic bag over her head and slashed her wrists after she had been raped and impregnated by her two brothers; 27-year-old Fadia Najjar, a divorced mother of five, bludgeoned to death by her father because she owned a cell phone that he thought she was using to call a man outside of the family; and 20-year-old Aya Baradiya, tied up and thrown down a well to die by her uncle because he disapproved of her engagement.
Yet, while honor killings have long been a staple byproduct of Palestinian society, the sharp upsurge in familial murder over the past several years has generated widespread condemnation by a growing coalition of Palestinian officials and human rights activists, denunciations which have included calls for new criminal legislation and longer prison terms.
To that end, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas in May 2011 issued a decree that amended decades-old laws which had guaranteed “leniency” for honor killers such that prison terms might not exceed three years.
The result of the presidential decree, according to PA Justice Minister Ali Mohanna, is that honor killings are now treated as any other murder, and, as such, claims of assailants that they were simply protecting “family honor” are no longer taken into account.
However, that judicial opinion is not equally shared by all, as critics argue the Palestinian legal system does not punish the crime of honor killing severely enough and thus still allows for violence against women to continue to go unpunished.
Specifically, they point to the fact that tenets of the amended laws in President Abbas’ legal order left in place can still be used to justify honor killings, such as mitigating circumstances that let perpetrators avoid severe punishment if they can prove that they acted in a “state of rage.”
As such, Attorney Salwa Banura said the new law encourages murders, since mitigating circumstances “are accepted by the courts, and a man who murders his daughter, wife or sister stays in prison only three months, and is then released.”
Yet, unfortunately, honor killings remain just one small aspect of the horrific torment faced by Palestinian women and girls at the hands of Palestinian men.
A recent study done by the Gaza-based Palestinian Women’s Information and Media Center found that 67 percent of Palestinian women reported being subjected to verbal violence on a regular basis, 71 percent to psychological violence, 52 percent to physical violence and 14 percent to sexual violence.
Not surprisingly, for some, this pervasive violence has been laid at the feet of the usual suspects, namely the Israelis. This scapegoating was summarily expressed in a 2011 report by the United Nations Economic and Social Council which blamed harsh economic and social conditions created by the Israeli “siege,” an occupation which has led to high levels of poverty, unemployment and, thus, “violence, within families.”
That belief was echoed by Rahiba Diab, the PA’s Minister of Women’s Affairs, who recently said that while the Palestinian Authority was committed to eliminating all forms of violence against Palestinian women, one should not “forget about the violence that comes from the critical political situation that we’re living under as Palestinians.”
However, an increasing number of leaders and human rights activist are refusing to buy into Israeli complicity as an excuse for Palestinian man-on-woman violence, but rather instead laying the blame on a much deeper problem, namely, “Arab-Muslim culture.”
For starters, while they applaud legislative efforts to at least address the issue of violence against women as a crucial first step, they maintain no amount of legislation will stop the violence and killings until cultural attitudes change within Palestinian society.
Those cultural attitudes, according to Mona Shawa, head of the women’s unit at the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza City, are based on female inequality and discrimination that “encourages violence against women.”
For her part, Maysoun Ramadan, Director of the Mehwar Center, the West Bank’s only women’s shelter, has simply noted, “We have a lot of previous constructions about women which need to be changed.”
Those “previous constructions” were bluntly articulated by Israeli-Arab lecturer Yusuf Jabareen in a June 2012 interview on Palestinian TV in which he placed the blame squarely on an Arab culture which has served to produce a deep vein of misogynistic cruelty in Arab men, callousness that encompasses their own immediate and extended families as well as women in general.
As Jabareen further explained, “Part of our [Palestinian] identity is to attack women… to beat women… – we must acknowledge it…Palestinian identity has its charms, but there are things that we have adopted from Arab culture for centuries that harm the individual and the woman…That’s part of our identity.”
Giving voice to that belief, the official Palestinian Authority daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida weighed in with two editorials that said it is an Arab “tribal mentality” that justifies the murder of women, rationalization based in part because many Palestinians “still think of them [women] as the bent rib of Adam, void of intelligence or religion.”
So, in an effort to rectify that thinking, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida has called for a “cultural revolution”
“Our [Arab and Muslim] societies consider the crime of violence against women, honor killings, and avenging the killing [of relatives], as legitimate, understandable and [part of] a unique heritage. There are some who even praise and glorify this [honor killing] as a manly, heroic act, turning it into an aspect of [our] culture that molds the character of Arab and Islamic societies. If we wish to free our society from this crime’s octopus grasp, we must first admit that without a cultural revolution that will cleanse our perceptions, our books, and our heritage from sanctifying murder performed in the name of Allah and honor, we will not be able to take a single step towards lessening this crime[.]”
Unfortunately, while Palestinian misogyny may indeed have an Arabic taste to it, deeply marinated Islam gives it its full flavor, seasoning found in Muslim countries throughout the Mideast, South Asia and Africa, where men more often than not treat women little better than livestock.
Changing that dismal equation will take more than just a cultural revolution.
Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.

