The NYTImes had a really nice article about women police officers in Gaza.
I'm reading this and thinking to myself, "Wow.. maybe there is hope for Hamas after all."
Granted, the women are mainly used to 'dealing with women, like drugs and prostitution, and helping out at police headquarters and the central jail.' Also, policewomen go along on drug raids because apparently police men are not allowed to search the women OR the family bedrooms (kinda makes law enforcement hard if you can't search that drug/weapon cache under the bed).
Still, what a huge step forward, to give women some authority... even if most are afraid to show their face and thus wear the niqab. Still, a huge step forward even if the manager of the military court systems snidely refers to women as either covering their beauty or their ugly. Still, progress right?
Wrong.
Rania had been working on the case of an unmarried female university student who had been photographed having sex. It was unclear whether she was engaged in prostitution, which is a crime. Either way, she had put herself in a compromising position that, in Rania’s view, could harm the Palestinian cause. Drugs and prostitution lead to “collaboration with Israel,” she said.
Rania took the pictures to the woman’s family and told them of the student’s “wrongdoing.”
Maher al-Ramli, 45, the chief of the Hamas police, said that the police usually aimed for reconciliation, but Rania acknowledged that in cases of “family honor,” the women often ended up dead at the hands of male relatives or were sometimes married off to those they had slept with or had been raped by.
Yes, that is right. They now have policewomen delicately telling families that their daughter is having sex (which leads to collaboration with Israel, don't ya know) so that they can delicately protect their family's honor by killing their daughter.