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.
So both of those words are spelled sabaya when anglicized and while I will admit I was not familiar with the soft s variant because it’s antiquated (and still not necessarily sexual in meaning even if that one is debatable), it doesn’t sound like the man in the video who is supposed to have said that even said either of those words to me. I genuinely can’t even make out what the word he said is.
Why is this the subject of debate nearly 8 months after the fact?
Because the hostage families decided to release recovered footage to put additional pressure on getting them released.
Also, because I went down the rabbit hole trying to find info on this stuff, I think I’ll share additional evidence I gathered. Specifically that sabaya (or saby for short) has been used in the context of ISIS taking female slaves (often for sex).
From Infatuated with Martyrdom Female Jihadism from Al-Qaeda to the ‘Islamic State’
Clippings from Dabiq Magazine (English Language Magazine Published by ISIS):
From the infamous Reddit AMA: https://archive.ph/s2tqH
I see the publisher of the above is Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. Could you share a link in relation to how they perceive zionism?
After that link I literally added redacted screenshots of a primary source that was published by ISIS
It does not matter what the publisher of the document in the first link thinks about Zionism. I don’t know and I don’t care.
Ok, no link. I’ll go to another point.
You try to present arguments against Hamas by talking about ISIS. ISIS and Hamas are not interchangeable words, and Hamas is not ISIS.
Also even if I don’t speak any variation of arabic it is well known that words can have different meaning in different places in which the same language is officially spoken. We have many examples of english speaking people that use the same word differently, like very differently.
So what are you really trying to do?
Come back when you actually know something instead of vaguely gesturing at possibilities. My argument and sources were clear. I spent too much time digging already, and forgive me if I don’t want to spend even more time researching every suggestion for your 9 day old Lemmy account.
There is an obvious cultural connection between different Arabic Islamic extremist groups in the Middle East. Yes there will be cultural differences, and differences in dialect, but the meaning of this word isn’t one of them.
Removed by mod
Removed, civility.
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.
Good retort