Palestinian daughter raped by brothers, murdered by mother

Daughter raped by brothers, murdered by mother
A Palestinian girl who was raped and impregnated by her two brothers was later murdered by her own mother – even though her daughter was the crime's innocent victim – in another of the disturbingly common, if vastly underreported, instances of "honor killings."

The mother will be sentenced in two weeks, but a harsh penalty is not expected.

When her mother found she had become pregnant, she insisted her daughter commit suicide, and even bought the unwed teen a razor so she could slash her own wrists. When the daughter refused, Amira Abu Hanhan Qaoud took matters into her own hands and murdered Rofayda to restore her family's "honor."

In a story for World and I magazine, James Emery says women in the communities of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Israel and Jordan are killed by male kinsmen in an attempt to protect the reputations of their families.

Most "honor killings" occur among Muslims in poor, rural tribal areas or among uneducated urban dwellers, he says, although the practice is not explicitly condoned by the Islamic holy book, the Quran.

Among Palestinians, all sexual encounters, including rape and incest, are blamed on the woman.

"The issue of consent is irrelevant when it comes to honor killings," says Marsha Freeman, director of the International Women's Rights Action Watch. "It has to do with the woman being defiled. It completely objectifies the woman as being about her sexuality and purity. It makes her not human."

Under the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, at least 25 "official" honor killings occur each year.

Emery says the women "are murdered in their homes, in open fields and occasionally in public, sometimes before crowds of cheering onlookers."

Emery has done extensive research in Palestinian communities and has lived and traveled overseas for a number of years. He is an expert witness on Asian and Arab culture in civil and criminal cases and a lecturer on Middle Eastern terrorism.

He says the murder of females in the Middle East is an ancient tradition that began prior to the arrival of Islam in A.D. 622. Arabs sometimes buried infant daughters to avoid the possibility they would later bring shame to the family, Emery notes.

So, for more than 1400 years, there has been no evolution in Arab society. It appears that honor killings are, and will continue to be, another horrific Arab cultural event that won't be solved by the kleptocracy called "Palestine".

It's also noteworthy that the U.N. is silent when it comes to Arab cultural events of rape, torture, enslavement of Christian Sudanese, and homicide bombings. Could it be that the Arab controlled U.N. will always protect Arab interests in the name of Political Identity?