Published: 5 August 2022
Last updated: 5 March 2024
Twenty women murdered in Ramle-Lod this year; Extremists assault woman for sitting at front of bus
Rabab Abu Siyam, who was killed this week, was the 20th Arab woman in Ramle-Lod to be murdered since 2011.
“The numbers speak for themselves,” Samah Salaime, executive director of Na’am, Arab Women in the Centre – the only NGO helping women in Ramle-Lod who are experiencing violence.
The police report a significant increase over the past decade of women at riks cooperating with law enforcement, leading to a drop in murders. However, a change in murderers’ modus operandi makes solving the crimes more difficult. Today, police sources explain, people who want to kill a woman usually don’t commit the crime themselves.
“They pay a hitman and make sure they have an alibi,” a senior police official explains. “The sender is also usually not a single person. There is usually another family member, other than the father, son or husband, who has an interest in the murder.”
Thus, the police immediately arrest suspects following a murder but releases them shortly after due to lack of evidence. The investigating team may know they are behind the murder but cannot prove it.
In the Haredi community, attacks on women are less deadly but also exhibit deep misogyny.
This week a group of ultra-Orthodox extremists verbally and physically assaulted a woman for sitting at the front of a public bus in Jerusalem, in an attempt to enforce a modesty code embraced by some members of the Haredi community.
The victim was targeted while riding a bus on route 577 between Jerusalem and the ultra-Orthodox city of Elad operated by the Kavim company.
"On the way home, a group of 20 guys got on the bus, and decided that it didn't suit them that I was sitting in the front," she said. The woman said she sufferred from travel sickness causing nausea and vomiting, and "sitting in the back was not good for me, to say the least.”
