greg stephens, I have never said or even suggested that Israel is "responsible" for the practice of "honor" killings among Palestinians. You said that. What I said is that the efforts on the part of Palestinian women, and on the part of the official sectors in the Occupied Territories to begin to solve this problem have been severely hindered by the government of Israel, and this is the truth. If we are sincere in wanting this practice to end, what we need to do is to support the efforts at bringing an end to this practice, rather than to undermine them. Anything else is pure hypocrisy.

GUEST,Sandi, I have said this on another thread, and I'll repeat it here. The subject of brutalization of women is a very delicate and complicated one. For instance, the practice of "female genital mutilation". My visceral instinct is to hate the people who would do such a thing to women. And I've noticed that some people try to use this practice as a way of spreading hatered towards Muslims under the rubric that this is a Muslim practice. The problem is that it is not a specifically Muslim practice. Non-Muslims practice it, and many Muslims do not practice it.

So for me to buy into this attempt to get me to hate Muslims for practicing this atrocity, I don't help the women against whom it is practiced, and, in fact, I make their situation worse. I heard some women from countries where this is practiced being interviewed. They said that they don't want people to stigmatize their society for practicing this thing. And they don't even like people using the term "genital mutilization". This is not because they think the practice is acceptable, but because in stigmatizing the society in which this takes place, the women who suffer the most from this practice also become stigmatized.

And this is the same with the subject you have introduced in this thread. It is a form brutalization of women, in this case, one that is committed by some Muslims. There are many other forms of brutalization of women that are committed by other people. When you stigmatize Muslims for the fact that some members of that religion brutalize women, you create the false impression that these brutalized women are different from all other brutalized women, and you further stigmatize them.

And on top of all of that, when you promote hatred towards Muslims, you help political entities who have agendas that are not in any way concerned with women's rights to commit further atrocities against those very same women. And to kill their loved ones. So you are not really helping them by doing things that can serve to single out only certain people and societies for this kind of scrutiny. It's the most vulnerable people in a society who suffer the most from this kind of thing.

If you would take the time to read what some other Palestinian women have to say about what they want in the links I have posted, you will see what they, themselves would like to see happen to solve this problem in their society. The idea is to help nurture a better attitude and better conditions for women within the culture rather than to further brutalize an already brutalized group of people.