Palestinian women victims of systemic violence

[oberliner]

RAMALLAH, West Bank - A new report paints an alarming picture of the abuse of women in the Palestinian territories, with police, courts and government agencies failing to treat violence such as rape and beatings as a crime.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch cited practices such as rape victims being forced to marry assailants and light sentences for men who kill female relatives suspected of adultery. It said families, tribal leaders and authorities, backed by tradition and discriminatory laws, often sacrifice victims’ interests for family honor.’

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2006/November/middleeast_November104.xml§ion=middleeast

[pelsar]

1. i'm sure this relates to the I/P conflict..

and i'm sure many want to read about it....so i wouldnt want this is get lost...

actually perhaps we should compare the Israeli society vs the palestenian one for tolerance of the "other" after all if one is intolerant of ones own, its probably a good sign to how tolerant you'll be to the other.

I'm sure the postets that scour the news for israeli civil problems and solutions would love to join in..consider this an invitation.

[msmcghee]

2. Thanks for kicking.

I am waiting for the first explanations that the "occupation" makes them treat their women that way.

[PrgressiveJ]

13. Yep a very important `unspoken` cultural problem nt

[PrgressiveJ]

16. So far no takers nt

[oberliner]

3. More Info from the NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/07/world/middleeast/07palestinians.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

More detailed article from the NYT:

JERUSALEM, Nov. 6 — Discriminatory laws, traditional practices and a severe shortage of emergency shelters combine to perpetuate violence against women by their family members and intimate partners in the Palestinian territories, according to a report to be issued on Tuesday by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based watchdog group.

The report, “A Question of Security: Violence against Palestinian Women and Girls,” is based on extensive interviews over the last year with victims, police officers, social workers and officials of the Palestinian Authority. It says that while there is “increasing recognition” by the authorities of violence against women and girls, “little action has been taken to seriously address these abuses.”

In fact, the report says, “there is some evidence that the level of violence is getting worse while the remedies available to the victims are being further eroded.”

[bemildred]

4. Renewed violence in Gaza raises serious concerns for children's safety

NEW YORK, USA, 6 November 2006 – Renewed violence in Gaza is again raising serious concerns about the welfare of civilians, including children. Now in its sixth day, the armed conflict has claimed the lives of an estimated 50 Palestinians – half of them civilians, and 8 of them children.

"The situation in northern Gaza, and in particular in Beit Hanoun, is very serious and is getting worse," says UNICEF Representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territory Dan Rohrmann. "We have seen an extraordinary number of children being killed just in the last five days. There are tanks everywhere, shelling, house demolitions and there is fighting in the streets. People are getting quite desperate.

"The children are terrified by everything going on, including seeing family members being taken away," adds Mr. Rohrmann.

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/MYOO-6VB4HX?OpenDocument

[bemildred]

5. Israeli government must stop human rights abuses

I had a nervous breakdown. I wanted to escape from this place and asked a client to help me. He turned out to be one of them and I was beaten up by the owners. There was nowhere to run -- there were bars on the windows and bodyguards all the time, day and night."
(Testimony of a woman trafficked from Moldova)

The Israeli government is failing to protect the human rights of women and girls who are trafficked from countries of the former Soviet Union to work in Israel's sex industry, Amnesty International said today in a new report.

"Many of these women and girls become 'commodities', literally bought and sold for thousands of dollars or held in debt bondage. They are locked up in apartments and have their passports and travel tickets confiscated. Many women are subjected to violence, including rape. Yet most of the people who commit such human rights abuses are never brought to justice by the Israeli government," the organization said.

Anna, a 31-year-old physics teacher from the Russian Federation was lured to Israel by the promise of a job in the sex industry earning 20 times her Russian salary. When she arrived, her passport was taken from her and she was locked in an apartment with bars on the windows along with six other women from former Soviet Union countries. She was auctioned twice, on the second occasion for US$10,000. The women were rarely allowed to leave the apartment and never allowed out alone. Much of the money they earned was extorted from them by their pimps.

http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engMDE150242000

[bemildred]

6. Israel a Human Trafficking Haven

TEL AVIV, Israel — Human trafficking (search) is turning into a real problem in Israel, where law enforcement officials say women are bought and sold into the indentured servitude of the sex industry.

The women in question are usually from the former Soviet Union (search) and are traded by the Russian mob (search). The same Bedouins who smuggle weapons into Israel bring the women up through the Egyptian desert, oftentimes with a load of weapons.

"It's a kind of meat market. It's very brutal — most of this kind of auction," said Gadi Eshed of the Israel Police.

