On Aggression, Human Rights, and Hegemonic Discourse: The Case of a Murder for Family Honor in...

Sex Rotes. VoL 30. Nos. 3/4, 1994

On Aggression, Human Rights, and HegemonicDiscourse: The Case of a Murder for FamilyHonor in Israel^

lisa M. GiazerKingsborough Community College, City University of New York

Wahiba Abu RasDepartment of Political Affairs. Untied Nations

Gossip, while a mean-spirited act of verbal aggression, has recently beenconsidered eufunctional because it affirms traditional morality, social cohesion,and cultural stability. In a similar vein, in the name of cultural diversity, humanrights anthropologists affirm the value of tradition, cohesion and stability.Extending Nader's theoretical fiamework on hegemonic discourse, this paperdemonstrates the androcentricity inherent in these views. When Arab villagewomen's gossip creates the climate in which the murder of a young womanis inevitable, a feminist anthropological perspective addressing the androcentrichegemonic discourse on aggression and human rights, however sensitive tomultiple voices, requires challenging the assumption that aggression iseufunctional because tradition, cohesion, and stability are inherently positive.

Recent theoretical work on gossip as eufunctional aggression (Gilmore,1987) and human rights (Downing, 1988) find common ground in the valuethey place on cultural stability and tradition. Gossip is eufunctional aggres-sion to Gilmore because it contributes to social stability and continuity,

'Earlier versions of this paper were presented by IMG to the joint meeting of the AfricanStudies Association and the Middle Eastern Studies Association, New Orleans, November23-26, 1985, to the New York Women's Anthropology Committee, CUNY Graduate Center,May 6, 1988, and to the Barnard Center for Research on Women, Barnard College, ColumbiaUniversity, October 14, 1992. Fieldwork was supported by a grant from the University ofHaifa. We wish to thank Richard Schuster for providing material on the most recentdevelopments in the Arab feminist movement, and Gideon Kressel and Elliott Skinner forsharing their insights.

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27V Giazer and Abu Ras

buttressing a moral sense of community. From the motive of malevolenceat the deviant arises order, structure, and continuity which are "primal val-ues" woven together by culture into the "good life" (Gilmore, 1987, p. 175-79).̂ Downing argues that all cultures have human rights propositions.These may involve "the option to deny individuals or groups access to cer-tain human rights, as a sanction necessary for social control" (Downing,1988, p. 11). The social cohesion borne of adherence to tradition is thusvalued sui generis. Bamett argues (1988) that we should judge the humanrights aspect of a cultural practice relatively, in terms of the cultural contextin which the practice is embedded, and that we should respect culturaldiversity, for such diversity is the basis of human survival.

Romance with tradition, cohesion and stability in theories of eufunc-tional aggression and culturally relative human rights function in whatNader (1989, p. 323) calls "male dogmas . . .which divert attention fromthe processes which are controlling women." Schuster^ & Hartz-Karp(1986) challenge Gilmore's notion of gossip as eufunctional aggression be-cause what is perceived as "the good life" may be good only for thosemembers of the community who control the resources of power, prestigeand privilege. Stability comes at the price of continued subordination ofwomen, and is neither a sui generis nor necessarily shared value of all. Intheir case study, gossip contributed to a social climate which prevented fe-male mobility in work roles in an Israeli kibbutz.

This paper builds upon Nader's theoretical framework of complemen-tary concepts of hegemony, true discourse and positional superiority forunderstanding dogmas of female subordination in a dynamic perspective.''Hegemony implies that "systems of thought develop over time and reflectthe interests of certain classes and/or groups in society who have managedto universalize their own beliefs and values" (Nader, 1989, p. 324). Ahegemonic relationship is most effectively established through practiceswhich "infiltrate minds and bodies, tastes, desires and needs" (Idem.). Dis-

F̂or Gilmore the analytic challenge is to reconcile functionalist and transactionalistapproaches to gossip through processual analysis of how the individual's behavior transmutesto collective action. Gluckman's functionalism (1963, 1968) viewed gossip as a spontaneouscollective sanction, the voice of public opinion enforcing conformity to community norms, agroup-binding, boundary-maintaining mechanism, an informal device for social control. ForEpstein (1969) gossip in a social network reaffirms values held in common, giving the bearersa sense of identity as a distinct social class. In their critique of the functionalist approach,transactionalists (Paine, 1967, Szwed, 1966, Cox, 1970) viewed gossip as the morally neutralmanipulation of information by individuals for tactical advantage. For them, gossip isinformation exchange, a genre of informal communication by individuals not concerned aboutthe moral unity of the group.

^Before 1990, lisa M. Glazer published as lisa Schuster.*Nader (1989: 324) develops her analysis through the insights of Gramsci, Smart, Foucault,and Said.

Aggression, Human Rights, and Discourse 271

course on alternative conceptions of reality is thereby restricted; "true dis-course" reveals the relations of truth and power. Positional superiority re-fers to East-West hegemonic discourse in which each, by claimingsuperiority over the other, restricts and controls women's resistance to sub-ordination. Today, Nader says, Arab and Western gender ideologies arechanging products of intemal debates over inequalities within each societyand between the two increasingly interacting societies. Both use mecha-nisms to control women; variations are related to the shape of the malepower structure. Both strengthen their own ideology by comparison to theother. "Images of women in other societies reinforce norms of subordina-tion in one's own society" (1989, p. 347). For Nader (1989, p. 323), "mis-leading cultural comparisons support contentions of positional superioritywhich divert attention from the processes which are controlling women inboth worlds." In the East, the form of resistance to multiple systems offemale subordination may be indigenous critique and a westernized formof feminism (cf., e.g., Moskona-Lerman, 1991 ).5

This paper proposes that the eufunctional view of gossip and the cul-tural relativity/diversity position on human rights are products of hegemonicdiscourse of cooperating Eastern and Western male intellectual elites, in-struments by which they control and subordinate both women and feministdiscourse. In true discourse, multivoca! feminist analysis must free itself ofEast-West male hegemonic discourse, of both the anthropological and in-digenous traditions. The paper is an ethnographic account of a family honorkilling in an Arab village in Israel.

