Last update - 00:00 05/04/2007
'Don't tell us that it's Arab society, that it's Islam'
By Meron Rapoport
It's not easy for a Jewish man to write about Arab women. The veil of suspicion is doubled. "You can't ask me what's possible to do from the bottom up in Arab society, against violence toward women," says criminologist Dr. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who specializes in the subject. "Those are a man's questions. It's like asking battered women why they remain at home. You can't ask me what I can do. I first of all want to protect my girls, to see that they get to school safely. To deal with this problem you have to take apart the centers of power - to take the weapons out of the hands of the phallocrats" - the term she uses to describe men who use their sexual power to dominate others. Phallocrats, Shaloub-Keorkian explains, are those men, Jewish and Arab, to whom the state has given the power of control over women.
"From all we know from other Arab countries, there was never another case like this one in Ramle, of the murders of eight women from [the Abu-Ghanem] family. There was one case in which a father murdered his three daughters and then killed himself. That was the worst."
Now, Shalhoub-Kevorkian explains, there is panic also among Arab women in the North. Many see a connection between the case of Reem al-Qassem of Haifa, who was murdered in front of her house in the Hadar neighborhood about two months ago, and the death threats received by Angelina Fares, the Druze woman who wanted to compete in the Miss Israel beauty pageant and was forced to pull out.
"The story in the North is starting to resemble what's happening in Ramle," says Shalhoub-Kevorkian. "I know a girl who was active in all sorts of women's activities that I'm involved in. She stopped coming. She is afraid. I don't listen to the police or to what men say. For me, the only source is the women themselves. And they tell about unbelievable terror."
Mu'ayan Halaby, who calls himself an "Arab feminist," says there is a fear of discussing this subject because of apprehension about the rising influence of the Islamic Movement. But all of the speakers here also point an accusing finger at Israeli society, which pushes the Arabs to the margins and thereby gives the people who possess a weapon the feeling that they can impose their will on those around them. They also fault the police and the welfare institutions, which don't seem to really care if Arabs are killing one another and do not provide aid to the women who need it.
"Don't tell us that it's Arab society, that it's Islam," says Shalhoub-Kevorkian. "Don't turn it into a cultural issue. Go to Jerusalem or Haifa and you'll see how the girls are dressed. The reasons for what happened in Ramle are historical-political, not cultural."
She goes on to say that she is very critical of what is happening in Arab society. She once wrote a harsh article against Yasser Arafat, after he ordered the release from detention of a man who had murdered his wife, because the man had previously been a security prisoner in Israel. "Arafat never forgave me," she notes.
"Just because the leadership is no good, does that mean that people should be allowed to keep on killing? These killings must be stopped, even if it requires outside intervention. The state has to take itself in hand and not keep going back to the same people every time. The state is giving these phallocrats weapons. Is it a coincidence that many daughters of collaborators are murdered? As soon as you turn a blind eye, you're giving these people power."
"The situation in Ramle is fertile ground for the growth of serious social problems," says Aida Touma-Suliman, director of the Women Against Violence organization. "The disconnect from the centers of Arab society in the North, the alienation from Jewish society, the ghetto mentality, the unemployment, the drugs. And all this in addition to the prejudices of men who think they're responsible for the women and for the family honor. Everything around them is crumbling, and they have nothing over which to exert their control. The woman is the last thing that they can control.
"The Arab political parties have called for equality for women," Touma-Suliman adds. "Even the Islamic Movement denounces incidents of murder of women, even if it appends a sentence saying that women should conduct themselves modestly. But this topic is not at the top of the agenda." She believes that what's happening in Ramle does not fit all the classic criteria of murder for reasons of family honor. "There were cases there of masked men who were not from the family, who shot women from the family. You could say that the murders there were done for 'community honor.' They phone a family and tell it that if they don't take care of a daughter who's studying outside of Ramle, they'll 'take care' of her."
Strategic consultant Mu'ayan Halaby is one of the few men in the Kiyan organization, whose objective is to raise feminist awareness among Arab women. From conversations with people in prison, Halaby has learned that "family honor" killers enjoy a high status in the internal hierarchy in the prisons: They occupy a higher place than armed robbers, and are way above rapists. "I understand that it's not easy for the police, but they have to treat this kind of murder like any other murder," says Halaby. "If that many Jews from one family were killed, would the police just ignore it?"