Thinking they are escaping the harsh conditions of home, a reported 3,000 prostitutes each year come to Israel. Their fist experience in the Holy Land is a forced march across the Egyptian desert, crossing the Israeli border through routes used to smuggle weapons and drugs.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,129157,00.html

[bemildred]

7. U.S. Report: Israel not doing enough to fight human trafficking

"Israel is a destination country for trafficked
persons" according to the U.S. State Department's
Annual Trafficking in Persons Report, released in
Washington yesterday. Throughout the world, some
800,000-900,000 people are victims of trafficking
each year, a global business that yields $7-10
billion in profits for those who conduct this
human trade, the report states.

Israel is ranked among the "Tier
2" countries in the report,
which includes countries that
are making efforts to combat
trafficking in persons. Tier 1
countries are those in which
anti-trafficking standards are
fully enforced, while the Tier
3 rank is assigned to countries
that are not making significant
efforts to combat trafficking within its
borders.

In 2001, when the annual report was compiled for
the first time, Israel received the lowest
(Tier 3) ranking. After stepping up enforcement
efforts last year, Israel was moved up to the
Tier 2 group, the same ranking it received this
year. During the first two years, Tier 3
countries were given the chance to improve
their ranking, but will now be subject to
economic sanctions by the United States.

"The government of Israel does not fully comply
with the minimum standards for the elimination
of trafficking. However, it is making
significant efforts to do so," the report
states. In previous years, the report
highlighted the trafficking of women to Israel
for prostitution. This year, it also notes the
abuse of foreign workers.

http://www.kavlaoved.org.il/katava_main.asp?news_id=537&sivug_id=24

[PrgressiveJ]

14. Abuse of women still rife in Palestinian life, says study

By Donald Macintyre in Gaza City
Published: 07 November 2006
Sanaa Umar fidgets with her handbag as she describes the daunting task of making a new start when her own father blames her for failing to keep the violent and abusive man who married her at 15 and divorced her at 16.

"My husband started beating me without any reason in the second week of the marriage," says Sanaa, now 17, from Beach refugee camp. Sanaa is not her real name - she is too frightened to be identified. "He beat me with a stick all over my body. It was like he was controlled by a genie. Even his own mother tried to stop him but she couldn't."

The man, a relatively well-off 22-year old, had seen her at a wedding and asked her - very poor - parents for her hand in marriage. Her father, who had made her finish school at 12 and had also often beaten her, was happy. " I agreed because my father agreed," Sanaa explains.

But all along her new husband was conducting a relationship with another 15-year-old girl whose father had forbidden the marriage. At one point, her husband beat Sanaa so badly that she was unable to get out of bed for a week, before he eventually dumped her back at her parents' home.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1961450.ece

[bemildred]

8. Israel's Sex Trade Escalating

(AP) Between 3,000 and 5,000 women have been smuggled into Israel over the past four years in a burgeoning, illegal sex industry, according to a parliamentary committee report issued Wednesday.

Zehava Galon, who heads the Committee Against Trade in Women, said the four-year inquiry showed how women are smuggled across the Egyptian border into Israel and "along the way, raped, beaten and then sold in public auctions." Most of the women are from the former Soviet Union, she said.

Galon, from the opposition Yahad Party, presented the report on Wednesday to the speaker of the parliament, Reuven Rivlin.

The panel faulted judges for light sentences, sometimes only community service, for men running the prostitution rings. The report called for minimum jail terms of 16 years instead.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/23/world/main682673.shtml

[PrgressiveJ]

9. WOWW !!!

Talk about calling in the cavalry.

A topic entitled ``Palestinian women victims of systemic violence``
brings about a response of 5 or 6 posts in a row about how bad Israelis and Jews are.
We must deflect?
We must change the subject away from bad Palestinians to bad Jews?


Quick before anyone notices.


LOL LOL

[bemildred]

10. Welcome to DU.

:hi:

[PrgressiveJ]

15. Group: Palestinian women often abused

By KARIN LAUB
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- A new report presents an alarming picture of the abuse of women in the Palestinian territories, with police, courts and government agencies failing to treat violence such as rape and beatings as a crime.

Human Rights Watch cited practices such as rape victims being forced to marry assailants and light sentences for men who kill female relatives suspected of adultery. In a report released Tuesday, the rights group said families, tribal leaders and authorities, backed by tradition and discriminatory laws, often sacrifice victims' interests for "family honor."

And the problem is getting worse with growing poverty and lawlessness in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the New York-based group said.

The report comes about a year after a Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics survey of more than 4,000 households found 23 percent of women said they experienced domestic violence, but only 1 percent had filed a complaint. Two-thirds said they were subjected to psychological abuse at home.

Human Rights Watch
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1107AP_Palestinians_No_Shelter.html

[msmcghee]

11. You'll have to get used to that around here.

The I/P forum is currently dominated by a few posters who's mission seems to be put up any post and hijack any thread to "Baaaad Jews". We try to engage them in substantive discussions on the many legal, moral and ethical dimensions of the conflict but as you can see it's pretty hopeless.