Glazer's interest in the aggression of women against each other de-veloped out of work on women in development. Part of her work was tounderstand why the women political leaders in Zambia scapegoated ratherthan supported young educated women (Schuster, 1983). Later, in Israel,she found the concept of inter-female aggression useful for explaining kib-butz women's facilitating roles in maintaining their inferior status (Schuster& Hartz-Karp, 1986). Over a period of fifteen years, her research exploredthe complexities of worlds of women in social change and the interplay be-tween development and aggression. After many years of teaching in the U.S.,Zambia and Israel, she was finally able to teach a course called "Womenin Social Change" at the University of Haifa, Israel. Until the early 1980s,teaching about women was not considered legitimate in Israeli universitiesand that course was the first of its kind in Israel. After taking the course,Abu Ras, one of the Arab women students, asked Giazer to study change

In Moskona-Lerman's interview of Israeli Palestinian Mariam Mar'i, Mar'i tells of beingadvised by her brother to imitate the "inner freedom, the freedom of action" of Israeli kibbutzwomen.

272 Giazer and Abu Ras

in the lives of Arab village women. Abu Ras was bom and grew up in asmall village in the Galilee. She was and still is the first woman in her villageto finish university. Glazer was concerned that working with her would brandAbu Ras as a "collaborator with the Zionists" and possibly affect her futureemployment, but Abu Ras was more concerned that analysis of the womenbe undertaken. The present study is the result. Coming from the same areawhere the case under analysis in this paper took place, speaking Arabic,familiar with rural norms, and having personal friendships, Abu Ras sharedher ready access to the village with Glazer. Subsequently Abu Ras conductedMA thesis research for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on Israeli Araband Palestinian women prostitutes in Israel and the West Bank. She thenworked with the Palestinian Arab women of a Jerusalem neighborhood.There, with a combination of Israeli and Saudi Arabian funding, she insti-tuted a "head start" program for mothers and nursery school children de-veloped for Israeli Jewish children based on a U.S. model, and counsellingservices for women whose husbands and sons were imprisoned by the Israelisecurity services. Her current position followed receiving two MA degreesat New Hampshire College and Harvard University.

In 1990, the women's studies program at the Israeli university Glazerand Abu Ras left behind grew to produce Israeli Arab women graduateswho formed a feminist organization called Al Fanar (the Lighthouse) towhich we will refer later in this paper. Al Fanar calls attention to humanrights abuses of the type we consider in this paper, addressing the problemin their society, abetted by the state. Our concern in this paper is with theconcepts and theories anthropology addresses in American scholarship. Thepaper addresses an audience of American social scientists. It is concernedwith the niche American cultural anthropologists have tended to carve outin the movement for universal human rights. We pose moral/philosophicalissues to [male and female] feminist anthropologists concerned with humanrights. They are intended to open discussion of some of our assumptionsabout multivocality, cultural diversity and universal human rights values.

THE POPULATION DEFINED

Israeli Arab women are citizens of the State of Israel. Like IsraeliJewish women, in legal terms they enjoy full rights, responsibilities, andprotection of its laws, such as to vote, hold office, receive free primary andsecondary education, and bituach I'eumi [national insurance] payments. AllIsraeli citizens are subject to the personal status law of their religion,whether Jewish, Christian, Druze, or Muslim. Laws of personal statusmostly affect marriage, divorce and burial. In Israel there are criminal


courts and civil courts dealing with all citizens and religious courts dealingwith issues pertaining to personal status issues among co-religionists.

Israeli Arab women are a different population from Palestinianwomen who live in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and GazaStrip. Palestinian women are not citizens of Israel. They have lived undermilitary occupation since the Six Day War of 1967. Israeli Palestinian andPalestinian women thus differ in political and legal status and historicalexperience. Israeli Palestinian women have lived since 1948 in Israel asminority citizens. This paper is concerned with Israeli citizens and not withPalestinian Arab women. The nature of the Palestinian women's struggleas feminists and as revolutionaries is substantially different from the strug-gle of Israeli Arab women at this time. Palestinian women have soughtconnection with Israeli Palestinian women since Land Day in 1977, a daydeveloped in 1976 to commemorate the loss of land, and a time when Is-raeli Palestinians started to identify themselves as Israeli Palestinians ratherthan Israeli Arabs. The connection between Palestinian and Israeli Pales-tinian women has grown since 1988, when the Intifada [the rebellion againstIsraeli occupation] gained momentum. These are yet other stories to tellin the future. We discuss this background of the paper to point out thelabyrinthine subtlety and complexity of political correctness in Middle East-ern and American professional anthropological contexts.

The paper contends that when Arab village women's gossip createsthe climate in which the murder of a young woman is inevitable, a feministanthropological perspective concerned with human rights, respectful of andsensitive to multiple feminist voices, requires that we rethink the assump-tion that traditional morality and social cohesion are inherently positive.The paper posits, on the contrary, that the value put upon tradition inexplicating this practice is a product of male hegemonic discourse on cul-tural relativism between the Jewish state and Arab tradition on the onehand, and theoretical analysis of American-based social scientists on theother.