Honor killing after years of abuse

Practically every sentence in this Ma'an article is more outrageous than the one before. 

A man is being charged for the murder of his sister, who he is suspected of killing after he was released on bail facing charges of beating her.

Days before the death of Randa al-Mahareq, aged 34, her brother and father were detained after she complained to police that they beat her.

The men, from al-Samu near Hebron, were detained for four days, but a court released them on bail on July 18. 

Randa's brother has told south Hebron prosecutor Mohammad Gaboon that on his release he returned home and beat Randa on her face and chest. "She lost her conscious and I left the room at that time," he said.

On July 21, Randa's father took her body to a clinic, where a doctor issued a death certificate.

Suspicions were raised by the family's failure to give Randa a proper funeral, said Atta Jawabra, who works at the family protection unit of Hebron police.

"As a result, we immediately informed Hebron police chief Ramadan Awad, about this matter as it might be a murder," he told Ma'an.

Police exhumed Randa's body on July 23 and a pathologist found seven fractures in her ribs.

Police detained the doctor that had issued Randa's death certificate, and after many hours of questioning the doctor said he issued the certificate without examining the body because Randa's father told him she suffered from epilepsy, the prosecutor in the case said.

Several months before her death, Randa had sought police protection from her father and her brother, said Farid al-Atrash, the regional director of the Independent Commission for Human Rights told Ma'an.

In January, she filed complaints with the family protection unit and at police stations in al-Samu, where she lived, and Yatta, a nearby town. Police made her father sign a "pledge" to stop beating her.

The beatings continued and Randa approached the Independent Commission of Human Rights on Feb. 4.

"We called the family protection department to find her a safe house, but family protection said that her father and brother promised to find her a job," al-Atrash said.

Randa was living with her family after her husband threw her out, Hiyan Qaqour, a lawyer for the Women's Center for Legal Aid and Counseling told Ma'an.

Aged 28, Randa was forced to marry a 78-year-old man from Beersheba, in Israel, her mother told Ma'an.

They were married for six years and he regularly beat her, the lawyer said. Randa complained to Israeli police, who arrested him. On her husband's release, he sent her back to her family in as-Samu in the southern West Bank, Qaqour added.

The Women's Center for Legal Aid and Counseling provided Randa legal support to divorce her husband, but the process was complicated by Randa's family's refusal to stand as witnesses in the case.

After four months, her brother finally agreed to stand in court and she was able to get a divorce, the lawyer said.

This is horrifying, even worse than the usual honor killings. Randa did everything she was supposed to and yet the people who should have protected her were the ones who punished her, repeatedly.

(I am also wondering how many other Palestinian Arab girls are forced to marry people in Israel. There issome evidence that there is a conscious decision by some either to try to overwhelm Israel demographically or simply to become Israeli citizens.)

YNET: Palestinian woman: I'll be killed if deported to territories West Bank woman tells Tel Aviv court she will be murdered for 'disgracing' her family after refusing to marry her cousin at young age

A 23-year-old Palestinian woman who was arrested more than a week ago for residing in Israel illegally said she would be killed if sent back to the Palestinian Authority for "disgracing" her family.

"I'm originally from the West Bank, but I've been living in Israel for the past three years," she told the Tel Aviv Magistrates' Court on Tuesday. "I refused to wed, and I tarnished the family's honor by running away. They’ve been trying to track me down ever since.

"I moved from place to place, slept in cemeteries. I've been through some tough times," she told the court. "All I ask is for is an opportunity to turn a new page and be allowed to live here in Israel and work."

The court ruled that the woman must remain under house arrest for an additional eight days. She will be staying with friends in Tel Aviv.

The woman told the court she had refused to marry her cousin at a very young age because she wanted to study and "get ahead in life." She claimed that in light of her decision, her father and cousin began to physically abuse her and denied her of basic living conditions.

