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Last update - 03:14 15/02/2008 'I looked death in the eyes' By Roni Singer-Heruti Tags: Honor killings, Israeli Arabs Even after eight years, G. remembers everything. She was standing with her mother in their kitchen in the Juarish neighborhood of Ramle. She recalls that she heard someone enter the house, and then saw a masked man aiming a gun at her. He fired five shots, one of which hit her in the head. She remembers falling on her mother. Her next memories are of the hospital, where she lay with a shaved head, and of six months of rehabilitation in Loewenstein Hospital. She is still undergoing rehab. On Tuesday morning, G. was sitting in a full auditorium at a youth center for girls in Juarish, attending the first conference of its kind in Israel. It was called "Arab Women and Girls in Ramle-Lod: Future Vision," but everyone knew the real motivation for organizing the event was the desire to discuss publicly, for the first time, the murder of women in Arab society - and especially in those two cities - for reasons referred to as "family honor." G. wasn't planning to tell her story, but felt it was important for her to come. "When the speakers spoke, it was hard for me to stop the tears," she said. "I cried about everything - about how they raise us, how they murder us like this and how the police usually don't do a thing." Advertisement G. looks older than her 30 years - "apparently," she explained, "because I looked death in the eyes." The splint on her arm peeks out of her sleeve and there are small scars visible on her face, evidence of the bullet fragments that penetrated her skull. "In a split second, he ruined my life," she said. G. knows the gunman was her cousin, even though his face was concealed. "I was 21 and I had left home," she recounted. "I was living in another city on my own; I was working as a salesperson and wanted to study. On weekends I would go back to visit my parents. I saw him on the morning of the day he shot me. When I passed by him he made a sign of a knife cutting across the neck. I wanted to live, to enjoy life - I wanted to study psychology. Now I'm alone, with my father and mother, living here in the neighborhood." Police did not arrest her cousin, claiming there was not enough evidence to prove he was the gunman. But G. is still certain it was him. She even sees him sometimes in the neighborhood. "I imagine the moment when he shot me. My mother and sister also suffer from post-trauma [disorder]. And he - I don't understand how he lives with himself." This was not the first time that Sameh Salamiya-Agbariya, the director of the Juarish youth center, had tried to convene representatives from the relevant parties under one roof to discuss the sad situation of women in Ramle and Lod. She has worked for a long time to convince local religious leaders to address the issue, and approached people at various social-welfare agencies, who were unsure about participating. The greatest efforts were invested in convincing local women to come, and in receiving permission to hold the event at the center. "I admit that at first we didn't want it here," said one administrator at the center, who requested that his name not be published. "They already attacked us in the past and beat me, and some time ago they fired at the center." Until the last minute, there was a feeling that some of the participants would end up canceling, but on Tuesday they started to stream into the center. Activists sat beside local residents and women from Jaffa and Rahat who felt the need to attend the event. Said S., a 17-year-old Jaffa resident: "With us, the issue of murdering women is less prevalent, but women's education is as much of a problem as in Ramle. With us, too, they educate you to be quiet, submissive, and to sit at home." An older woman, in traditional dress, with her head covered, stood nearby. She had come from the South to tell the story of her life as a battered woman who survived a murder attempt. But it appears that the conference's most significant achievement was the arrival of Mahdi Abu-Laban, the imam of Ramle's largest mosque. "The very fact of his sitting on the panel, on the stage, signifies a lot," noted one participant. "This is an important and dramatic day in the history of Ramle, a city that has turned red from the blood of the innocent who have been killed here," Abu-Laban said. He emphasized Islam's opposition to killing women, adding, to applause from the audience, "It is a religion that honors the woman, but unfortunately we see Muslims who do not act according to our norms. The time has come for Muslims to return to the right Islam and for women to know their rights." The imam, however, avoided answering a question regarding whether he would speak about the phenomenon of "honor killings" in future sermons. The blacklist Twenty-one Arab women have been killed in Israel over the past two years. Haaretz reported six months ago that eight women in a single family - Ramle's Abu-Ghanem family - have been killed over the course of six years. Each of them received a death sentence because of insufficiently modest dress, cell-phone conversations or random chats with a man in the street. One member of the family, Kamal Rashad Abu-Ghanem, is currently being tried on charges of murdering his 18-year-old sister, Hamda, a year ago. Hamda, who knew she was marked for death and lived in a women's shelter for a while, kept a diary in which she described her feelings of doom. In addition, a separate police investigation is currently under way concerning the well-respected Abu-Amar family of