The paper contends that family honor killing violates the humanrights of women. This is because women are acted upon as victims of maleviolence: the violence practiced against them by their families and the vio-lence practiced upon them by the state. In the name of "tradition," theyare without protection of the religious courts theoretically accorded to allcitizens.

The paper begins with a general discussion of the concept of familyhonor and the results of its violation. It then analyzes a specific case, fo-cusing on a women's gossip network. The final section of the paper inter-prets the "value" of this tradition and its implications for human rights.


THE CUSTOM OF MURDER FOR FAMILY HONOR

Kressel (1981, p. 142) defines the traditional concept of family honorand its implications for women:

In Arab Muslim culture, the honour of the patrilineal group is bound up with thesex organs of its daughters, and a specific term, 'ird, combines the two. . . .Maintenance of group honor means continuous supervision over daughters'movements . . . to make them immune from temptation (hasana) by which is meantmarrying them off as soon as possible. The test of virginity is decisive and compelsfamilies never to leave young girls on their own. . . . However, the immunity ofthe woman and her modesty remain the concern of her family of origin even afterher marriage — indeed, throughout her life.

Ginat further explains (1987, p. 114):The most serious breach of modesty is an illicit sexual act regarded as sinful in theKoran. The deflnition of a sinful act is any unseemly contact with a male; to havebeen seen in the company of one in doubtful circumstances is enough to stigmatizea female and to reduce the 'ird of her agnates.

Abu Ras takes issue with Ginat's derivation of a sinful act from the Koran.To Abu Ras, the definition Ginat describes is a social, not a religious one.Family honor is violated when an unmarried female of any age is suspectedof having sexual contact with a male or when a married woman is suspectedof adultery. Female consent to sexual contact is irrelevant. A female whohas been raped has also violated family honor (Hassan, 1991, p. 71).'' Inthis light, Ginat's observation is interesting (1987, p. 113):

A woman cannot by exemplary conduct add to her agnates' 'ird, though bymisbehaving she can detract from it. This renders a male vulnerable and dependenton a female's conduct. In fact, it is surprising that a woman should have the powerto detract so much from male honor when Islamic tradition stresses her frailty.'

A male hegemonic perspective sees such women as having "power" ratherthan as arbitrarily victimized. Thus human rights violation cannot be anissue, by definition.

The situation is complicated by the fact that, according to Ginat, vio-lations of family honor are handled in different ways. The social and his-torical relationship of the patrilineages to which the parties belong, the

^Emergency hot-lines for Arab rape survivors have been operating in Israel since 1987. Elam(1991: 316) reports that about 70% of calls come from survivors between the ages of eightand fifteen, and half of these involve incest. These hot-lines followed the opening of Jewishones. Arab and Jewish women work in cooperation and turn to U.S./lsrael Women toWomen, an American feminist organization, to help with funding. The links between IsraeliPalestinian, Israeli Jewish and American Jewish feminists are in a continual process of growth;still missing as of 1992 is the American Palestinian connection.

'Abu Ras takes exception to the claim that "Islamic tradition stresses" female frailty: sheregards this as a social construction independent of the Islamic religion.

Aggression, Human Rigiits, and Discourse 275

social status and attitude toward the tradition of the head of the female'spatrilineage, and the extent to which others become involved in talkingabout the situation are factors. Ginat explores a range of circumstances ofviolation and their various solutions, of which murdering the "deviant" fe-male is one.* In refining the analyses of Antoun (1968) and Black-Michaud(1975), Ginat argues that when there is a possibility of hiding shame thefemale is not punished; she is murdered only when directly and publiclyaccused by a member of her patrilineage (co-liable)' or her father's spouse— her mother or her father's wife, and the accuser has a personal or po-litical motive. The public challenge to family honor by a co-liable meansthat the only way to restore family honor is to murder the deviant, accord-ing to Ginat.'° At the same time, Ginat says, behind carrying out the killingare issues of power, control and exchange relations. He suggests (987, p.38) that fathers want to arrange their childrens' marriages to the fathers'political advantage. Sons today do not rely on their fathers' inheritanceand may choose their own brides. Fathers therefore want the power tocontrol their daughters' marriages even more today than in the past, andso killing the daughter for illicit sex may be even more important todaythan previously. A father will warn his womenfolk against sinning, but thereal issue is control. He does not want a marriage forced on him by hisdaughter's illicit sex (Ginat, 1987, p. 149).

Ginat associates a possible increase in "importance" of killing womenwith loss of control over sons by fathers. This came about with the profoundand rapid socioeconomic changes brought about when this population re-mained in Israel following statehood and the first major Arab-Israel warin 1948 as the largely peasant population became proletarianized. His viewswill be questioned in the conclusions to this paper.

