Murder in the name of "family honor" is another variation of violence against women stemming from motives mainly involving damage to men's honor. A man who is unemployed and a criminal, whose deteriorating condition constitutes no damage to his family's honor, accepts from fellow members the task of killing his "wanton" sister, to remove the blot on the family. Sometimes a phone call, a way of dressing or her refusal to marry someone is enough to sentence a woman to death. While in Western society women are murdered by their husbands for infidelity and divorce, in the Arab family the task of killing is given to brothers, fathers and cousins.

Every year, 12 women in Israel are killed on average to assuage "the desecration of family honor." A similar number of women are murdered by their partners in what was called until recently "murder in a romantic context." In both cases, prevention is very difficult. It seems the damage to family honor is so great that even the long imprisonment of suspects or potential victims moving to shelters do not prevent the murder. In Arab society prevention is even more difficult since even the closest relatives do not protect the woman from murder.

Last week something may have happened to help solve "honor killings." On Thursday, as Haaretz reported, an indictment was issued against Kamal (Rashad) Abu Ghanem, suspected of murdering his sister, Hamda Abu-Ghanem. For the first time, the women of the family agreed to break the conspiracy of silence that usually surrounds such cases, and to testify, while the men refused to cooperate with the police.

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Hamda Abu-Ghanem was murdered in mid-January at her parents' home in Ramle after she declined police protection that had been offered her. Seven women from her family have been similarly murdered over the past six years. In one case a family member who was a physician took part in the killing. Hamda Anu-Ghanem no longer saw the point in running from an inevitable fate.

When the annual statistics on women murdered by their partners are released, those killed in the name of "family honor" are not included because their lives were not taken by their partners. But the phenomenon is the same: women murdered because of conduct deemed unsuitable to women by traditional codes.

In Western society the attitude toward violence against women has changed only in the past decade, mainly thanks to women's organizations. Complaints of violence are taken seriously today, whereas in the not-too-distant past the police would send a violent husband home to make up with his wife. It is impossible to relate to violence and murder in Arab society differently and to explain tolerance toward it by citing cultural differences. This is a universal struggle for a woman's right to equality in which women's organizations in the Arab sector, as in the Jewish sector, have a major role to play. In the Arab sector this is a struggle that requires courage, and every assistance must be offered.