On Wednesday, Israel released a heavily edited video that depicted the moments when Hamas fighters captured female Israeli soldiers from the Nahal Oz military base, apparently on the request of the families. As the video went viral on social media, Arabic speakers quickly pointed out the deliberate mistranslations of what was being said, to which the mainstream media responded with obfuscation and attempts to legitimize the video hoax.
Israel’s official X [formerly Twitter] account posted a heavily edited series of clips that had been put together in order to provide a specific depiction of the capture of 5 Israeli active-duty soldiers on October 7. The incident showed fighters belonging to the armed wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, in the process of capturing the five Israeli soldiers and later transferring them in a vehicle to the Gaza Strip as prisoners of war; from the Nahal Oz Israeli military facility.
The first problem with this clip is that it was cut 11 times, which we can deduce was done in order to show the scenes that are the most incriminating. This is a major issue as we do not know what was happening in between these clips, during which we see the fighters calling the female soldiers killers, one fighter also shouts at the Israeli soldiers and calls them dogs. Some of the soldiers appear with injuries, however, there is nothing showing how this happened and it doesn’t appear that these injuries are the result of beatings. Nowhere in the video do we see the Hamas fighters beat the captured soldiers either, which is a common feature in the daily Israeli detainment of innocent Palestinians.
The edits are not unusual for propaganda videos of this kind and it makes sense for the clip to show the worst scenes they have, however, the key issue with the video is not what it shows, but rather its deliberately false translation of the Arabic spoken by the Hamas fighters and what it implies about what might have happened to the female soldiers afterwards. The Israeli tweet, describing the video they shared, states the following:
““Here, these are the girls who can get pregnant.” This is video footage depicting the horrific kidnapping of 5 female Israeli hostages: Liri Albag, Karina Ariev, Agam Berger, Daniela Gilboa and Naama Levy. They have been held hostage by Hamas terrorists for more than 230 days (8 months). Think of what that means for these young women.”
“Here, these are the girls who can get pregnant.”
This is video footage depicting the horrific kidnapping of 5 female Israeli hostages: Liri Albag, Karina Ariev, Agam Berger, Daniela Gilboa and Naama Levy.
They have been held hostage by Hamas terrorists for more than 230 days… pic.twitter.com/zFo9eB77uC
— Israel ישראל (@Israel) May 22, 2024
While the tweet suggests that a Hamas fighter said “here, these are the girls who can get pregnant”, the translation on the video contradicts this by saying “these are the girls (who can get pregnant)”. So instantly we have a difference between the tweet itself and the video translation, a major red flag to say the least. Putting the “who can get pregnant” part in brackets, is an admission of editorializing, while Israel’s account was asserting that this was said directly. Nobody in the entire video said the word pregnant. Yet, the reason why this quote, out of all the dialogue in the different snippets, was highlighted and the tweet ends with “think of what that means for these young women”, is to lead the viewer to the conclusion that the Palestinian fighters were planning to rape the female soldiers.
The Israeli video and tweet also leave out the key detail that these are soldiers, captured from a military site. The reason why they are in civilian clothing is because the Hamas military operation occurred early in the morning and the soldiers still hadn’t gotten dressed for the day.
As for the claim that a Hamas fighter says “these are the girls who can get pregnant”, the translation is not at all accurate. The translation that is given in the video, without the brackets, would mean that the word ‘Sabaya’, or صبايا in Arabic, was used, which literally means “girls” and is often used to refer to younger groups of women, the male equivalent is the word Shabab. However, despite the video being a little difficult to hear, many jumped in to claim that the similar sounding word Sabaya, spelled سبايا in Arabic, is used, which literally translates to “captives” but is used specifically for female captives. The following sentence is translated as “these are the Zionists”, but that is also a mistranslation as the sentence is actually “here are the cowards”.
Another deliberate distortion in the subtitles is the claim that a Hamas fighter calls the female soldiers “beautiful”, for this part it appears that audio is added by the video editor in order to obscure what is clearly the Palestinian fighter actually saying “no no you’re not beautiful“. Towards the end of the video, the Palestinian fighters are transferring the Israeli soldiers onto a truck to transport them to Gaza and repeatedly say “get her up”, in order to hurry fellow fighters, while they put one of them into a vehicle, this is mistranslated to “without her”. Although this mistranslation was mocked across Arabic media as clearly ridiculous, the Western media, as usual, went into damage control mode in order to try and make the clearly distorted clip seem somewhat credible.