The custom of murder for family honor persists as an establishednorm in the wider Arab world as well despite fundamental socioeconomic

*Ginat reviews eight cases of family honor killings, of which three are Bedouin and five village,dating from the 1940s to the mid 1980s. He also reviews eight cases, five Bedouin and threevillage, in which women who violated the morality code "survived." Of these one womanwas locked in a basement for fourteen years, discovered by Israeli soldiers during a securitycheck, and subsequently killed. One might question Ginat's classification of this case as"survivor."Ginat uses the term "co-liable group" to refer to Bedouin; the equivalent group in a villagewould be the hamuta. defined as the patronymic group (considered as a clan or lineage)made up of persons having the same surname plus individuals who have joined the descentgroup. This paper will refer to the patrilineal group and retain the term "co-liable."Some of Ginat's case material is inconsistent with his theory. For example, he relates

contrasting Bedouin tales in which a father kills his as-yet-chaste thirteen year old daughterout of fear that she might follow her deviant mother's pattern and another in which a manloves his wife too greatly to kill her despite "proof of her infidelity.


and political changes that have impacted upon all levels of society." ForArabs living within the pre-1967 borders of Israel, socioeconomic and po-litical upheavals have resulted in changes in marriage age and seclusion(Abu Baker, 1984; Khazan, 1991), practices which Kressel (op. cit.) suggestsare correlates of the family honor code. The custom persists despite theintroduction of required education for girls (Mar'i and Mar'i, 1984; Mosk-ona-Lerman, 1991) and the contemporary situation of female labor forceparticipation (Abu Rakba, 1991). Between twenty to forty female corpsesare discovered each year in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza (Hassan, op.cit, p. 71).'^ The custom also has been exported by migrants from the widerArab world to the United States (King, 1985).

One searches the fairly extensive feminist anthropological literatureon women in the Arab world in vain for discussions of murder for familyhonor, though Sayigh (1985, p. 206) mentions it in passing and then onlyto condemn the Israeli government handling of cases. Failure by both Araband Western feminist anthropologists to write about this phenomenon isitself an ethnographic fact worthy of analysis unfortunately beyond thescope of this paper.'-^ The lack of feminist anthropological interest in family

"There are cases in the United States among Arab immigrants. The legal systems of someArab countries make allowances for family honor killings. Ginat (op. cit.: 23) says thataccording to Jordanian law (No. 16, 1960, article .340 [1] if a husband or brother surprisestheir wife or sister in the act of illicit sexual relations the judge may absolve the attackerfrom killing her, or 340[2] may prescribe a penalty of between six months to two years inprison. If imprisoned they will be treated differently than the rest of the prisoners. They arenot classified as criminals and will be respected by other prisoners.

In Lebanon the murderer will be judged guilty but will not be sent to prison. In the Sudan,authorities claim that Islamic law proclaims that a man or woman caught committing illicitsexual relations will be sentenced to death. In Israel, if premeditated murder is proved, thejudge sentences the murderer to life imprisonment. However, {Ibid.: 24):

Although Israeli law makes no distinction between homicide for different reasons,the Israeli administration does. A murderer of a woman who engaged in illicit sexualrelations . . . can be released by presidential pardon after no longer than 8-12years in prison. Such release is not automatic and must be applied for, but it isthe usual pattern in most cases. Under Arab legal jurisdiction, as practiced on theWest Bank and Gaza Strip, it is the courts that are empowered to reduce sentenceson appeal, but in Israel it is only the administration that can do this in cases ofblood revenge and family honor killings.

common method of killing a woman is to push her into a well, and calling it an accidentor suicide. When police discover such a death and autopsies reveal no bruises, the death isso ruled. Thus there are far more deaths than the figure provided.

'•'Many foreigners conduct fieldwork for limited periods and do not personally encounterfamily honor killings (Abu Lughod, 1986 and personal communication; Davis, 1982 andpersonal communication; Altorki, 1986; Wikan, 1980). Egyptian, Iranian and JordanianMuslim feminists living in the Middle East suggest to us that urban murders are morefrequent than rural murders in their countries because of the greater opportunities for illicitsex for women in the city.


honor killings of women is not refiected at the grass roots in Israel since1990.

Since that time, the Israeli Palestinian feminist organization Al-Fanarhas organized public demonstrations each time they learn of family honormurder, as well as set up an all-volunteer professional support network forwomen threatened by various types of abuse (Greenberg, 1991). The ac-tivists receive no public support from Arab political parties and mayors intheir protests, though one parliamentarian tells the Jewish journalist Green-berg that he supports them. The women say they have been strongly de-nounced by the fundamentalist Islamic Movement, though its leader tellsGreenberg that he is "against" family honor killings.'"

Of particular interest to this paper is Ginat's theory that the publicaccusation which leads to murder for family honor is by a member of thewoman's patrilineal group, often a woman. This suggests that the intrafe-male aggression may be a key factor in perpetuating the practice. By ex-amining how a private act of deviance enters public discourse as gossip,this paper will examine Ginat's theory. Ginat's interpretation of personaland/or political motives as key behavioral factors will also be examined.Following Nader {op. cit.), we will explore the possibility that Ginat's in-terpretation may represent the shared hegemonic discourse of male intel-lectual elites: Israeli Jews, Israeli Palestinians, and Palestinian Arabs,obfuscating the fine points of social interactions within the community inrelation to power and status, the relationship of the community to the state,and the human rights issues involved. Perpetuation of family honor killingsis a product of both the community and the state in dynamic interaction.We begin with the community.

'^Greenberg (1991) interviewed Sheikh Abdullah Nimr Darwish, leader of the IslamicMovement, and Hashem Mahameed, a member of the Israeli parliament who was previouslymayor of the largest Arab town in Israel. The Sheikh is quoted as saying:

I do not support 'family honor' killings. Such issues have to be investigated in courtbefore a judge, and the court will decide if the young woman is guilty or not andconvict her if she's done something wrong.

The parliamentarian says:

The time has come to stand firmly against assaults on women, with or withoutcause. There can be no justifiable reason for such attacks in a civilized society.