The Palestinian woman said that after another attempt to get her married at an early age, she fled to Israel with the help of a police officer. Shortly after entering Israel she was deported and was once again subjected to abuse in her family home. The woman claimed that her father had even turned to assassins and The woman's attorney, Kfir Daniel, said "it was made clear to me that if she is expelled to the territories - it would mean a death sentence for her."

Following the court hearing, the attorney filed an urgent petition with the High Court asking that it issue an injunction that would prevent the woman's expulsion and allow her to reside in Israel legally.

Illegal residents are routinely returned to the Palestinian territories.asked that they bring her body back to him.

Interview with woman who escaped 'honor killing' in 'Palestinian territories'

Another myth we often hear about Islam is that there are no honor killings. Here is testimony from a woman who was set on fire because she was pregnant and somehow survived. It's from French television and the woman was from the 'Palestinian territories.' I would love to have heard the entire interview because in addition to the (all-too-typical) story, she also mentions being taught to hate Jews.

Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Tundra Tabloids via Will)

The Price for Refusing to Kill Your Gang-Raped Child

A Pakistani family is under brutal assault for refusing to murder their daughter for being a victim of rape. The case serves to underscore Pakistan’s malevolent role as the world epicenter of “honor killings.”
Kainat Soomro was 13-years old when she was kidnapped in 2007 near the Pakistan town of Dadu and viciously gang raped for three days by four Muslim men. While fortunate enough to finally escape her captors, Kainat’s ordeal was tragically just beginning.
Despite being the victim of rape, Kainat was instead declared to be a kari, or “black female,” by tribal elders in her town for having the temerity to have sex outside of marriage. As a consequence of that decree, Kainat’s family was expected to subject her to an honor killing.
However, despite the pressure to murder Kainat, her family refused. As Kainat later pointed out, “It is the tradition, but if the family doesn’t permit it, then it won’t happen. My father, my brothers, my mom didn’t allow it.”
Instead, her family opted for a saner and less barbaric route by seeking to have Kainat’s rapists prosecuted for their heinous acts. Unhappily for the Soomro family, that decision would subject the family to years of sustained attacks and beatings by fanatical fellow Muslims, assaults that eventually drove the Soomros into a grim state of poverty.
Unfortunately, despite the Soomro family’s heroic efforts to spare their daughter’s life, Kainat’s rapists were acquitted in May 2010 after a local judge declared her sole testimony as an “alleged rape survivor” to be insufficient. Regrettably, the anguish of that court decision only deepened a month later when Kainat’s brother was murdered by unknown assailants, ostensibly for the sin of having the audacity to defend his sister during her trial.
Now, 17-years-old, Kainat and her family remain undeterred. To that end, they are petitioning higher Pakistani courts to appeal the ruling in her case. However, beset by severe pressure to withdraw her appeal, the Soomros remain under attack by men affiliated with her rapists, men who recently vandalized their apartment, beat the father and brother with iron rods and threatened to kill Kainat.
Sadly, the decision by the Soomros to resist community efforts and not kill their daughter remains the exception to the rule in Pakistan. The sad reality is that more often than not, Pakistani families stand eagerly ready to murder their wives and daughters for any “damage” they may have done to the perceived “honor” of the family.
That “damage” can occur when a woman has the misfortune of being raped; marries a man of her own choosing; has any contact with an unrelated male; dates a Christian; openly flirts; or adopts Western ways of dress and behavior.
While in most cases husbands, fathers or brothers of the offending women in question commit the murders, in some cases, tribal councils decide that the woman should be killed and, as such, send men to execute her.
According to the United Nations, about 5,000 honor killings take place each year, most of which take place in Muslim countries in the Middle East and South Asia. For its part, Pakistan accounts for nearly 20 percent of those killings, nearly 1,000 a year, the most of any nation. Honor killing incidents in Pakistan reported in 2011 have included one girl burned alive, five girls dying from acid attacks, and four girls tortured to death.

