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Palestinian girl's murder highlights growing number of 'honor killings'
The Glassboro Whit ^ | 20 November, A.D. 2003 | Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson

Posted on 11/20/2003 9:09:06 AM PST by Ryan Bailey

Palestinian girl's murder highlights growing number of 'honor killings'

By Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson,Knight Ridder ABU QASH, West Bank - Rofayda Qaoud - raped by her brothers and impregnated - refused to commit suicide, her mother recalls, even after she bought the unwed teenager a razor with which to slit her wrists. So Amira Abu Hanhan Qaoud says she did what she believes any good Palestinian parent would: restored her family's "honor" through murder.

Armed with a plastic bag, razor and wooden stick, Qaoud entered her sleeping daughter's room last Jan. 27. "Tonight you die, Rofayda," she told the girl, before wrapping the bag tightly around her head. Next, Qaoud sliced Rofayda's wrists, ignoring her muffled pleas of "No, mother, no!" After her daughter went limp, Qaoud struck her in the head with the stick. Killing her sixth-born child took 20 minutes, Qaoud tells a visitor through a stream of tears and cigarettes that she smokes in rapid succession. "She killed me before I killed her," says the 43-year-old mother of nine. "I had to protect my children. This is the only way I could protect my family's honor." The guilty brothers are in jail.

Qaoud's confessed crime, for which she must appear before a three-judge panel on Dec. 3, is one repeated almost weekly among Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel. Female virtue and virginity define a family's reputation in Arab cultures, so it's women who are punished if that reputation is perceived as sullied.

Victims' rights groups say the number of "honor crimes" appears to be climbing, but at the same time, getting little attention. Israelis and Palestinians are too busy with political and military issues to notice what they dismiss as domestic disputes, says Suad Abu-Dayyeh, who works for the Women's Center for Legal Aid and Counseling in East Jerusalem.

Police in Israel investigated at least 18 honor killings in the past three years.

Palestinian police reported 31 cases in 2002 - up from five during the first half of 1999 - the last time such incidents were counted before the current Palestinian uprising began, according to the center's study.

But the number of killings is likely higher, given that Palestinian police investigate only crimes that have been reported, said Yousef Tarifi, the Ramallah prosecutor assigned to Qaoud's case. Shalhoub-Kevorkian says her past research showed the likely number to be 15 times higher than the number of reported cases.

Legal authority on the West Bank has been weakened by Israel's military crackdown, and the growing influence of militant Islamic factions has led clans to dole out their own justice. "In this chaotic situation, every man who thinks he knows a little bit of the Quran ... thinks honor issues are supposed to be resolved by killing," says Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who adds that leading Muslim clerics in Jerusalem and Jordan have denounced such killings.

Qaoud says her husband, Abdul Rahim, 52, told her the Quran forbade such killings. But neither his pleas nor those of Palestinian crisis counselors swayed her. "Why did she accept what happened to her?" Qaoud asks. "Even a wife can tell her husband 'no.' "

According to court records, Rofayda was raped by her brothers, Fahdi, 22, and Ali, 20, in a bedroom they shared in the family's three-room house. On Nov. 26, 2002, doctors at a nearby hospital who were treating Rofayda for an injured leg discovered she was eight months pregnant.

Palestinian authorities whisked her off to a women's shelter in Bethlehem, where she gave birth to a healthy boy on Dec. 23. He has since been adopted by another Palestinian family, court records show.

Rofayda, meanwhile, wanted to return to her parents in the Ramallah suburb of Abu Qash. Ramallah Gov. Mustafa Isa called a meeting with the family and village elders, demanding they pledge in writing not to harm the girl. "He asked me if everyone in the family and the village would promise not to bother this girl, but I told him I couldn't give him a guarantee," Abu Qash Mayor Faik Shalout says.

Rofayda returned home in late January without notifying the authorities.

The shame was unbearable, Qaoud said. Relatives and friends refused to speak to her family. Her elder daughters' husbands wouldn't allow them to visit because Rofayda had returned home.

On Jan. 27, Rofayda sent word that she was in danger to crisis counselors at Abu-Dayyeh's center in East Jerusalem. They, in turn, called Palestinian police in Ramallah, who have jurisdiction over Abu Qash. The police said they couldn't get to the Qaoud home because of Israeli checkpoints.

Qaoud, meanwhile, sent her husband, who suffers from heart disease, to a doctor in the nearby village of Bir Zeit. Her three youngest children went to a cousin's house.

At 11:30 p.m. she killed Rofayda, court records show. Tarifi says he's convinced Qaoud had an accomplice, but Qaoud insists she acted alone.

Qaoud turned herself in and, after four months in jail, was released pending the resolution of her case. While honor killings committed in the heat of the moment - for example, by a husband who catches his wife in bed with another man - generally carry a six-month to one-year jail term, Qaoud will likely be sentenced to three to five years in prison, Tarifi says. The fact she is a mother who was trying to protect her family's honor mitigates the crime of premeditated murder, which is punishable by death under Palestinian law, he adds.

The brothers are currently serving minimum 10-year sentences in a Palestinian jail in the West Bank city of Jericho


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: honor; honorkillings; honour; islam; killing; palestine; radicalsism
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As we in this latter world Anglo-American Suzerainty continue the propagation of our 'New World Order', we must ask ourselves what Human Rights we shall endeavour to implement throughout the world.