These quotes appeared in an English-language news magazine in Israel.


THE SETTING

Masdar El-Nabea'^ is a small, conservative Muslim Arab village witha population of 2200 divided into seventeen patrilineages at the time ofthe family honor killing in the late 1970s. The village is nestled on a hillsidebetween a Christian Arab town and a Jewish farming village. As masdarel-nabea, the source of a fresh water spring, the site has been more or lesscontinuously occupied since the fourth century B.C. At one time or anotherJews, Muslims, and Christians occupied the site as both single or mixedcommunities. In the twentieth century it has been exclusively Muslim, witha population deriving from Egypt, Syria, the Lebanon, elsewhere in Israelas well as locally. It lost much of its population and its landholdings in the1948 war and was incorporated into Israel at that time.

The village has undergone a near total transformation. Local levelpolitical power is a source of intense debate, particularly over relations withthe state. The village economy is completely altered. Farmers have becomeskilled or semi-skilled laborers outside the village. A few men own busi-nesses in the nearby town; others, with education, have skilled employment.In some respects, women's lives have changed in dramatic complement tothose of the men. Women receive bituach I'eumi, national government in-surance payments scaled by the number of children, giving them personalaccess to private cash incomes. Relieved of their heavy farm duties due tothe loss of land, women tend garden plots, olive groves and orchards, andkeep small livestock. Most food is purchased rather than home grown. Thevillage was electrified in the 1970s, and most houses now have refrigeratorsand washing machines. Families vary in the extent of the freedom of move-ment and dress they permit their women.'^

Most women visit health clinics, travel on buses, and discontinue se-clusion, traditional dress, and veiling. In the late 1970s the first girl fromthe village went away to university. More recently a number of unmarriedgirls started work in a textile factory outside the village. Access to cash,major improvements in health and nutrition, universal primary educationin the village school, easy communication through improved roads, and ac-cess to information via radio and television, combined to raise the expec-

' ^ o protect their privacy, names of villagers and the name of their village have been changed.The incident took place as described.

' ^ h e fundamentalist Islamic Movement grew very recently. Young devout women havereturned to Islamic dress in Israel as elsewhere in the Muslim world. Many say that byprotecting them from lewd encounters, Islamic dress gives them freedom of movement andof personal growth. Their view thus expresses western liberal individualism in accommodationto eastern society. There is very great disagreement among contemporary young women onthis issue.


tations of young people as the standard of living improved.'^ The popula-tion grows by several hundred a year and by the mid 1980s reached about4(KX). Young men now build apartments on family land in preparation formarriage; no longer do mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law share a com-mon kitchen. The building boom makes Masdar El-Nabea resemble a mod-em suburb in which extended families live in multistory apartment blockssurrounded by gardens.

Complex webs of kinship link village households with each other, per-mitting women easy access to each other. Since few women are entirelysecluded within households, and if they are they can be visited by otherwomen, there is ample opportunity for information to be shared within thevillage. With men away at work, women monitor each other's daily behaviorand activities to the extent that they are free to observe and report to eachother on events beyond their own households. Within the village, their richand intricate networks give them considerable information. Women arethus the main sources for information sharing about village events. Gossipabout deviant behavior is passed with ease. Below is an account, taken fromour field notes, of the actual events that led to a murder for family honorand the critical role played by women's gossip.

In the evening of the fifteenth day of their marriage, Younis presented himself toJamila's brothers to announce that he was not her first lover and would not remainher husband. At midnight she was knifed to death in the apartment in which sheand Younis lived. Her youngest brother voluntarily confessed to the police that hemurdered his sister to purily the family's name. He was sentenced to ten years inprison, with week-ends off. He was freed after serving seven years.

Jamila's murder does not appear to conform to Ginat's theory. Younis'swas not a public accusation, nor was he a member of Jamila's co-liablegroup. The accusation was made privately to her co-liable group, not bythem, and was entirely a male affair. That it lead within hours to her mur-der does imply she had already been considered a liabilify. To understandwhy Younis's accusation evoked such an extreme response, it is necessaryto trace the source of Jamila's vulnerability.

That Younis's claim that Jamila was not a virgin when he first hadsexual intercourse with her was so quickly accepted implies that she mayhave previously been a target of village-wide gossip. Since most village mencame home only at night, women were the primary carriers of the gossip.Tracing Jamila's actions thus involved reconstructing what she did and whatvillage women said she did.

'^This does not imply that "development" has come without cost or that all people are equally"better of f than before (cf. Nader. 1989). Still, most women we asked would rather washclothes in a washing machine than in a river, especially in winter, although it means theymiss the companionship of other women.

280 Glazer and Abu Ras

Jamila, illiterate, asked Aisha, her young literate girlfriend and neighbor, to reada love letter Saied had sent to her in secret. Saied, a village electrician, had donewiring in Jamila's mother's apartment. He had given Jamila small gifts which shetook from their hiding place to show Aisha. Aisha scolded Jamila for accepting thegifts. Aisha wrapped them and took them to Khaula, her girlfriend who worked inthe post office, to send them back to Saied.

The first links in a gossip network are thus established between the teen-agers Jamila, Aisha, and Khaula, over Jamila's relationship to Saied, whichJamila insisted to Aisha did not involve sex. We cannot know whether ornot she had sex with Saied, since she would have had to deny it. However,Saied and Younis were free to approach Jamila because she was sociallyvulnerable, marked as deviant because her brothers had not yet arrangedher marriage, her right as a secluded sister after reaching puberty.