 

Recent Pakistani honor killings have also included a 15-year old girl strangled to death by her uncle for suspicion of having sex with a Christian; a 21-year-old woman electrocuted to death by her family for secretly marrying a man they disapproved; and a Pakistani man shooting down six of his teenaged daughters on suspicion they were involved in relationships with older boys in the neighborhood.
In fact, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), 46% of all female murders in Pakistan are considered to be honor killings. As a spokeswoman for the Pakistani Women’s Rights organization, Aurat Foundation, said, “Incidents involving murder of women for honor have increased to alarming proportions.”
Of course, it should be noted that the number of honor killings are probably much higher than the numbers actually reported. Either most murders go unreported or family members of the victims simply report the girls as having committed suicide.
Part of the reason for Pakistan’s increase in honor killings, according to an HRCP spokesman, stems from the simple fact that “people are getting away with it,” noting that “only 20 percent of cases are brought to justice.”
That deplorable result may arise from Pakistan’s penal code which treats honor killings as murder, but also allows the family of the victim to pardon the murderer, who is usually a relative who committed the murder on the family’s behalf.
Yet, it’s certainly not too surprising that Pakistan’s judicial system has been slow to react to the horrific abuses being hurled at Pakistani women. The Executive Director of the Centre for Peace and Civil Society notes that domestic violence is not explicitly prohibited in Pakistani domestic law. In fact, Pakistan is the only South Asian country that has yet to pass a law on domestic violence.
So, given a lack of support from Pakistan’s judiciary and fearful of reprisals launched at them by family and community members, most Pakistani women do not report instances of abuse.
The result has been, according to a 2011 report on Pakistan by Amnesty International, an explosion of  rampant “gender-based violence, including rape, forced marriages, honor killings, acid attacks and other forms of domestic violence.”
Not surprisingly, such high levels of violence have led to an estimated 90 percent of all Pakistani women having experienced some form of domestic abuse in their lives. As Gulnar Tabussum, spokeswoman for Women’s Action Forum said, “The status of women is low and also brutality is growing by the day.”
That sad fact was perhaps best expressed recently by a young Muslim man from Pakistan’s Kurdistan region, an area in which it has been reported that in September of 2011, 25 women alone were murdered under the guise of honor killings. According to the man, “Here is man’s world. If you are man, Kurdistan is a nice place, but if you are a woman, it is a tragedy.”
Sadly, for Kainat Soomro and millions of other Pakistani women and girls, life in all of Pakistan is one never-ending tragedy.

Death in the West Bank: the story of an 'honour' killing The brutal murder of a young Palestinian woman shocked a nation and helped change the law over so-called 'honour' killings.

As Ibrahim Baradiya recounts the events surrounding the last moments of his daughter's life at the bottom of a dark well, the agony of grief is drawn across the face of his wife, Fatima. She says almost nothing. Her eyes are half-closed. She shakes her head with small, rapid movements. A deep frown furrows her forehead. When the story is finished, she fetches her daughter's trinkets – beads, bangles, a hair clasp, a key ring, a purple pom-pom – and spreads them over the table and she weeps.

The story of Aya Baradiya's murder is like an incomplete jigsaw puzzle whose full picture may never be known; a dark and disturbing tale of death, lies, rumour, ruptured family relations, shame, despair and anger.

But the killing went far beyond a family affair. After the discovery of Aya's body more than a year after the 20-year-old university student went missing, her uncle confessed to Palestinian police, claiming it was an "honour" killing. Widespread protests against such crimes, led by students and women's organisations, erupted. In response, the Palestinian president last month scrapped historic laws that permitted leniency for the perpetrators of so-called "honour" killings.

Aya's father – a 56-year-old carpenter who works long hours to pay for the education of his 12 surviving children, five of whom are at university – begins the story with the day Aya went missing: 20 April 2010.

She left the family home in the West Bank town of Surif for an exam in English Literature at the nearby Hebron university. When she didn't return, Ibrahim and Fatima notified the police that she was missing and an investigation was launched.

Then the rumours began. Ibrahim heard variously that she was married, or had been spotted "in Ramallah, Nablus, Qalqilya, Jenin, Israel". Every time he heard of a possible sighting, Ibrahim went to look for his daughter, distributing photographs. At the time, the family never suspected Aya was dead.

Ibrahim now believes those rumours were all put about by his brother Okab, 37, currently in custody awaiting sentence for Aya's murder. "Okab said she had sent an SMS saying she was afraid to come back. All the rumours were spread by him. He tried to divert the security services."

In the previous months, Aya had received a marriage proposal from a man 17 years her senior. At first, worried about the age difference, Ibrahim had refused permission. "He came in an official way to ask, he did it properly. My daughter convinced me and then I agreed, but I said she could not marry until after her studies."

Aya's suitor was held by police for 35 days following her disappearance. Ibrahim begged him to reveal any information he had about her whereabouts. "He said: 'I don't know where she is. But your daughter disappeared after being with her uncle.'"

