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
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.
I would say that the reception it’s getting indicates that a lot of people at least here have a lot of trouble classifying Hamas as bad people. If I were simply posting a two-week-old story about the IDF desert detention camp, or a US policeman from last November who shot somebody when they shouldn’t have, I don’t think it would be receiving this level of anguished scrutiny about timeliness and relevance and headline.
I get it. I think because Israel are objectively the bad guys, there’s a tendency to interpret any story like this as supportive of them, and so start trashing it out of defense for the Palestinians. I won’t say that’s a crazy thing to do, but I don’t think it should be all that difficult to accept Hamas as bad people. I meant the Israeli government has been giving them funding and support against their domestic opposition, specifically because they can be relied upon to be violent and corrupt in a way that tears down legitimacy for the Palestinian cause. Someone on Lemmy who’s standing up in defense of Hamas in any particular war-criminal action they’re doing is not making the bold stand for Palestinian people that I think they may believe that they are making.
It looks like it’s getting the reception it’s getting because, as @Cheradenine@sh.itjust.works said, it’s two weeks old and it’s already been rebutted.
I realize rule 1 says within 30 days, but this sort of thing is a story that can change from one day to the next.
Very few people think Hamas are good. They just know, like I do, that Israel is not at war with Hamas. Not really. They’re at war with all of Gaza. They don’t care whether you’re a member of Hamas or not. They don’t care if you’re a baby or you’re 99 years old. And don’t give me the “Hamas hides amongst them” bullshit. That in no way justifies the thousands of dead children.
it’s already been rebutted
What do you mean by “it,” here? The IDF translation?
Israel is not at war with Hamas. Not really. They’re at war with all of Gaza. They don’t care whether you’re a member of Hamas or not. They don’t care if you’re a baby or you’re 99 years old.
100% agreed. I usually put “war” in quotes because it’s much more accurate to describe it as a large-scale terrorist attack by the IDF (killing and threatening a helpless civilian population to influence their behavior) than anything remotely resembling a normal state-level conflict between armed combatants.
If you agree, what does it matter that Hamas says bad things?
Because sometimes there is more relevant information to be learned about the world and situations in it, aside from “who good guy” and “who bad guy”
indicates that a lot of people at least here have a lot of trouble classifying Hamas as bad people
Oh fuck off with this delusional bullshit. Nobody calls Hamas good people or has trouble saying they are bad people. 99% of the world would happily let every person in Hamas die. The only people who think anyone is supporting Hamas are the same ones who think it’s OK to blindly kill 30,000 civilians in response to 700 civilians being brutally murdered.
It’s not news because everyone knows that Hamas is evil and doing/saying evil things.
Buddy buddy. I’m on your side. If I need to say it, I think that the war crimes Israel is committing are at least 10 times worse than anything Hamas has done. That doesn’t mean that all of a sudden a story about Hamas doing crimes becomes a non issue or a thing to react to with hostility. In my opinion.
I didn’t say anyone here was supporting Hamas. I was saying that it seems like people are clearly reacting negatively to this story because it makes Hamas look bad, when they would be completely fine with a story that made the IDF look bad, even if it contained some of these issues which they are claiming are what they’re so aggrieved about about this story.
Again, I get why there’s a value judgement that the IDF is the bad guys. I agree with that judgement. I’m just saying you don’t have to demand that your news coverage obey the same judgements.
To me, stories about the world have value beyond the conclusion being “Hamas good” or “Hamas bad,” and can be important even if the conclusion along that axis is “Hamas bad” which we knew already. It seems weird that people are saying that because the conclusion is that Hamas is bad, the story is irrelevant, and also are pretending for some reason that the anti-Palestinian-looking viewpoint is not the entire reason they don’t like it.
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?
You haven’t read the article, have you
I thought my message was short enough that it wouldn’t have been missed, but this is one of the articles which disagree with what you’re calling the official translation (along with providing a lot of other information.)
I have read it. Again, why are you posting this? It is not recent news.
Honestly, I posted it because (a) it was news to me; it was a detailed explanation of a news event which enhanced my understanding (b) I felt it was needed perspective to add the “IDF translation was wrong and so nothing to see here” narrative which as we are learning is pretty popular © I checked and it was within the 30 day window according to the sub rules
I suspect that the hostility is because people are interpreting it as anti-Palestinian and pro-Zionist. Which is a fair conclusion, I get it, but not why I posted it. Israel’s crimes are objectively 10 times worse than anything Hamas has been doing, but I don’t see a need to proceed from there to “and therefore anything Hamas does is okay and any attempt to criticize them is probably a lie and I need to support them.”
Not that I’m saying you’re doing that, but like I say, I suspect some of the hostility to this story lies somewhere on a continuum which does include that at one end.
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.
Hm
That’s actually a pretty good point. I added a body which explained what’s in the article and why I think it’s relevant.
I’m a little doubtful that that will lead to it being any more well-received, since as I say I think the issue is people interpreting it as anti-Palestinian and reflexively going on the attack, but yeah there’s no reason for it to be cryptic for no reason, so I fixed it.
Oh yes that’s MUCH better! Whether your original goal was to encourage people to read the article, or to encourage us all to have a conversation about the matter, either way this helps a ton to increase discoverability! I mean, as you say it’s probably too late now, but still it should help - I get people replying to my comments days to over a week later sometimes - and it is good practice for next time:-).
Thanks for the synopsis.:-)