Jamila, longing for marriage and frustrated by her brothers' lack of interest inarranging a match for her, was noticed by Nasrah, the village herbalist, to be flirtingwith Younis, a young man of the village.

To be noticed by Nasrah added to her vulnerability. Nasrah was a frequentcaller at Jamila's mother's home. Nasrah had access to many householdsin her capacity as herbalist. Furthermore, Jamila's family itself was vulner-able to gossip. Jamila's father died the year before, leaving his widow im-poverished. During his lifetime, he was among the strictest men of villageand had a reputation for miserliness. His relations with his sons were soproblematic that they defied customary patrilocality and lived elsewhere inthe village after they married. His wife and daughters were secluded duringhis lifetime. After his death, the sons continued their preoccupation withtheir own wives and children, and with their work outside the village. Theydid not assume responsibility for their mother and sisters, and did not in-terest themselves in the problem of Jamila's marriage. The patrilineage wassmall and poor in comparison with other patrilineages of the village. Incontrast, Younis's patrilineage was large and relatively wealthy. Younis'ssocial position and the position of his patrilineage would have made himattractive to Jamila, while her own family's poverty, its residential fragmen-tation and low social status, combined with her inexperience due to herhistory of strict seclusion, made Jamila an easy mark for Younis's irregularsexual attentions. A young man would not be so bold if a girl's patrilineagewas strong. The flirting noticed by Nasrah was the expression of a sexualaffair that had begun.

Lila, Jamila's younger sister, discovered Younis and Jamila having sexual intercoursein the out-house behind Jamila's mother's apartment. She reported it directly toher mother, who notified her sons. Jamila told her family Younis gave her sleepingpills and took her virginity. After that, she couldn't reiu.se his advances. Jamila'sbrothers met with Younis's father who agreed to a marriage. Younis then ran away.He spent twenty days first in the Jewish city, Tel Aviv, and subsequently in aBedouin camp. The village elders then found him and brought him back to the

Aggression, Hnman Rights, and Discourse 281

village. Younis's mother refused to allow Jamila to live with her. The elders foundan apartment for the couple in the village and arranged the wedding ceremony.The ceremony was desultory, the groom appearing in dungarees, the village men,apart from the families, not attending. There was no customary gift exchange, norwas there a marriage certificate.

Several important issues are raised here. The couple's choice of the out-house for intercourse was clearly indiscreet. Even so, Jamila's brothers didnot kill her immediately on discovering this breach of propriety. Insteadthey acted as many do to hide shame by arranging the couple's marriage.Younis's disappearance lead to the wider involvement of the village elders,making public the family's shame, further heightened by the disrespectfuland incomplete marriage rite. Marriage further enhanced Jamila's vulner-abilify rather than eliminating it because Younis's mother refused to co-reside with the bride. Normally co-residence is not preferred, and menmarry after they have built private apartments as extensions of their father'shome. This was not possible for Younis and Jamila. Younis's mother with-drew her initial support for co-residence when she heard gossip aboutJamila in the twenfy days of Younis's absence from the village. The linkin the gossip chain was a relationship between women.

Samirah was Younis's mother's sister, unmarried because her virginity was in doubt.Samirah quarreled with Jamila's half sister. Hassnah. Hassnah's daughter andYounis's half brother were married and living with Hassnah, a widow. Younis'sfamily had accused Hassnah of distancing their son. Al one point of contact betweenSamirah and Hassnah, Samirah questioned Jamila's morals and Hassnah remindedSamirah of her own suspected past.

Younis's mother and Hassnah each had the burden of a sister of suspectmoralify in her patrilineage. By accepting Jamila, Younis's mother wouldhave had an additional burden. That both Jamila and Samirah were prob-lematic was openly acknowledged in the quarrel of Hassnah and Samirah.This was the closest event to the kind of open accusation Ginat found socritical. However, although Hassnah was indeed of Jamila's co-liable group,it was Samirah who brought the accusation.

Among Bedouin, Kressel (op. cit.) says the social status and aspira-tions for social mobility of the patrilineal kin group of the murdered womanwithin the communify are important considerations. That social mobilifywas another critical issue in the village is evidenced by Younis's subsequentmarriage to a higher status woman.

Jamila had not been seen to leave her apartment during the fifteen days of hermarriage. Concerned, Amina, her sister and neighbor, visited her toward the endof her life. Amina found Jamila badly bruised, tearful and fearful. Jamila toldAmina that Younis tied her up, beat her, had only anal intercourse with her, andrefused to feed her. She said she wished that she were dead. Amina reported thenews of her visit and her discovery of Jamila's condition to their mother.


We do not know the precise details of the subsequent events. Ouite prob-ably Jamila's mother repeated news of Younis's treatment of Jamila to hersons, who confronted Younis. At that point Younis accused Jamila of notbeing a virgin. Whether this is how the gossip circle closed in on Jamilais irrelevant to the significance of women's key roles in the chain of events.Younis and Jamila's brothers were clearly the physically violent aggressorsin this incident. The women of Masdar El-Nabea facilitated this violence,however, in key ways. "True discourse" suggested by Nader's analyticframework suggests that as the gossiping moral guardians of Masdar El-Nabea society, Aisha, Khaula, Nasrah, Younis's mother, Lila, Samirah,Hassnah and Amina, however unwittingly partners in the hegemonic rela-tionship, maintained the status quo in women's position, and hencewomen's extreme vulnerability.

