Israa Ghrayeb – a hideous crime committed against every Arab girl who wants to exercise her human rights normally
#WeAreAllIsraaGhrayeb (opens in a new tab) A crime committed against every Arab girl who wants to exercise her human rights normally
#WeAreAllIsraaGhrayeb (opens in a new tab) A crime committed against every Arab girl who wants to exercise her human rights normally. The punishment of every girl who declares her love, or lives as a free and innocent human being, or has ambition, talent, love, human values, or tries to declare her humanity, is that she must die under torture at the hands of her family under the banner of honour or shame.
A live video by human rights activist Nada Al-Ahdal on her Facebook page declaring her full solidarity with the Palestinian icon of love, peace and innocence Israa Ghrayeb. She ended her angry words with the voice of the rising singer Hanadi, performing a song by the artist Kadim Al Sahir. It said the following:
How many Arab girls have been killed in the name of honour? Dozens of girls every day, or rather thousands of girls every month?
And millions whose pure souls have gone up to heaven? Fine, but did the killer get his honour back after he killed his dear and beautiful sister?
Did he become a gallant man of values and morals through the crime of murder?
Did he make his mother, his father and his family happy and glad with this brutal, hateful crime?
Honour must lie in your tolerance, the greatness of your thinking, your values and morals, and your protection of your girls and daughters … that is what is called honour, values and morals
Honour is not placed on a girl’s body to stand for the honour of the family and the tribe… A girl is a human being like you, she loves life like you, and she has feelings, thoughts, a self, a heart, a soul and a mind; she is a maker of change, the one who raises generations, she is the mother and the great sister, and the good wife.
Honour must lie in thought and minds, in noble values and virtuous morals, not in a woman’s body or her conduct and behaviour.
Answer me, please.. Are you truly honourable by killing girls, or are you killers and criminals devoid of humanity?
You have slaughtered us with your honour, you criminals…
A woman’s honour belongs to her alone, and no one has the right to interfere in her decisions, her fate or her conduct; honour is higher and nobler than to be stuck in one part of her body. Israa Ghrayeb is a victim of the disease stuffed into the empty spaces of rotten minds… a hideous crime and an even more hideous reality,
Have we not had enough of your defence of your so-called honour, tied to the bodies of girls? Israa and many like her have been killed and their cases covered up because of sick minds, low awareness, society’s complicity with the criminals, and the absence of the law.
Israa Ghrayeb is one number among the victims of extremist ideas, the ideas of ISIS and terrorist organisations, and one number among the victims of the criminal thinking lodged in people’s minds…
Israa is a victim of the ignorance that kills girls every minute. Israa and others tried to live in a normal way, and they were met with violence and then murder.
Here in Yemen a girl like Israa dies every day, but we have not been able to document it because of the lack of security.
Our solidarity with Israa will not bring Israa back to us after her death, but it will immortalise her as an icon of love, peace and innocence, and make her criminal family a mark of shame in the history of humanity.
We send a message to every father and every family that has a girl: your daughter is a trust placed in your care, for you to look after her and protect her as she pursues her dreams and ambitions as a human being, not to make her a commodity for sale or to die under torture.
The actual killers are her brothers, but the whole of society killed her. Every father who raised his sons to feel superior to their sisters killed her; every sheikh who said in his sermon (a woman is a shame to be covered) killed her; everyone who asks you (would you accept it for your sister?) killed her; everyone who “justified” and “was lenient” with her brothers killed her.