Anyway, welcome to DU. :hi:

[PrgressiveJ]

12. Pretty amusing

The gymnastics involved in the attempted deflection :)

[cali]

17. Sorry to see you engaged in such silliness.

I have a lot of respect for you. I'm surprised to see you doing this.

[bemildred]

18. Let us say I think all this concern for the welfare of Palestinian women

rings hollow. It appears to me that it's OK for IDF soldiers to shoot them down in cold blood, but the height of moral outrage if some Palestinian does it.

Sorry we disagree, but you knew that before.

[msmcghee]

19. " . . shoot them down in cold blood"?

C'mon, even you should be able to see how far from reality that characterization is. Are they cruising around Beit Hanun looking for women in the open to shoot? That's what your statement proposes.

Those (two out of a hundred) women willingly placed themselves between terrorists who were shooting at the IDF and the IDF in an attempt to allow the terrorists (who were suspected of being complicit in firing missiles into Israel) to escape. This was during an active firefight. The suspects were offered the chance to surrender and prove their innocence. Israel detains many Palestinians and then releases them if it is found they were not combatants.

Your position would be perhaps slightly believable if you did not stretch reality so brutally (like breakaleg's "open death threats" in an adjacent thread) to wrap around your "Baaaad Jews" meme.

After all this time it becomes increasingly evident that you actually have nothing.

[bemildred]

20. Well, there is an interesting question there.

Was there an officer in charge, and did he order them to shoot the women? The IDF seems to have been smart enough to want to seem to be avoiding destroying the mosque, that is sensitive to appearances, so you have to wonder whether no one considered how shooting the women was going to look?

The alternative would be that the troops were just acting on their own.

[msmcghee]

23. You are not a dumb person and you seem to have some . .

. . appreciation for the reality of armed conflict.

You should understand that moral truths can seldom be discerned from actions that take place in battle once it is engaged. There are no moral truths to be gleaned from the actions of scared people on both sides of the line who desperately want to go home to their wives and babies and be anyplace but where they are as the rounds zip over their heads. You can, however, discern some moral truths from the nature of the actions that caused the armed conflict to take place in the first place.

Your focus on things like your apparent assertion that the women bringing in disguises in the middle of a firefight were innocent civilians being killed by the heartless IDF forces "in cold blood" may appeal to readers' emotions - but they are just desperate attempts to avoid the obvious.

If terrorists were not firing missiles into Israel the IDF would not be there to start with. Likewise. If Hisb'allah had not killed and wounded several IDF and kidnapped 2 others across the blue line - Israel would not have attacked Lebanon to get them back and wipe out the firing positions of the missiles being fired into N. Israel.

All the hand-wringing about what happens after the fight is engaged is just so much blather. I'd expect you to know that more than most here. It just shows the lack of substance in your underlying assertion (that you never specifically name) - that Israel is engaged in some "international immorality" by defending its land and citizens.

[eyl]

28. Making a guess

it's likely different officers. The decision not to level the mosque was probably a high-level decision. But once the women intervened and the gunmen started fleeing, the decision to shoot at them was likely made by a much more junior officer, since it had to be made immediately. And frankly, I'm not prepared to fault the shooting - by intervening in favor of one side in the middle of a firefight, the women forfeited their civlian immunity (or if you want to look at it another way, the gunmen's placing themselves in the midst of those women made an attack legitimate, even if it hit some of the women (as happened in the event).

[bemildred]

29. That was sort of what I thought.

I considered that the order might have been "fire over their heads" too, but it doesn't really look that way. But the lack of coordination of command authority is noticeable.

Once enough of the women showed up, it ought to have been clear that the "terrorists" were going to escape, either with or without a massacre of the women, and it seems to me that someone ought to have had the good sense to cut their losses at that point. Instead the "terrorists" escape and you have a PR debacle. Good job.

Your notion that the women forfeited their right to life by showing up and that shooting them was then "legitimate" are most amusing, although I expect that the women knew full well what to expect. I can assure you that most humans will not view it that way, but will instead view it as they would any other instance of a military force deliberately shooting a bunch of unarmed women. You can rail against the unfairness of all that, but that is the way it is.

Thank you for your response, I do appreciate it.

[pelsar]

31. i dont see any "lack of coordination of command"

i see decisions made on the spot by the local commander that had to be made in within seconds. With his men in danger in the middle of a firefight, "the buck stops at the commander in the field in the fight" Only he can make the judgment of how much danger there is to his men and from which areas....conference calls at that point can only waste time and get his men killed.