In my mind it is the noblest cause of Globalism to raise the cultures of the world to some semblance of universal human rights, along with the other goals of our 'Empire of Mercy'. The idea that these Mohammedans should be able to persist in this barbaric behavior is not only antiquated but dangerous.

1 posted on 11/20/2003 9:09:07 AM PST by Ryan Bailey
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To: Ryan Bailey
This is the spiritual darkness in which they live. The liberty of the west is a direct result of the influence of Christianity (yes, with all the misdeeds perpetrated in its name). I don't believe lasting freedom can be sustained by the underlying theology of Islam.
2 posted on 11/20/2003 9:13:31 AM PST by aardvark1
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To: Ryan Bailey
Already posted here.
3 posted on 11/20/2003 9:17:46 AM PST by Yo-Yo
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To: aardvark1
Freekin' sadistic satanic animals is what they are.
War on Islam. Now.
Or we will eventually be overrun and brought down
as a nation. Nukes? Green light.
Whatever it takes. Expel them all from the US.
Cancel all VISAS. Our survival is at stake.
When in heaven's name will some people ever realize that?!
4 posted on 11/20/2003 9:19:03 AM PST by Indie ("death was our business....and business was good" -MACVSOG)
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To: Indie
Dude!

Smoke a peace pipe will you?

Don't you know that Islam is THE religion of peace?

<./sarcasm off>

5 posted on 11/20/2003 9:21:37 AM PST by DCBryan1
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To: Ryan Bailey
I am moving toward the position that these people are savages. How else can you explain a mother trying to induce her raped daughter to commit suicide and when that fails killing her.

The mother knew the Koran forbid the murder but was more concerned with her own status in the community.

I don't believe 4 months in jail is sufficient penalty for killing your child.
6 posted on 11/20/2003 9:25:42 AM PST by CHUCKfromCAL
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To: Indie
I'm afraid it will take a major disaster to wake people up. "Arise, O ye slumberewrs!?"
7 posted on 11/20/2003 9:40:17 AM PST by sheik yerbouty
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To: Ryan Bailey
The brothers are in jail? Amazing! Normally, the rapist gets off scot free. In most Muslim countries only the victim is punished.
8 posted on 11/20/2003 9:47:33 AM PST by redheadtoo
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To: Indie
I don't think people will get this for a long time. It will take a lot more innocent dead before it even begins to show on the radar.

I'd say this: What makes Islam any different than any other cult that practices barbaric acts on themselves and others? WHY DO WE TOLERATE IT? What sensible argument can be made to say that 'cult a' is not ok, but Islam somehow is. These nutjobs provide us daily demonstrations of their savagery and bloodlust (today's being a bombing in Istanbul with Al Qaeda claiming responsibility).

I'm just sick of it. They do not want peace, and perhaps they should get precisely what they're asking for.
9 posted on 11/20/2003 9:47:48 AM PST by Made In The USA (Where is the outrage?!)
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To: CHUCKfromCAL
I am moving toward the position that these people are savages.

I'm moving towards the position of hate. But then September 11th started me on that path 2 years ago.

10 posted on 11/20/2003 9:49:10 AM PST by Ashamed Canadian
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To: redheadtoo
A foreign woman reported being raped to the Saudi authorities. They arrested the perp but also had her flogged. No, she hadn't been drinking alcohol or anything like that. The authorities considered her culpable in her own rape.
11 posted on 11/20/2003 9:54:07 AM PST by Ciexyz
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To: Ryan Bailey
This is incredible.

Animals treat their own children better.

And these people think they need their own country?

12 posted on 11/20/2003 10:11:21 AM PST by RonHolzwarth
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To: sheik yerbouty
re: "I'm afraid it will take a major disaster to wake people up. "Arise, O ye slumberewrs!?""

Wow. You mean WTC on 9-11 does not count for a "major disastor"?

What will it take, do you think???



13 posted on 11/20/2003 10:15:40 AM PST by RonHolzwarth
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To: RonHolzwarth
Probably another one. Security in many of our cities and ports are poor. We keep taking in people from jihadist nations, amd we have poor contro; of our borders.
14 posted on 11/20/2003 10:32:09 AM PST by sheik yerbouty
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To: Ryan Bailey
There is a growing number of REPORTED honor killings. These savages have been murdering their women in large numbers for centuries.
15 posted on 11/20/2003 10:52:11 AM PST by tkathy (The islamofascists and the democrats are trying to destroy this country)
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To: Van Jenerette
...for class reading.
16 posted on 11/20/2003 11:42:55 AM PST by Van Jenerette (Our Republic...if we can keep it!)
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To: RonHolzwarth
+And these people think they need their own country? +

absolutely. Put them all in the same country so they can stop screwing ours.
17 posted on 11/20/2003 12:53:28 PM PST by sprunged
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To: RonHolzwarth
re: "I'm afraid it will take a major disaster to wake people up. "Arise, O ye slumberewrs!?""

Wow. You mean WTC on 9-11 does not count for a "major disastor"?

re:What will it take, do you think???


I think it will take a destroyed city.
18 posted on 11/20/2003 1:42:17 PM PST by thathamiltonwoman
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To: Ryan Bailey
And the American and European left, of course, is completely silent.
19 posted on 11/20/2003 1:43:59 PM PST by Mr. Mojo
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To: Ryan Bailey
Cult of dementia--

This is the first story of an honor killing where Mommy does it--in large part to protect her favored sons. And she did in a grandchild while she was at at. Mohama-mama

What inhuman filth...

20 posted on 11/20/2003 2:28:57 PM PST by Mamzelle
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