On #InternationalwomensDay, hypocritical "pro-Palestinian" groups don't give a damn about Palestinian women's rights

Today is International Women's Day. As usual, "pro-Palestinian" groups are using it as a means for anti-Israel propaganda. 

Yet not one is calling for more women's rights under Palestinian rule.

As we've mentioned before, the Palestinian Authority cynically uses women's rights as a weapon against Israel but really doesn't care about rights for its own women.

It joined the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) along with over a dozen other international agreements in 2014 without reservation. Yet it never actually put any of CEDAW's provisions into law.

Not only that, the PA itself has rejected the convention as violating Islamic law.

Not one "liberal" anti-Israel group said a word.

The editor of a major Palestinian newspaper admitted that there was no intent for the Palestinian government to actually take these international agreements seriously. The only reason that it joined these conventions was to pretend to be a "state" so the International Criminal Court can bring a case against Israel: "The government cannot implement CEDAW in its entirety in light of the existence of a societal system, and that the signing of the agreement is political and was not intended to undermine the Sharia, and had it not been for the signing of CEDAW and many other agreements, the International Criminal Court would not have accepted us."

The actual laws under the Palestinian Authority and under the Gaza government undermine women's rights. Here are only some examples from a 2018 UN report that, as far as I can tell, was completely ignored by these hypocritical "pro-Palestinian" groups who pretend to care about Palestinian rights. 

It gets even worse.

A 2018 survey showed that:

• 35% of Palestinian men say that men who kill their female relatives for "honor" reasons should not go to jail. 
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• 47% of Palestinian men say that female relatives who "act or dress" in ways that they disapprove deserve to be punished.
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• 17% of Palestinian men admitted to have engaged in physical violence against their female partners, 21% of women say they have been hit by their husbands.
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• 80% of Palestinian men say "A man should have the final word about decisions in the home."
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• 34% of them say "There are times when a woman deserves to be beaten."
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• 63% of men say "A woman should tolerate violence to keep the family together."

Again, these "pro-Palestinian" NGOs and media outlets who happily use women's rights as a club to beat Israel don't have a word to say about Palestinian misogyny that affect Palestinian women every day.

When these groups claim that Israel is the main oppressor of Palestinian women, they are actively hurting Palestinian women by not allowing a real conversation about their rights to even take place. 

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