GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — In 1984, the TV movie "The Burning Bed" opened Americans' eyes to the long-cloaked reality of domestic violence. It helped establish in American minds the validity of desperation as an extenuating circumstance in certain criminal cases.
More than 30 years later, in a statement issued Dec. 18, an alliance of Palestinian nongovernmental organizations is calling on the Palestinian judiciary to consider the effects of domestic violence as a woman appeals her death sentence in the slaying of her husband.