this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2024
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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

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[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev -3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I get what you're saying, but:

  1. It matches the content of the article exactly
  2. 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.
  3. 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
  4. I am forbidden by the sub rules from changing the title
  5. It's not selling you fucking printer ink, it is news in a news sub
  6. 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
[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago

One thing you can do is copy a paragraph or two into the post text.

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 3 points 1 year ago

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.:-)