Capulets versus the Montagues

July 17, 2007 - 3:30 PM by Stephanie

Classic Romeo and Juliet. A young couple. Passionate love. Turmoil between families. Unrequited love.

In North America’s deep south it’s the Hatfields versus McCoys.

And in the deep south of Israel, it takes on a more sinister twist as it is termed “Sleeping with the Enemy”…

Kiryat Gat’s municipality held an emergency conference this week warning Israeli teen girls: Don’t date Bedouin boys or you’ll pay for it dearly.

The conference kicked off with an introductory film that “included testimonies from young women whose Bedouin boyfriends did not let them return home after they asked to end the relationship.

During the conference, the organizers presented quotes which they claimed appeared in the Koran, such as “a woman can be beaten as long as her bones are not broken and no blood is spilled.”

Whoa. According to this YNet story, the conference was organized, in part, in response to…

…the 2006 murder of 16-year-old Mika Dabab whose body was found burned near the Bedouin community of Rahat. An investigation revealed that Dabab was romantically involved with a young Rahat resident and tried to break up with him several days before she was murdered. The young man refused, kidnapped her from a discotheque and murdered her.

The Bedouin response to the claims and the conference?

“We in the Bedouin sector do not encourage romantic relations between Bedouins and Jews as well. It hurts our families just like it hurts the Jews. It causes a lot of difficult problems and internal conflicts which often end in violence,” Rahat Mayor Talal al-Krenawi said in response to the Kiryat Gat conference.

I don’t know exactly how to view this sort of organized appeal …Readers?

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