Reading too much into the language seems, at this point, to be less of a danger than reading too little into it.
This week, Israel released an appalling video featuring five female Israeli soldiers taken captive at Nahal Oz military base on October 7. Fearful and bloody, the women beg for their lives while Hamas fighters mill around and alternately threaten to kill them and compliment their appearance. The captors call the women “sabaya,” which Israel translated as “women who can get pregnant.” Almost immediately, others disputed the translation and said sabaya referred merely to “female captives” and included no reference to their fertility. “The Arabic word sabaya doesn’t have sexual connotations,” the Al Jazeera journalist Laila Al-Arian wrote in a post on X, taking exception to a Washington Post article that said that it did. She said the Israeli translation was “playing on racist and orientalist tropes about Arabs and Muslims.”
These are real women and victims of ongoing war crimes, so it does seem excessively lurid to suggest, without direct evidence, that they have been raped in captivity for the past several months. (“Eight months,” the Israelis noted, allowing readers to do the gestational math. “Think of what that means for these young women.”) But to assert that sabaya is devoid of sexual connotation reflects ignorance, at best. The word is well attested in classical sources and refers to female captives; the choice of a classical term over a modern one implies a fondness for classical modes of war, which codified sexual violence at scale. Just as concubine and comfort woman carry the befoulments of their historic use, sabaya is straightforwardly associated with what we moderns call rape. Anyone who uses sabaya in modern Gaza or Raqqah can be assumed to have specific and disgusting reasons to want to revive it.
Yes, we all know Hamas is bad.
That justifies nothing Israel has done in this war.
As long as people realize it doesn’t justify Hamas’s action either
First of all, why does it matter what people realize? Will it stop more killing?
Secondly, I think the vast majority of people in this world understand that Hamas is a terrorist group that should not be supported.
People are supporting Palestinians, not Hamas.
Thank you. I think this nuance is often lost by those barely paying attention
I agree. Over 60% of Palestinian people (some of who are loosely affiliated with Hamas, some of who are friends and family with Hamas fighters, some who joined Hamas as they invaded Israel and some who are Hamas fighters) support Hamas and it’s very reasonable to assume these same people agree with the actions of Hamas (invading, mudering innocent people, kidnapping innocent people) on October 8. And yes it’s sometimes a very blurry line between an innocent civilian, a civilian giving support, a civilian carrying a weapon to supply to fighters, a civilians knowingly manufacturing items that are used by Hamas fighters and Hamas fighters.
Israel created this situation, perpetuates the violence and has a history of SA against Palestinians. Fuck Israel anyone who wants to shove Hamas into the conversation is braindead
Why?
Because no matter how you slice it one is the dominant partner here. Nobody is defending Hamas but people justify Israel.
Moronic
I find it moronic that as the default people seem to root for the underdog seemingly because they are the underdog and not because one side is morally superior than the other. They’re both shitty in their own ways