Here is what happened (I'll mostly quote the article in Newsweek by Kevin Peraino, Inside Gaza Where Murder Is Easy):
A gravedigger, Yehia Abu Moghaseb, noticed that men were dumping three large bundles in black plastic bags late at night in freshly dug pits.
Abu Moghaseb asked a neighbor to call the Hamas-controlled "Executive Force," a network of troops composed mostly of former militants from the group's Izzedine al-Qassam militia. When the Hamas men arrived, wearing their trademark black uniforms and cradling Kalashnikovs, Abu Moghaseb helped them uncover the graves. A doctor tore open the black body bags. Inside, the gravedigger saw three young women, two of them still in their teens. "They were beautiful," he said later. "Except for the blood." Two of the girls had been stabbed repeatedly in the chest; the third had her throat cut.
Three days later the gravedigger was interviewed:
The murders had been an honor killing, he explained; he says he was later told that the victims were orphans and had been working as prostitutes. A devout Muslim, Abu Moghaseb said that he has mixed feelings about the practice of honor killing and seemed to be working through his rationale while we talked. "If a woman works as a prostitute, she must be killed," he reasoned. "It will spread diseases." Still, he went on, "Our religion says not to kill," and then after another moment: "But our tradition says to kill." As we baked in the midday Gaza sun, he eventually gave up on the tortured logic. "You don't kill a girl," he told me finally, looking a little disgusted, before walking back up the hill toward his house.
WTF, how can he differentiate religion from culture in this way? It is all religion, even the traditional part. The same Koran obviously sends out mixed messages, but the end result is a culture of death, and of course, constant spinning.
A suspect was caught. He was a cousin to the sisters. Yes, he was an individual, so I won't go ragging on the Palestinian YET:
....the Executive Force had swiftly arrested a suspect in the Juha case, a cousin of the victims, and that he was currently under interrogation. Shehwan (Hamas spokesman for the Executive Force) explained that he had met with the alleged killer yesterday and claimed that the man had confessed. "He was very calm," the official told me. "He was proud of it." Still, Shehwan didn't seem particularly sympathetic to the murdered sisters. "They were prostitutes," Shehwan told me matter-of-factly. "We are good investigators. We have big files for them. We have many stories. One was taking drugs. They were caught having sexual relationships many times—more than five times." (Sharia requires four firsthand witnesses to convict a woman of prostitution; family law in Gaza is strongly influenced by Sharia, even before the Hamas takeover.)
Now for the sickening part. The reaction by the Palestinians collectively:
Quoting Palestinian attorney general, Ahmed al-Moghani, "Look, we have information from intelligence sources that they have been committing sins," the attorney general explained. He told me that he had taken a personal interest in the case, and ordered "forensic work" to be done on the bodies. "After the work was done, it was determined that they were not virgins," he continued. "We could detect that there were recent sexual relationships." He lifted his hands and cocked his head, as if to say: case closed. "Of course, this is not a pretext to kill them," he added. "Nobody is allowed to take the law into his own hands." The attorney general sounded very much like he was trying to convince himself.
This is a case of hardwired human morality, that is usually followed in the West, versus a culture that is taught hate from day one, and taught standards that are repulsive to anyone with an ounce of empathy and compassion.
A neighbour of the slain girls was no different in his reaction:
A neighbor who identified himself as Abu Ahmad said that the three had lived alone; their father had died years before of a heart attack, an older brother had been killed as an Israeli collaborator in the 1990s, and their mother had also been murdered. "They used to talk to boys in the street," the neighbor recalled. "They used to go without a headscarf. Now we're rid of them." Relatives I visited were no more helpful or sympathetic. Not a single family member was willing to talk about the girls. Mahmoud Juha, the family mukhtar—the head of the clan—explained that he would have nothing to say about the young women or their murders. When we stopped by his home, he told my translator firmly: "I advise you not to talk to anyone else."
Human beings know what is right and wrong generally. Many Palestinians may be too brainwashed though, and have voided themselves of this human trait, just like the Phelps family in the US have.
To Yehia Abu Moghaseb, that attitude is part of the problem. The crime should be publicized and the killers punished, the gravedigger told me, as we stood in the sun at the cemetery near where the bodies had been dumped. "We can't be silent," he went on, his voice rising slightly. "We can't cover it up." Then he was quiet. I thought of what he had told me earlier, with the simple, sound judgment of a man who has seen more than his share of bodies covered with earth: "You don't kill a girl." In the absence of law, at least there is someone in Gaza with a little common sense.
A couple of real good posts I want to bring to the attention of my reader here.
Oleh Michael asks Some Questions About Gaza
, where he illustrates that Gaza land has many possibilities when it comes for growth potential. The location and the fertility of the land is prime. But what can expect from a culture that in bent on revenge on honour killings?
Also of interest is a post by Beaman called Why I Strongly Support Israel. Beaman's profile on Technorati states: A 20-something Englishman. Writer, artist, poet and slob. Likes fine food, wine, chocolate and German beer. Formula One and cat fanatic. Philosophical and political.
He left out atheist, which he is as well. Oh, and he makes it clear that he is not a Jew.
He makes a point in his post that many in England are misinformed about the I/P conflict, mainly because Muslims outnumber Jews, and the Brits tend to get one side of the story....the wrong side. Many secularists, as I've stated previously have a warped understanding of victimhood. They feel that those with the less resources and less wealth, and whoare in the most dire straights must be the collective victims. Beaman points out that this line of thinking is not necessarily true all the time, and especially in the case of the Palestinians.