Juarish. Jerusalem police arrested seven family members on suspicion of kidnapping and killing their relative Nadia Abu-Amar, 22. One family member - Noel Abu-Amar, principal of the Juarish elementary school - attended this week's conference, but didn't speak much on the record, saying only: "I hope that we find solutions in order to save as many girls and women as possible." The use of the term "family honor" angers almost all those who deal with the subject. Abu-Laban attacked the media for using the term. "Every murder of an Arab woman immediately turns into a murder over family honor," said the imam. "Murder is murder, and in Islam there is no concept of murdering because of family honor." Women's activists also protest the term. "The man harms the woman to prove his control," said Fida Nara Abu-Dabai, of Women Against Violence. "It happens among the Jews and the Arabs." She did agree, however, that women are viewed differently in Arab society: "They educate us to be silent, to be weak. Expressing an opinion is considered insolent. But a boy is educated from a young age to be strong, not to cry. From a young age he escorts his big sister everywhere, out of a feeling that he needs to supervise her." Abu-Dabai presented data from a recently released Israeli poll showing that some 30 percent of Arab respondents said they could understand the murder of women, while nearly 40 percent said they understood men beating women. Standing outside the hall, a man who works at the center said he didn't believe the conference would bring about change. "Everyone here is speaking in slogans, and the representatives of various organizations came here," he said. "That's all well and good, but the people who really need to be here are the men of the neighborhood, the heads of the families. From them the change can come." Superintendent Yigal Ezra, who is in charge of investigations in the Ramle police, and social worker Said Tali both called for more men to fight violence against women. "We have to talk here about waging a campaign, a war," said Tali. "We have to recruit men, because at the end of the day, they're the ones responsible for this violence." Bullet holes "When I started working in Lod and Ramle, I was really unpleasantly surprised by the situation of women," said conference organizer Salamiya-Agbariya, who grew up in the Galilee village of Turan, studied social work at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has been focusing on helping Arab women since she began her career. Now in her 30s, she lives in the mixed Jewish-Arab community of Neve Shalom, and has developed a feminist worldview. "There is a big crisis in Lod and Ramle, for various reasons," she explained. "For instance, there is a serious shortage of day-care centers for young children. A woman has nowhere to leave her children in order to work or study. But the main thing is that she doesn't have a feeling of safety here." She added that the fear of being seen as dishonorable, or having one's daughter seen that way, pervades the lives of girls and women: "I've met mothers who said they prefer that the daughter be home all day, cooking, instead of going outside where who knows what will happen to her. I've heard fathers who are worried that the daughter will go out, and God forbid something will happen and then something will be [said] that will endanger her. The girls who come to the center worry all the time, are under pressure all the time, and are in contact with their homes all the time to report where they are and what they're doing. We make sure they have rides back and forth, and promise the parents that they are meeting only with women here." Tali, the social worker, explained how he took care of a girl with an unwanted pregnancy. "Her life was in danger and I got involved in the matter. The big concern was that the secret would become known to someone outside. Ultimately I managed to keep her alive, but there were some in the family who did not agree with the fact that she was still alive. The worry stems from the shame that the family - not the girl - will endure if the story gets out." The Women Against Violence hotline received some 800 reports about Arab women in danger last year, but the actual number is thought to be much higher. Frequently, after a woman is killed, accusations are leveled in the Arab sector against the police for not doing enough to prevent such murders. Women in danger, however, typically go to a female relative or friend, and occasionally to a religious figure, not feeling they can trust established institutions like the police or social services. During the conference, holes from bullets fired at the door of the youth center a few weeks ago were still evident; police say the bullets had been aimed at one of the women taking shelter there. But on the other side of the door stood a large group of women, who believed that they were finally taking their fate into their own hands. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Not even for Natalie A Haredi actor quits Natalie Portman's latest film due to rabbis' protests. Al-Jazeera boycott Al-Jazeera slams Israeli boycott as attack on free expression.   1.   Can Muslims still claim Islam to be a peaceful religion? 00:14  |  Benjamina 17/02/08   2.   Honor Killing 05:19  |  Kacey Mathew 17/02/08   3.   u r right. 07:29  |  me. 17/02/08   4.   Where is Natallie Durson(the feminist)? 08:31  |  Reality 17/02/08   5.   "Honor killing" - time to expose the hypocrits 09:25  |  Joe 17/02/08   6.   to #5, calm down, the answer is ... 10:31  |  Noa 17/02/08

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