Israeli Palestinian feminists agree with this interpretation. Al-Fanar'snewsletter ^

The rumor and gossip system has the social role of curbing the behavior andconduct of the Palestinian woman in accordance with her lowly position in societyand her role in preserving 'family honor.' Damage to the reputation of a girl bymeans of the rumor and gossip system means damage to the reputation and honorof the family. This leads to mobilization of all the 'family forces' to uphold thishonor, usually by inflicting heavy punishments on the young woman, the victim. Itshould be noted that the degree of truth to this gossip and its relation to realityis usually unimportant. Mere rumors are justification for passing final judgmentagainst a woman. Women's active participation in this (rumor) system highlightstheir total transformation into faithful 'collaborators' in upholding the oppressivetraditions of the patriarchal regime which are directed against them.

Israeli Palestinian women combine what Nader calls "indigenous critiqueand a westernized form of feminism." Jamila's tradition-minded mother'sreaction to her murder reveals the internalization of male hegemonic dis-course: Why, she wept, did her daughter behave in a manner which madeher death necessary?

The stark contrast to the Israeli Palestinian feminist challenge whicharose years after the event might seem as if Israeli Palestinians are infiu-enced only by Western feminism. However, reactions of other villagers in-dicate otherwise. The village was divided on the issue of necessity. Whilesome felt the murder had to be committed, much of the subsequent gossipby both men and women consisted of possible alternative solutions. In ad-dition to such common solutions as marrying her off to an old man in adistant village, sending her to a convent was among the more inventive.Furthermore, some pious men took the position that the murder was not

'*The article, "The Role of Rumors and Gossip in the Oppression of Women," appeared inArabic in the quarterly newsletter Al-Fanar distributed in Israeli Arab towns, villages andwomen's clubs. It was translated and reprinted in Greenberg (1991).


a proper Islamic solution. Thus the critique of Israeli Palestinian feministshas a basis in indigenous culture.

The effect of the murder on young village women was to recoil inhorror. One informant revealed that she dreamt nightly of the murder fortwo years, and found it very difficult to concentrate on her school work byday. Whether the murder can be said to act as a form of social control ofgirls and women to prevent them from responding to male sexual advancesseems an uncertain proposition, and even irrelevant. Even when the womanhas no personal responsibility for a sexual encounter, as when she is thevictim of rape, still the very fact that she has had sex is enough to bringshame upon herself and her family. Israeli Palestinian feminists rebelagainst this tradition. Western liberal thinking has had an impact on theirinterpretation of their social status. Hassan (1991, p. 67) writes:

Incomplete internalization of female traits is viewed as incipient rebellion, as athreat to the very foundations of the patriarchal family. Such phenomena are dulypunished, with Islamic religion and tradition — which justify the 'natural' inferiorityof the woman and her possibility of becoming no more than a successful servantto a man — providing criteria for compliance with expectations and constituting aconstant, omnipresent system of evaluation. This reality is in stark contradiction toall humanistic principles of individual freedom, and the right of a human being todevelop her own talents and capabilities.

From the beginning of the feminist movement in Israel, the struggle ofIsraeli feminists, Jews and Palestinians alike, has been over the politicalissue of priorities in liberation: that is, whether women have the "right" towork towards individual freedom when their societies are faced with "moreserious" threats of survival (Espanioly, 1991). In addition, both societiesthat share the state put great value on the collective rather than the indi-vidual. In their concern with the basic right of the individual, contemporaryJewish and Arab feminists heed a western liberal message at variance withthe Jewish/Arab male hegemony of the male dominated state.

Israeli Palestinian Muslims are in a paradoxical position. On the onehand, they are equal citizens in a democratic state; as a minority, they faceinformal social and economic discrimination. On the other hand, they arepart of a geographic region in which fellow Muslim Arabs are an over-whelming majority yet they are scorned as Israeli. There are few issuesaround which the interests of Israeli Jewish and Israeli Palestinian mencoincide. The informal understanding between Jewish and Arab men overmurder for family honor is such a coincidence of interest. Jewish/Arab malehegemony in a male dominated state is clear from the fate of the murderer.In Israel murder for family honor is illegal. The murderer is tried in courtand jailed if found guilfy. Despite the formal procedure, the state has animportant role in perpetuating the murder of women for family honor.


Jamila's four brothers confronted her, and one of them knifed her. They decidedthat the youngest should confess to the police, since the older brothers had familyresponsibilities. They promised him that while he would be in prison they wouldbuild him an apartment and arrange his marriage so that on his release he couldmarry. By combining their resources the brothers could accomplish what would havetaken the youngest brother years to achieve, and this is what subsequentlyhappened.

The State acts as anthropologists interested in human rights and eufunc-tional aggression indicate is desirable. The state "respects" the cultural rela-tivity of "tradition" by meting out light punishments, by not investigating"suicides" too closely, and by handing back runaway girls to their families.Given their experience with such murders, the police "knew" that Jamila'steenage youngest brother did not act alone, and in view of his small physicalsize compared to his older brothers, may not have acted at all. Yet theyaccepted his confession without further investigation. The cooperation ofthe men of both cultures works successfully to keep the "tradition" alive.

Israeli Palestinian feminists agree with Nader on positional supe-riority. For Hassan (1991, p. 72), by supporting "tradition," the state:

which is responsible for the security and welfare of all its citizens, is prepared torenounce its sovereignty in this sector in order to reinforce the traditionalleadership, at a very low cost: the body of one more Palestinian female . . . . Thisapproach enables Israelis to look down on Palestinian society as 'primitive,' and todraw implications for Palestinian national ambitions and the struggle againstoppression.

