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.
jordanlund I must admit that I do not see what was uncivil about my response. I will try and rephrase:
Please, civility.
As I mentioned above, this was left behind. My statement was clear about this: Ok, no link. I’ll go to another point. Also, I really don’t see how the number of days I am on this platform is relevant to anything we are discussing here.
Yes, clear and irrelevant to your point. They are about ISIS, not Hamas. Again, Hamas and ISIS are not interchangeable words.
Because you say so? I’m sorry, you failed to provide evidence to support your claim.
Taking into consideration the above, I think it is obvious that I don’t see any point continuing this interaction. I find the way you approached it, infantile.
The comment removed:
https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&userId=7867023
“How old are you? Are you 5?”
Yeah, that’s a civility removal.
I just saw there is an explanation on how this community defines civil:
My intentions were not to belittle anyone, I was just totally unimpressed by the level of immaturity this user showed in their replies, and wanted to point that out. And I hope this point was clear in my rephrasing. I take this comment removal as a motivation to use more words, so it is obvious what I mean.
I’m going to reply one more time out of the hope you actually are confused about my response, and aren’t simply sealioning.
Troll accounts are prevalent on this platform. So much so that certain apps flag new accounts to users.
I do not disagree with that statement. However, that is not what I am saying.
The influence of ISIS on the Middle East, in Arabic language, and in the culture of similar Militant Islamic Extremist groups is clear and obvious. It colors the world in which the Hamas Militant spoke. It is only logical that he would choose words to frighten, and degrade those whom he was fighting against.
No. Because the word spoken has a specific meaning in the culture/context in which it was spoken. The only argument that makes any sense against this, is that he actually said a different but similarly pronounced word.