In the blood-stained annals of “honor killing,” this is surely one of the most appalling stories ever to emerge: Abu-Ghanem women speak out against serial ‘honor killings’.

The murder of Hamda Abu-Ghanem, whose bullet-riddled body was found in mid-January at her parents’ house in Ramle, surprised nobody.

As police set about their investigation, everyone was aware that the victim’s brother had been threatening to kill her, and that long before the murder, she had taken refuge in a battered women’s shelter. It was a typical “honor killing,” meant to remove some perceived stain on the family’s reputation.

The perpetrators of most honor killings in the Arab community are not apprehended. Hamda’s murder, however, was one too many for the women in the Abu-Ghanem family. She was the eighth woman to be murdered in the extended family in the last six and a half years. All her predecessors also lost their lives in “honor killings.”

This time, instead of keeping mum when the police questioned them, the Abu- Ghanem women gave detailed testimonies of everything they knew. One said she had seen Rashad enter the house where Hamda was. Shortly afterward she heard shots and seconds later saw Rashad, the key suspect, fleeing from the building. The victim’s mother told the police that Rashad had forbidden his sister to leave the house after some men had called her a “prostitute.”

“It was a women’s revolt against the men of the family. While the men refused to cooperate with the police and forbade the women to speak, the women revealed all. They decided to put an end to the bloody circle of silence,” Chief Inspector Haim Shreibhand, who was in charge of the investigation, told Haaretz. …

Rashad Abu-Ghanem was charged with entering the family’s home, in Ramle’s Juarish neighborhood. His sister was alone in the house, lying on her bed. She probably knew she was about to die. He went up the stairs with a loaded 9-mm. handgun, entered his sister’s room and fired nine bullets at her.

Before Hamda, the other women of the Abu-Ghanem family who lost their lives for honor were Naifa, Suzan, Zinat, Sabrin, Amira, Reem and Shirihan.

Like some of the other victims, Hamda had spent the last few years in a shelter, hiding from her brother. Her “crime” was apparently her numerous telephone conversations, and being seen talking to her cousin once. About a year ago, she asked to move back to her parents’ house in Ramle. A few months later, she filed a police complaint against her brother, who had assaulted her. He was arrested, but later released by the court.

“The hardest thing at these murder scenes is the awful silence,” said Yifrah Duchovny, Coastal Plain police commander. “Nobody cries, nobody speaks.”