According to the family's account, Okab took Aya to his home a few days before her disappearance. While his wife was out, Okab made Aya coffee, they used the computer and Okab took a shower. Until Aya vanished, Ibrahim says his relationship with his brother was good. "After Aya disappeared, they stopped visiting. Even my sisters stopped coming. They were insulting my wife, saying: 'Now your daughter has run away, who will come and ask for your other daughters in marriage?'"

The suggestion that Aya had brought shame to her family's reputation had a powerful impact within conservative Palestinian society. The family was ostracised by their neighbours; Fatima rarely left the house during the 13 months between her daughter's disappearance and the discovery of her body.

Ibrahim, Fatima and their other children, whose ages range from four to 29, were distraught at Aya's disappearance, but they never gave up hope. However, says Ibrahim: "It was very hard for us. We were living in hell."

Then, last month, bones were discovered by chance in a well about four miles from the family home. Initially, it wasn't clear whether the remains were human or animal. "Even when the police in Hebron said it was a human body, I didn't think it was my daughter. I never thought she had been murdered."

But the police also found Aya's identity papers in a bag. Ibrahim and three of his sons were called to identify the remains. "We collapsed," he says.

The police went to the family home to give Fatima the devastating news as Ibrahim and other male family members were held for questioning – "harsh interrogation" – for three days. Ibrahim and his adult sons were released when Okab confessed to killing Aya. Okab and his accomplices had put a plastic bag over the young woman's head and thrown her, alive, to the bottom of the well. According to reports, he told police that he disapproved of her relationship with her fiance.

Aya's murder was immediately branded an "honour" killing. Under a 1960 Jordanian penal code, part of which still applies in the West Bank, which Jordan ruled between 1948 and 1967, perpetrators of such crimes are treated with leniency as they are deemed to have mitigating circumstances. The maximum sentence is six months, according to police. A clause in a 1936 British Mandate law, still in effect in Gaza, also allows for leniency in the punishment of "honour" killings.

Reliable statistics are hard to come by, but it is thought there are around 20 such crimes in the West Bank and Gaza each year. Women who have been raped or molested, or are victims of incest, are considered to have stained a family's reputation. Such acts of violation are rarely admitted by the victim's family.

Following the discovery of Aya's remains, 20,000 people attended her funeral, Ibrahim says. "They knew how innocent she was, they were demanding death for the criminals." There were protests against the "honour" killing laws at Hebron university, and Aya was commemorated as a "martyr".

During a live Palestinian television programme on Aya's case, a government official called in to say President Mahmoud Abbas was watching and intended to change the law. Abbas, who later met with Aya's family, signed the decree last month.

Pressure for a change in the law had been building before Aya's death. "The Palestinian women's movement has been struggling for many years on so-called 'honour' killings," says Amal Khreishe of the Palestinian Working Woman Society for Development. Her organisation submitted a petition signed by 8,000 women to the president's office this March demanding new legislation.

"We sent a message to the president that this is the time to cancel the articles in the penal law which encourage people to kill women and ignore the human rights and dignity of women," says Khreishe. She welcomes the president's move, but says it is a small step and "more political will is needed to enhance gender equality".

In Surif, Yasmine Alheeh, 29, minding a clothes shop, says she approves of the legal change. "There are a lot of things that are hard for a woman to do [in Palestinian society]. A woman has no personal freedom. It's OK to work, but you can't make personal choices."

Nearby, in a vegetable shop, Jalal Danah, 25, says women's actions are limited by Islam. "Our religion does not allow a woman to go out and practise her life without restriction. This would lead to corruption," he says.

Ibrahim Baradiya believes Okab and his accomplices "should be thrown in a well to suffer the same as my daughter suffered". He approves of the president's change to the law, but knows that it cannot bring Aya back nor heal his family rifts. Even his youngest daughter, Ranim, four, notices her mother's grief – her insomnia, dramatic weight loss and weeping – he says. "[My brother] stole part of me and part of my wife. He has destroyed the whole family."

SERAPHIC SECRET: Harry Potter Actress Afshan Azad in Hiding

Actress Afshan Azad is in permanent hiding.

My colleagues in the film business absolutely a-dore causes.

They sport really cute AIDS and breast cancer ribbons at every opportunity. Global warming—rebranded as climate change—is, natch, the fashion forward cocktail shmooze of the moment. Park in any studio lot and you'll see a dozen “Free Tibet” bumper stickers, as if Tibet will ever be free from the mass murdering Chinese.

