1y ago

What Hamas Called Its Female Captives, and Why It Matters

www.msn.com

MSN

So to recap the events of a couple of weeks ago:

One Hamas fighter called a group of female captives sabaya
The IDF translated that as "women who can get pregnant"
Basically the whole world got up in arms about the translation, and rightly so

What was missing from the discourse IMO was the procession on to step 4: Someone comes in and explains exactly what the word actually does mean, and why even just bringing it up in this context was an important thing, neither of which are trivial questions.

This article does a pretty good job of that, hitting the high points of:

IDF's wildly inflammatory translation aside, it is a word with explicit associations to sexual slavery, which has been resurrected in the last 10 years after it had basically disappeared as the common practice of slavery had waned, and its use in this context is an important window onto Hamas's rank and file's mindset
While of course bearing in mind that one random soldier saying one fucked-up thing isn't indicative of anything other than that soldiers (especially ones deployed against civilian populations) sometimes do and say real fucked up things

Obviously the full article has lots more detail, but that's the TL;DR

30 comments

From the end of the article:
Reading too much into the language seems, at this point, to be less of a danger than reading too little into it.
So the answer to "why it matters" in the headline is that it doesn't and I wasted my fucking time reading it.
- The syntax they're constructing is working the opposite of how you said
  You don't have to agree with them (and as they point out, one random solider saying one random thing doesn't mean anything "official" about Hamas as a whole), but they are saying that it is relevant that some individual in Hamas is talking about its female captives in explicitly sexual-slavery terms.
  Put it this way, if a US prison guard or an IDF person were talking about female prisoners in an analogous way, it would abso fuckin lutely be some news.
  
  Because U.S. prison guards and the IDF aren't already declared to be terrorist groups.
  Letting us know that bad people say bad things is not news.
This report is two weeks old. There have been many rebuttals to the translation. I can only assume this is posted in bad faith.
- One of those rebuttals to "the" translation is contained within the article.
  I.e. part of what they explain, alongside a lot of other context, is why the IDF's (which is I assume what you mean by "the") translation was wrong.
  
  You don't have to put the in quotation marks, the translation was released by the Israeli goveernment, that is what this article and many others are referring to.
  When this was released, two weeks ago, when the article was written, most articles disagreed with the official translation.
  So why are you posting a two week old article?
I am downvoting bc of the exceedingly clickbait title with absolutely zero follow-up details except for a link. This post is therefore "advertising" - like spam in my inbox alerting me to an "opportunity" (to save on car insurance or printer ink, ignoring whether or not I even have one of those devices, or whatever), it takes up all of our attention. Which at currently 37k subscribers to this community, measured at a one minute each, is collectively 617 hours, or 15.4 work week time periods, i.e. 3.9 months total.
The article itself might even be good, or it might not be but at this point I am indisposed to click the bait in order to find out. And my point above stands either way.
Possibly you mean well OP - I have had troubles posting articles myself, assuming that details would be auto-populated like I see elsewhere, but then it did not happen - I am just offering my unasked-for opinion, in case it helps.:-) Especially since others I see are likewise downvoting so I wanted to add an explanation at least from my own POV.
- I get what you're saying, but:
  It matches the content of the article exactly
  People are either familiar with the sabaya controversy, in which case it's instantly obvious what is meant, or else they are unfamiliar, in which case it would be impossible to communicate any level of approximation of the full situation in 250 characters (and I think the headline is about as good as anything at communicating the rough sketch). A big whole point of the article is, the situation's more complex than can be communicated with quick phrases.
  The article itself is a pretty deeply factual and nuanced take on an active controversy in the news, i.e. not just a waste of time oversold by the headline
  I am forbidden by the sub rules from changing the title
  It's not selling you fucking printer ink, it is news in a news sub
  I would be pretty surprised if the phrasing of the headline is why they are downvoting -- I think it's being interpreted as some kind of Zionism or excuse for Israel's crimes, which is a pretty sensible assumption TBF, but in this case is wrong
  
  One thing you can do is copy a paragraph or two into the post text.
  
  I don't think it's a poor title, and even if it was as you said there is a constraint there, but rather my beef was how the title was the only piece of information offered.
  I am not accusing you of trying to sell anything commercially - I was offering some advice to help you get the message out that you wanted to spread. This is not your family that you might expect to click on every single link that you send, this is a social media platform where people from all walks of life are here, and you had an opportunity to not quite "sell" but "encourage" people to read this post. I ran into a similar situation in the past where I posted a video, and someone was kind enough to explain why they did not want to watch it, so I added a description and while it was too late for discoverability, it did help I think.
  Yeah some people are discussing the content too, I was hyper-focusing on the delivery aspect here, in case it was of interest to you.
why would a liberal who have zero knowledge in Arabic think they can argue and correct a native on the meaning of the words? and all to justify a genocide!
not only are you lying but also ignoring all my detailed answers. anyways this is yet another reason not to associate with liberals or vote Democratic. you people hate us even more than the conservatives.
The book you are citing is a book titled النهاية في غريب الحديث والأثر لأبي السعادات ابن الأثير الجزري “The End of the Strange Hadith and Trace by Abu Al-Sa’adat Ibn Al-Athir Al-Jazari”, a collection of strange Hadiths and traditional sayings. Anyone who studied Hadith formally knows that not all are valid or trusted, and not every collection is authoritative. It is known that many Hadiths are fabricated or have poor attestation and narration chains. Only six books are considered canonical and authoritative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kutub_al-Sittah
The Arabic words for female slave are amat أمة and jariyat جارية, plural إماء Imaa’ and جواري Jawari. Nice try though, you know just enough superficial Arabic to fool ignorant people.
Anyways I am not engaging anymore. Thank you for going mask off.
Sabaya is plural for captives and is genderless, both male and female captives are Sabaya
You don't have to take my word for it
https://translate.google.com/?sl=ar&tl=en&text=سبايا&op=translate
- Hey, neat! Now do nggers into Spanish and see what it says.
  Do you not speak Arabic? Out of curiosity?
  
  Arabic is my first language and I studied it formally for years.
  Sabaya means captives nothing more and nothing less. It is plural, genderless and used for men and women.

30 comments