ISRAEL: Control by Femicide

IN ISRAEL, MURDER OF WOMEN IN WHAT ARE REFERRED to as “killings to protect the family's honor” account for the majority of homicides among Arab citizens. These murders are carried out by relatives of the victims, or their proxies, because of some perceived transgression by the women of gendered social norms.

At least nine Israeli-Arab women have been murdered since January 2010. In October, two Arab women were murdered in the city of Lod. Police arrested two hired hit men, who are suspected of offering their services to locals, who wanted to attack their family members.

“I oppose using the term ‘family honor,' insists Aida Touma- Sliman, 46, the outspoken founder and director general of Women Against Violence. “Whether the excuse is ‘family honor' in the East or ‘crime of passion' in the West, women are killed so that men can control women's lives,” she says. “And it is the state's responsibility to protect the women.”

The Jerusalem Report: Why do you object to the term “family honor” killing?
Aida Touma-Sliman: The term “family honor” killing implies that the woman who has been murdered was responsible for her own murder. Using the term grants legitimacy to crimes against women and tries to cover this with a veneer of pseudo-cultural explanations that allow the authorities to shirk off their responsibility to protect women.

Women are not murdered because of their behavior. They are murdered because they resist the attempts that men make to control women and to prevent women from making independent decisions regarding their own lives.

In the West, the nuclear family is predominant. Arab society is based on an extended family model, which includes cousins, uncles and so forth, so the circle that attempts to impose its will on the woman is wider. But in all cases, these murders have nothing to do with “the honor of the family.” They have to do with a woman's attempt to take responsibility for her own life.

What name would you give to these murders?
Femicide – the murder of women. By calling it femicide, you remove the so-called cultural aspect. Women are murdered in all societies, and not only in Arab societies.

Yet sometimes women – especially mothers – participate in these so-called “honor killings.”
All women are products of their society, and ours is a patriarchical society. Women are afraid: they see that a woman who rebelled was murdered, and they are afraid for their own lives, especially since they know that no one will help them or defend them. This is no different than a Jewish mother, or any other mother, who is silent even when she knows about incest or sexual abuse in her own family – she is too frightened to respond.

Why has there been an increase in femicide in Arab society?
Over the past two years we've seen an increase in the numbers of women murdered. We cannot separate this increase from the general spike in violence among Palestinians in Israel. We know that in every society, as violence in general escalates, violence against women escalates, too.

Palestinian society in Israel faces severe social and economic problems that act as catalysts for violence. Arab society is very poor, with high levels of unemployment and almost no cultural or leisure time options. And we are imprisoned in our overcrowded, densely populated cities and villages, with no options for building or expansion.

Add to this the easy availability of guns in the Arab sector, which we have been complaining about for years, and we see that our society, and especially the younger generation, is deteriorating quickly.

In 2009, of the 123 people murdered in Israel, 76 were Arabs – that's nearly 62 percent of the murders, while the Arab population makes up only 20 percent of the population in Israel. This points to the seriousness of the problem. But the authorities are not doing anything.

What should be done?
Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich has stated that the murders can only be prevented by “introducing changes to culture and education” in the Arab sector, as if this were merely a cultural problem. But the police should be providing Arab women and all citizens with the same protection against violence.

As long as the violence is contained within Arab society, the authorities don't really care. The government only responded to the spate of murders in Lod [in October], when the violence came close to the Jewish neighborhoods.

The violence in general, and the violence against women in particular, suit the agenda of the government, especially this government. It suits their racist theories, as if it proves that the Arabs are harmful, as if we are somehow “different” and dangerous to Israeli society. This inflames hatred.

What has Arab society done for itself?
There are numerous organizations operating in the Arab sector.

Our own organization, Women Against Violence, was founded in 1993 and also established the first shelter for women that same year. We operate a 24-hour hot line and receive some 900 calls a year from women regarding all forms of gender-based violence.

We are also working in the schools, giving some 1,200 lectures a year and raising awareness among both girls and boys.

We also operate a shelter for girls at risk, transitional homes and other services. But it's not enough. Some 35 percent of our funding comes from the state, which is the same level of funding as the Jewish sector receives. But our situation is much worse and our needs are greater, because our society is poorer and also because we do not have the support of the world Jewish organizations.