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  • 2009-09-26 (xsd:date)
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  • Do These Photographs Show a Hamas-Organized Wedding of Men and Young Girls? (en)
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  • As documented in various news accounts, mass weddings of Palestinians organized by Hamas, involving hundreds of couples per event, have been a common occurrence in recent years in the Gaza Strip. For example, an October 2008 New York Times article reported: Likewise, a 2009 Agence France Presse (AFP) report described a similar event in July of that year: Photographs and video from the latter event were quickly circulated via e-mail, accompanied by commentary asserting that most (or all) of the brides at the wedding were actually pre-pubescent girls who, despite being under ten years of age, were being married off to men in their mid- to late-twenties (an impression created in large part because the older women who were the real brides were not visibly evident in those images): Although the photographs and video footage did originate with the July 2009 mass wedding event, and they do show pre-pubescent girls dressed in clothing resembling bridal garb holding hands with older men, the young girls in these pictures were not being married off to adult males; they were relatives of the brides and grooms (typically nieces and cousins ranging in age from three to eight years old) who were merely ancillary participants in the ceremony, performing a function similar to that of flower girls in western-style weddings. Even though news accounts documented they were undeniably present, the older women who did get married that day weren't apparent in the recorded images because, unlike the style of weddings most westerners are accustomed to, brides don't take center stage at this type of event: None of the news accounts that reported this story made any reference to the brides in these mass wedding ceremonies being only ten years old or younger, a circumstance so unusual to western readers that it surely would have been mentioned had it been true. Moreover, accounts from officials present at the event confirmed none of the women married that day was younger than 16, and most of them were adults (i.e., over 18) by western standards: Tim Marshall, a reporter who covered the event for Sky News, later posted a denunciatory blog entry condemning the Internet-circulated claims of child brides as nothing more than uninformed, scurrilous rumor-mongering: (en)
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