Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Honor killings in the PA

Several of the PA's worst problems -- its attitudes to Christians, attitudes to women and particularly honor killings, problems with law and order, tendency to blame Israel for everything -- merge in this horrible story, which you won't hear about in the non-Israeli press, but should. According to Jerusalem Post correspondent Khaled Abu Toameh, who is usually pretty reliable, an entire Christian village in the PA was ransacked by hundreds of Muslim men because a man from the village had an affair with a Muslim woman.
But much, much worse -- almost impossible to comprehend -- is the fate of the woman herself:
The 30-year-old woman, according to PA security sources, was apparently murdered by members of her family for having had a romance with a Christian man from Taiba.
"When her family discovered that she had been involved in a forbidden relationship with a Christian, they apparently forced her to drink poison," said one source. "Then they buried her without reporting her death to the relevant authorities."
When the PA security forces decided to launch an investigation into the woman's death, her family protested for fear that the relationship would be exposed. The family was further infuriated by the decision to exhume the body for autopsy.
Nifty trick, that -- get the woman to drink poison herself so it's harder to convict you of murder (or would be harder, if the PA had a proper legal system and if it bothered prosecuting people for honour killings, a very widespread problem in the West Bank and Gaza); to lessen your own guilt; or to make the punishment for the woman even worse. Note that they weren't afraid of a suspicious death being discovered -- they simply didn't want the affair to be exposed. I simply cannot begin to imagine what this poor, poor woman went through -- and find it hard to absorb the depths of evil, heartlessness and cruelty some people can sink to.
On a seperate tack, I don't understand why Western Christians don't seem to care about the way other Christians are treated in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the PA etc. True, unlike the Jews and Muslims, they're not an umma -- but surely it's both in their interest to ensure that Christians are treated well everywhere, and simply part of Christian charity, kindness etc.?

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