Further more there is actually a "pecking order" of whos lives are more important in a firefight: first on top is your own men...then come civilians, then comes the people who are trying to kill you. If the civilians get in the way and endanger your own men, its a very tricky decision on what to do and i wouldnt want to second guess a judement call while getting shot at....its pretty much a very personal decision of "how much danger" your in or your men are in.

were the palestenians litterly shooting while the women walked in front? was there a sniper shooting over her shoulder? I dont know nor do any of us....but if that was the case, i too would return fire as would everybody i know...

[bemildred]

32. Of course not. nt

[pelsar]

33. theres a reason why "

only combat soldiers can judge other combat soldiers......

to put it a rather lame way i doubt any married couple would take advice from a 40 yr old bachelor or bachleret on their marrige...they would politely tell their friend that he cant possibly understand what marriage is all about.

or how about a high school grad telling a grad school student how to prepare his thesis?

an aeronautical engineer telling a garage mechanic how to fix his engine?

but somehow when it comes to how combat soldiers react under life and death situations people here seem to think not only do they understand but that they know the environment and know how they "should have reacted"

we have a phrase for that: is called the height of chutzpa. Maybe just maybe before writing how guilty those soldier are or their commanders or making up some theory of the 'breakdown of command" maybe it really comes down to very simple action:

women intentionally walking into a live combat zone and gambling with their lives that they wont get shot......it was they who were gambling, the environment was a given.....

[bemildred]

34. Well, enjoy your "victory". nt

[pelsar]

35. its not a victory...

its a sad comment on the morality of "hamas" and its society to send unarmed civilians in the middle of a firefight....its a sad comment on the DU for many assuming that the israel soldiers must be guilty for some how not risking their lives enough for a cyncial use of civilians by hamas.

[bemildred]

36. Look, if it pleases you to think this is all someone else's fault,

and that this was a great, well-executed and well-coordinated operation, that achieved lots of important and useful goals, then that is fine with me; but you are not going to convince me, so let's let it rest.

[pelsar]

37. i just think you misunderstand...

i have no idea what happend..and neither do you. All we do know is that hamas told some women to go enter in the middle of a firefight..and some got shot-what a surprise.

[cali]

21. I suspect that this was posted

to demonstrate flaws in Palestinian society more than anything else, as there are so often posts pointing out the flaws in Israeli society- a practice you seem to have no problem with. But then I suspect you know that already. You seem to have a problem with hypocricy on one side, but not on the other.

[bemildred]

22. I take hypocrisy where I find it.

It is true I usually ignore these things, one would never be done if one attempted to stamp out hypocrisy, we are all somewhat hypocrits. I am too lazy for such a monumental task. But the shooting of those women was still fresh in my mind, and in the context of the OP, that prompted me to act. The wound was still a bit too raw.

[msmcghee]

24. Hypocrisy is where you find it. That's true.

Your concern for those women would be far more touching if you had anything to say about the daily firing of missiles by the terrorists they were defending and helping to escape - so they could fire more missiles the next day.

You know, those terrorists that were firing ball-bearing laden missiles into Israel every day with the purpose of killing innocent Israeli civilians.

You know, the terrorists that made it necessary for the IDF to be in Gaza trying to stop the missiles.

Your animosity for "cold blooded killers" is touching.

[bemildred]

25. I post those stories too, as you know.

What do you think of my thread hijacking technique?

[msmcghee]

26. Yes, you do.

That's why most here respect your opinion. And is probably why it pushes more of my buttons when you engage in sophistry. But we all do that at times - including me.

All I can do is keep trying to keep the discussion into relevant areas. Still, it seems to me that the anti-Israeli group (of which you are a primary member) will post a spate of OP's - each of which do nothing but cast Israel into a "demon role" by the words in the headline. You are a prime example of this.

Those threads have nothing to do with any better understanding of the conflict. They simply polarize the two sides. They are verbal extensions of the bullets and rockets on the ground in the ME that are killing real people.

But they do offer solace and support for one's emotional position - so I understand why it is done.

But soon, to refute the emotional barrage and relieve the negative emotional tension it creates - the other side understandably does the same - perhaps like oberliner did with this thread.

That's why I'd like to keep the emotional bombs out of the forum entirely. Some on your side like intiRaymi seem to have nothing but snarky emotional bombs to throw. Thankfully, some of the worst Israel haters who had the least to offer - like Violet Crumble - are gone. (I would mention that you usually supported her attacks.) But some here are awfully close to that line IMO - like Englander and intiRaymi.

BTW - I am not singling anyone out here for ridicule. I know I could do better myself. But, we are discussing things here that have a real and significant impact on the lives of actual people - some are members of this forum like pelsar and his family and friends.

I think that deserves an intellectually honest effort by everyone here to engage the "ideas and concepts" underlying the conflict - in a way that would increase our understanding of it. I hate to see some here use this forum as a playground for their partisan emotions.

[eyl]

27. IOW

"quick! look over there!"

[bemildred]

30. Please see post #25. nt