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

  1. One Hamas fighter called a group of female captives sabaya
  2. The IDF translated that as “women who can get pregnant”
  3. 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

  • مهما طال الليل
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    3 months ago

    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.