The only brewery in the Palestinian territories escaped an attack on Sunday by a mob that razed a dozen homes over an alleged affair between a Christian man whose family owns the beer factory and a Muslim woman from a neighboring village who was then murdered by her own family.
The attack on Taybeh, a wholly Christian village which gives its name to a popular Palestinian beer, came despite appeals from residents to their neighbors in Deir Jarir to refrain from violence while the body of the murdered 25-year-old woman, identified only as Haim, was disinterred for DNA tests to try to ascertain if she had sex with the accused man, Mahdi Abu Houria.
"Because we were afraid of what would happen, we got permission from Abu Mazen [the Palestinian president] to dig her up from her grave and have DNA testing," said Maria Khoury, the wife of Taybeh's mayor who co-owns the brewery.
"You can't just accuse someone without evidence. They buried without testing. We are very suspicious that this family raped their daughter and buried her and they want to find an excuse to destroy our village," she said.
The accused woman was murdered by her family last week in an "honor killing" after the alleged affair was made public.
Palestinian women's groups say that women are sometimes killed after being raped by relatives who then attempt to shift responsibility for pregnancy to an innocent man.
Abu Houria was arrested by the Palestinian police after he was accused of the affair and is being held in "protective custody" in prison where his family says he is routinely beaten. Despite pleas to wait for the results of a DNA test, Taybeh's residents say hundreds of men descended on the village in the middle of the night.
"They came from Deir Jarir, the Muslim village, armed, and they threw petrol and lit up one home right after another," Khoury said.
"They burned 12 homes down which are those of the accused man and every member of his family, third cousins, fourth cousins, anyone related. We have 12 homeless families without clothes, without anything. These are fanatics who take the law into their own hands. If one person is guilty that person deserves punishment, not the whole village," she said.
The brewery was founded by Nadim Khoury a decade ago when he returned to the Palestinian territories after living 20 years in Boston. He and 25 other residents of the village are naturalized US citizens. The family says it attempted to enlist the help of the US consulate in Jerusalem during the attack but it said that the only action it could take was to inform the Israeli army.
"The Israeli army came in, looked around, smiled and left," Maria Khoury said.
"The whole village is a peaceful village. We don't participate in resistance [against the Israeli occupation] and we really don't want to be burned down. We are very afraid. These people will come back," she said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) launched a week-long diplomatic blitz of South America on Thursday by inaugurating a massive deep-water port in Peru, a US$1.3 billion investment by Beijing as it seeks to expand trade and influence on the continent. With China’s demand for agricultural goods and metals from Latin America growing, Xi will participate in the APEC summit in Lima then head to the Group of 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro next week, where he will also make a state visit to Brazil. Xi and Peruvian President Dina Boluarte participated on Thursday by video link in the opening
‘HARD-HEADED’: Some people did not evacuate to protect their property or because they were skeptical of the warnings, a disaster agency official said Typhoon Man-yi yesterday slammed into the Philippines’ most populous island, with the national weather service warning of flooding, landslides and huge waves as the storm sweeps across the archipelago nation. Man-yi was still packing maximum sustained winds of 185kph after making its first landfall late on Saturday on lightly populated Catanduanes island. More than 1.2 million people fled their homes ahead of Man-yi as the weather forecaster warned of a “life-threatening” effect from the powerful storm, which follows an unusual streak of violent weather. Man-yi uprooted trees, brought down power lines and smashed flimsy houses to pieces after hitting Catanduanes in the typhoon-prone
HOPEFUL FOR PEACE: Zelenskiy said that the war would ‘end sooner’ with Trump and that Ukraine must do all it can to ensure the fighting ends next year Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom early yesterday suspended gas deliveries via Ukraine, Vienna-based utility OMV said, in a development that signals a fast-approaching end of Moscow’s last gas flows to Europe. Russia’s oldest gas-export route to Europe, a pipeline dating back to Soviet days via Ukraine, is set to shut at the end of this year. Ukraine has said it would not extend the transit agreement with Russian state-owned Gazprom to deprive Russia of profits that Kyiv says help to finance the war against it. Moscow’s suspension of gas for Austria, the main receiver of gas via Ukraine, means Russia now only
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un renewed his call for a “limitless” expansion of his military nuclear program to counter US-led threats in comments reported yesterday that were his first direct criticism toward Washington since US president-elect Donald Trump’s electoral victory on Oct. 6. At a conference with army officials on Friday, Kim condemned the US for updating its nuclear deterrence strategies with South Korea and solidifying three-way military cooperation involving Japan, which he portrayed as an “Asian NATO” that was escalating tensions and instability in the region. Kim also criticized the US over its support of Ukraine against a prolonged Russian invasion.
RSS