Police: Na’ura man stabbed wife, 38, to death

Mother of four murdered; one child witnessed the assault; husband had previously been in a psychiatric ward.

By YAAKOV LAPPIN
A 38-year-old mother of four was stabbed to death by her husband on Saturday in Na’ura, in the Gilboa region, police said. The husband, 42, has been arrested on suspicion of murder. He had been hospitalized in a psychiatric ward in the past.
The homicide victim has been named as Iwahiba Husseini Zuabi.
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Police said one of the couple’s children witnessed the deadly assault. The woman was initially found by paramedics in her home in critical condition and rushed to the Ha’emek Medical Center in Afula, where she died of her injuries shortly afterwards.
Large numbers of police arrived on the scene.
This latest slaying is the 17th case of a woman being killed by her partner in 2010, a dramatic rise from 2009, in which eight women were murdered by their spouses. Speaking earlier this month, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch called on social services, the educational system and other state authorities to take a more proactive role in order to prevent further murders of women by their husbands or boyfriends.
Aharonovitch described the upsurge in violence as a “social phenomenon which requires a broad, systematic treatment.”
The public security minister has also condemned the practice of so-called “honor killings” within the Arab community, calling for an end to “cultural” support for such deadly violence.