Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Gaza: Fourth honor killing in a week

Jihad Watch

Islamic apologists in the West tell us that this practice has nothing to do with Islam, and yet wherever Islamic fervor grows, as in the domains of the "Islamic Resistance Movement," a.k.a Hamas, honor killings seem to increase as well -- and Islamic clerics have led the effort in Jordan to kill attempts in Parliament to stiffen penalties for honor killings. It's unclear why Maan referes to this as a "so-called 'honor killing.'" Certainly in an objective sense the murder of a child by a parent has nothing to do with honor, but since the perpetrators think that it does, and since the assumption that family honor can be cleansed in this way is widespread in the Islamic world, which is why the practice is broadly tolerated, it is an apt term.

"Gaza woman dead in fourth so-called 'honor killing' in last week," from the Maan News Agency, April 13 (thanks to Pamela):

Bethlehem – Ma’an – A woman was killed on Monday morning in the Gaza Strip in the fourth killing related to so-called “family” honor in the last week.

According to information collected by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), 28-year-old Rihab Al-Hazin, from An-Nusseirat Refugee Camp was killed by her 21-year-old brother, who told police he killed his sister to ‘maintain family honor.’...

Last Thursday, three members of the Olaiwa family were killed in Gaza City. Police found three bodies belonging to Sufian Arafat Olaiwa, 45, his wife, Miriam Al-Majdoub Olaiwa, 30, and their son, Jawhar Sufian Olaiwa, 5, in their houses in the Ash-Shuja’iyya neighborhood in the east of Gaza City. Each had been shot several times. Later, police arrested three members of the same family.

Yousef Abdul Wahab, Chief of the Police Criminal Investigation Bureau in Gaza, told PCHR that the crimes were related to so-called ‘family honor’.

These killings, PCHR said, are a sign of a resurgence in so-called honor killings. The Center called for these killings to be prosecuted as murders, and for the Palestinian judicial system not to hand out reduced sentences to perpetrators who claim reasons of “family honor.”

Good luck with that.

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