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.”
The problem is only getting worse with growing poverty and lawlessness in the West Bank and Gaza, the report said.– from this article
There is in this article no mention of Islam, of its tenets, or its attitudes, or its atmospherics, to explain the treatment of women in societies that have been suffused or re-suffused with Islam. Instead, early on, readers are given an alternative explanation, one which effectively blames Israel, for its strange refusal not to supply the “Palestinians” with jobs and every good thing, and Infidel countries for withholding, but only temporarily, the Jizyah of massive aid on which those “Palestinians” rely and which, they assume, is theirs by right: “The problem is only getting worse with growing poverty and lawlessness in the West Bank and Gaza…”
Obliquely, but clearly, Israel is being blamed.
And thus the implied remedy is not to confront and denounce, the sources within Islam for the mistreatment of Muslim women by Muslim men, but rather — bring back that Jizyah, hand over those revenues, let those “Palestinians” into Israel to work, no matter what a security nightmare this poses.
Meanwhile, Stephen Erlanger unsurprisingly thrums his lyre a bit more to the theme of in-the-end-there’s-a-blame-Israel angle-to-everything for which The New Duranty Times has become famous:
The report notes that the Palestinian Authority is not a sovereign state [of what relevance is that? Does it not have total control in Gaza, where the mistreatment is most acute?], that the West Bank is under Israeli occupation [a loaded term, and in any case, what is its relevance to the mistreatment of Muslim women by Muslim men?], and that the current fighting with Israel [which is generated entirely by the continued firing of rockets into Israel from Gaza, and terrorists who continue to plot and carry out attacks from the “West Bank”] which intensified in 2000 [why was that? Who declared the “Intifada” of 2000 and set it going? Anyone? No one? It just happened?], has only weakened the sway and reduced the resources of the Palestinian administration and the police [poveretti].
[“¦.]
The report also urges Israel to ease travel restrictions for judges, emergency workers and social service providers and to help Palestinian victims of abuse use shelters in Israel, including those used by Arab citizens of Israel.
And this is how Stephen Erlanger, so indifferent and so bored with Israel and charitable to those who wish to do it as much harm as possible, as well as so ignorant and apparently in no hurry to learn what Islam teaches, and to study the clear tenets of this belief-system and the attitudes and atmospherics naturally to be found in societies suffused with Islam, sums up the situation:
The difficulties created by the current political situation, including travel restrictions and a cutoff of Western budget support and other funds to a Palestinian Authority led by Hamas, Ms. Mair [one of the two authors of the study] noted, “has led to the deterioration of existing institutions, erodes available remedies and makes the situation worse.”
So the reader is left, in Erlanger’s lazy and ill-written piece, with the feeling that if only Israel were to supply those battered-women’s shelters, and whisk judges from “West Bank” to Gaza (What? Family court judges for Muslim families? Dr. Ruth, or Dr. Phil? What, exactly?), all would be well. Above all, if those fiendish Israelis would start pumping money and jobs back into the economy of those whose declared aim is sooner (Hamas) or later (Fatah) to destroy the people and state of Israel, and if, furthermore, the Infidel nations would only reinstitute the Jizyah of foreign aid (rather than suggesting that the Muslim Arabs who constitute the “Palestinians” ask fellow members of the ummah, such as Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E., if they could spare just one hour’s unearned oil revenues rather than take for granted the turning on of the Jizyah-spigot from the Western, non-Muslim taxpayers), this problem would disappear.
Oh, it was quite a piece — brief, seemingly innocent, but still managing to bristle with all kinds of anti-Israel and pro-Jihad assumptions.
And not a word, not a single word, about the texts of Islam that would help the readers of The New Duranty Times understand why the mistreatment of women is so deeply and naturally a part of Muslim societies, and that only where someone or some outside power — Ataturk in Turkey, Bourguiba in Tunisia, the Shah in Iran, Soviet commissars in Central Asia — has managed to constrain the power of Islam, has there been any diminishment in the mistreatment of women under Islam.
That would require Stephen Erlanger to actually read Qur’an and Hadith and to find out how Muhammad, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil, treated women. And that would also require him not only to read, but to ponder what he had read, to thoroughly assimilate it, to understand it and to relate it to observable practices in Muslim countries or in Muslim societies within non-Muslim countries.
And that would be asking too much.
Let Gaza alone. No Jizyah, no coverage, no nothing. Let Gaza — be Gaza.