But talk to film people about the oppression of women in the Muslim world, specifically honor killings, and you'll be met with either blank stares or a stumbling explanation about the moral complexities of judging third world cultures.

In short, western liberals, most notably so-called feminists, have abandoned the human rights of Muslim women in the name of multicultural gibberish. It's okay to let women be slaughtered by their fanatic families because we, as depraved western oppressors, have no right to tell the natives how to live.

Which is a pretty good description of dhimmitude.

In fact, western liberals are the perfect dhimmis. Accepting and condoning the violence of Muslims is exactly what the Islamists want. Why do you think it's a hate crime to burn a Koran, but urinating on a statue of Jesus is considered art?

The reason liberals can moan about Tibet is because they really don't have to doanything. Just slap on the dopey bumper sticker and yadda-yadda about what a great guy is the Dalai Lama and your progressive credentials are totally up to date. You can go to your yoga class or faculty meeting and feel the love. Liberals are not going to go up against the ruthless and murderous Chinese who have turned Tibet into a killing field. They just want to feel good about themselves. It's the nirvana of self-righteousness liberals seek.

But to confront Islam, violent and fanatic, actually takes courage. Because, let's face it, Islamists are homicidal maniacs who take great pride in rioting, maiming, raping, torturing and beheading. Why else do you think they go to such lengths to broadcast their atrocities on You Tube?

And now that one of Hollywood's own, Afshan Azad, 22, a fine young actress, is in hiding because her father and brother are determined to murder her, well, I'm sure Hollywood will sigh with compassion, and then move on because the part can always be recast.

This moral nothingness perfectly compliments the barbarism of the Islamist world. One cannot survive without the other. They are, in clinical terms, enablers.

Phyllis Chesler, who bravely and tirelessly writes about honor killings, puts the horrifying Afshan Azad case in perspective.

Afshan Azad, 22, the high-profile Harry Potter actress remains in hiding after refusing to appear in a London court. Ms. Azad had been seeing a non-Muslim man, a Hindu. Her family, specifically her father, Abul Azad, 53, and her brother Ashraf, 28, called her a “prostitute” and tried to force her into an arranged marriage with a Muslim man. Her brother also beat and her father threatened to kill her in May of this year. She escaped her family home and has been in hiding ever since. According to the Telegraph, she refused to testify against her family, saying that doing so would endanger her further. Apparently the British police tried but failed to persuade Ms. Azad to testify.

Full article here.

Gaza father torches son

GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- A father from Jabaliya refugee camp in north Gaza killed his son by setting fire to him because the boy refused to help the family pick olives, police said.

Security forces identified the father as AN, and said the 40-year-old threatened to torch his son Mohammad, 14, when he refused to help him harvest olives. The father then sent the boy's brother to get Benzene and gave him 2 shekels ($0.50) to buy a lighter.

Police said AN chased Mohammad into the bathroom, and poured fuel over him. The boy managed to escape and ran towards his grandmother's house next door, but his father caught him and set alight to him. Mohammad's grandmother told police that she opened the door to find her grandson's body burned.

Mohammad's father was arrested and questioned by police, who said he has been charged with murder.

CAROLINE GLICK: The rise of the suicide protests

David Be'eri is either much admired or much hated, depending on how you feel about Israel and Jewish heritage. Be'eri is the founder and head of the Ir David Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to excavating, preserving and developing biblical Jerusalem, the City of David.

MUSLIM SONS ARRESTED IN BRUTAL MURDER OF THEIR MOM "BLOODBATH": ISN'T THIS AN HONOR KILLING? UPDATE: HER HANDS WERE CUT OFF

Are we to believe that this was not an honor killing, the way the Times Square car bombing was not Islamic jihad? Or the Fort Hood jihad was not ..........jihad?

Arab Wife-Beating EtiquetteIn this clip, translated by Memri, Egyptian Cleric Sa'd Arafat tells the interviewer how beating women actually honors them. He say's "Allah honored wives by instating the punishment of beatings" and then goes on to list the rules regarding wife beating.

In this clip, translated by Memri, Egyptian Cleric Sa'd Arafat tells the interviewer how beating women actually honors them. He say's "Allah honored wives by instating the punishment of beatings" and then goes on to list the rules regarding wife beating.

If Terrorism is Not a Muslim Threat, What About Muslim Violence?

Noor Almaleki was murdered by her Iraqi father in 2009 who ran his car over her in an honor killing. He objected to her living and dressing like an American.