The Israeli journalist, Shira Rubin, even wrote a piece for The Washington Post, where she claimed the following about the video:
“At one point, a Hamas gunman inspects the women and calls them سبايا , or “sabaya,” an archaic term that means female captives but can have sexual connotations. The video subtitles, which were provided by the Israel Defense Forces, translated sabaya as “girls who can get pregnant.” Another man says, “Beautiful.””
However, it doesn’t sound like the word سبايا is used at all in the video, it sounds more like the word صبية (Sbyeh), is used, this translates to “girl”, the plural of this word is صبايا, meaning “girls” as was stated above. It also makes more sense that a Palestinian would use the word صبية, because it is a common word in Shami Arabic [the Arabic dialects of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria].
Regardless, let us assume that everyone who speaks Arabic is mishearing the clip and the word for female captives was indeed used, it is interesting to see that the pro-Israeli Hebrew and English native speakers are now experts in “archaic” Arabic and are attempting to extract, what would have to be specific Islamic implications, from the term that still could not be described as “sexual connotations”.
Even in the event they are correctly hearing “سبايا”, the idea that the Israeli translation was accurate is still incorrect as nothing was ever said about pregnancy, nor could you even claim that the phrase for female captives means anything like this. In order to try and make that argument, you would have to provide the Islamic link, which still makes no sense as this scenario has nothing to do with that. To briefly explain the link for this word; if an enemy man is killed in battle and his wife is left as a widow, it can be argued using an old Islamic doctrine that in the event the woman agrees, she can marry a fighter from the victorious army quicker than is usually the case when a woman’s husband is killed. In normal circumstances there is a mourning process before she is allowed to re-marry according to Islam. To argue that this could be applied here makes no sense as these are captured female soldiers, their husbands haven’t been killed and even in the event that this was the case — which it is not — they would have to agree to marry the Hamas fighters in order for their to be any sexual implications. It is simply so far fetched and ridiculous that no matter which way you try to spin this, the pro-Israeli propagandists are wrong. In Islam, pre-marital sex is strictly prohibited and is considered as one of the greatest sins that someone can commit.
Putting this case to the side, this is not the first time during the 8 months of war that we have seen such ridiculous, willful mistranslations of Arabic by the Israelis. In November, last year, Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari transformed himself into a viral meme after being featured in a video where he mistranslates an Arabic calendar in Gaza’s Rantisi Hospital. Hagari proclaims “there is a list!“, before pointing at the Arabic calendar and trying to claim it is a “terrorist” shift schedule that says “we are in an operation”, the alleged “terrorists” named in the calendar are actually just the days of the week. Although this was passed off throughout the Western media as a video that could possibly help prove Israeli claims that Hamas was using hospitals as military facilities, the Arabic media simply mocked what was to them a laughable media stunt.
Special footage from the Rantisi hospital in Gaza – on the basement floor, a room was found with signs indicating hostages were held there, underground headquarters and a room full of weapons inside the hospital: pic.twitter.com/pDsyA1mT6T
— דובר צה״ל דניאל הגרי – Daniel Hagari (@IDFSpokesperson) November 13, 2023
Unfortunately, the corporate media is completely dishonest, inept, and, despite the countless Israeli mistranslations, hoaxes and outrageous lies, they still take everything that Israel says seriously. Since the media refuses to do its due diligence, and in many cases willfully participates in spreading Israeli disinformation, it ends up giving legitimacy to hoax videos like the one just released. Really, what Israel is depending upon here is the ignorance of Western audiences and hoping that they will not be skeptical of such videos. There is simply no way that they mistranslated this in good faith, it is a grotesque mistranslation, aimed at trying to convince Western audiences that their female soldiers are being raped by Hamas fighters.
The real question here is why in the world the families of these five soldiers would have agreed to have this manipulated and deliberately mistranslated video published, knowing that the point of it is to indicate that these five women are being raped in underground tunnels inside Gaza? At this point, there is certainly something to be said about the Israeli government’s obsession with their own women being raped in Hamas tunnels and why it is acceptable for such disgusting allegations to be repeated so often without any proof, even as many are being proven to be outright lies.