The Israeli Jewish male establishment maintains its positional supe-riority over all Israeli Palestinians, male and female. The system as it existsbenefits Israeli Palestinian men by giving them self-respect despite discrimi-nation they suffer as a minority and the fear they evoke as a potential fifthcolumn. For those Israeli Palestinian males who continue to adhere to thetradition of murder for family honor, positional superiority over Israeli Jew-ish men is affirmed. In their view, Jewish men have no sense of honor andhence no control over their women. As a consequence Jewish women aremorally corrupt.

Radical male and some female Palestinian nationalists, in Israel andthe Occupied Territories, although expressing "understanding" of the situ-ation of doubly oppressed Palestinian women, feel they must subordinatetheir aspirations for gender liberation to concentrate exclusively on nationalliberation (Hassan, 1991, p. 73). This view is familiar in many revolutionarymovements and characteristic of Palestinians in the Occupied Territoriesand in Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon (Bendt & Down-ing, 1982). In the Israeli Palestinian context, given the fact of citizenshipin a democratic Israel, there are many different ways to look at nationalliberation. For some it means rejecting the Jewish domination of the state.


For those who accept living as a minority in a Jewish state it means achiev-ing genuine equality, an end to discrimination in all its forms.

CONCLUSIONS

Aggressive gossip which supports the cohesion of a subordinate groupis not in itself a "social good." True discourse, sensitive to power relations,suggests that gossip is a mechanism reinforcing subordination. The subor-dinate group is itself internally differentiated into dominance hierarchies,and gossip is a means of maintaining dominance within the subordinategroup. It is also the "power of the weak," a mechanism women use formaintaining relations with the superior groups of Israeli Palestinian andIsraeli Jewish men." Any change in the status of the lowest stratum of thesubordinate group would threaten the position of those higher in the statushierarchy. Therefore women have an interest in keeping those beneaththemselves in their place (Giazer, 1992). Thus, we see the reactions ofJamila's mother and mother-in-law uphold tradition, a tradition that hasnow been seriously challenged by Israeli Palestinian feminists.

The goal of Israeli Palestinian feminists is to create a society of trueequality and justice. This goal challenges theoretical feminist anthropology.Can equality be achieved in complex society? If complexity requires hier-archy, who should occupy the lower positions? If the goal of equality andjustice is Utopian, does this mean that feminists should give up their strug-gle? Or should feminists be supported by anthropologists concerned withthe human rights of all the world's citizens?

The multiple voices of feminist anthropology, indigenous and West-ern, adhere to profoundly different cultures and value systems (Giazer, inpress). Can they agree to universal human rights and an end to oppression,given the interconnectedness of our contemporary global village? Can theyagree that murder for family honor violates human rights, harming vulner-able women by killing them without giving them the opportunity to defendthemselves?

While the evidence is clear for persistence of the practice, familyhonor killings may well be decreasing in Israel. Reliable statistics on actualmurders today and historically are lacking. Media coverage, however, is

"The "power of the weak" is Ginat's term used in this paper in a different sense than Ginat.For Ginat, "the power of the weak" is a strategy used by Arab women for their long-termsecurity. By renouncing her claims to her legal inheritance, the rural Muslim woman createsa situation in which her brother is morally obliged to take her into his home when she iscast aside by her husband (cf. Schuster, 1984).

28t Giazer and Abu Ras

increasing. Ginat implies an increase in incidents. His interpretation ofthe increase is the need for increased control of daughters. This viewseems fiawed. Under the impact of modernization, ties between Arab fam-ily members are less strong than traditionally. Weakened ties means thatfewer obligations and fewer risks will be undertaken. Therefore, familymembers today will be less likely to undertake a murder for family honor.Dependence on wage employment in the modern economic sector seemsto us to reduce the incidence of murder for family honor. As traditionalsubsistence farmers and nomadic pastoralists, families were interdepend-ent and individuals were embedded in tight kinship networks. Today's ex-tended families cannot support individual members to the extent that usedto be possible when land ownership provided the economic base. A po-tential murderer must be assured that his extended family will providesupport for himself and his dependents both during his incarceration andafter his release. Thus the application of Israeli law as well as the Israelieconomy are deterrents.

The infiuence of Israeli society on Israeli Palestinian society is alsoimportant in its impact on the changing status of Arab women. As womenhave become more educated, they have become more aware of their rightsand more willing to stand up for their rights, supported by new organiza-tions and privately supported women's centers. In Israeli Palestinian soci-ety, shelters for such girls and women, supported by the state, can becreated in the future.̂ ^ We argue that these developments, and not blanketsupport for "tradition," should be supported by anthropologists. In con-temporary society, anthropologists need not serve as self-appointed spokes-persons for indigenous peoples where indigenes can speak for themselves.Feminists such as Al Fanar speak out against certain traditions and thestate policies that support maintaining these traditions. These feminists can-not be dismissed as having been "tainted" by Western liberalism. Anthro-pologists need to expand their definition of culturally specific human rightswhen cultural traditions deny some citizens the human rights that shouldbe universal. As we approach the new millennium, throughout the worldcitizens are struggling to create new democratic state structures. The de-mocratization movement cannot be dismissed as disrespecting cultural di-versity because it challenges traditional authoritarian regimes. Promotingcultural stability as a value in and of itself denies even the possibility ofuniversal human rights.

shelters that now exist for battered Jewish women receive no state support. Historicallythere was wide opposition to their creation, with parliamentarians denying the problem.


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