Sabaya

and Hamas’ propagandists who fiercely denied the term’s sexual connotation, but also reputable commentators, public intellectuals, and scholars. Heiko Wimmen, project director for Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon at the International Crisis Group, appealed to phonology, pedantically insisting that the Hamas gunman used a different word in Levantine Arabic, with a similar pronunciation but a different sibilant, which simply means “young women.” Meanwhile, Georgetown University professor Jonathan Brown, who characterized the IDF video as an “Islamophobic” mistranslation, denied the sexual connotation of the term, insisting that the word means merely prisoners or captives. Other commentators maintained that associating the term with sexual enslavement meant “regurgitating Israeli propaganda” and constituted “absolutely racist drivel.”…

Why, despite the clear evidence of the Islamic State’s use of sabaya to justify sexual slavery, have commentators rushed to deny the term’s sexual connotation in the context of the Palestinian terror group and Israel? And more broadly, why, in the case of Jewish victims, have so many been eager to undermine evidence about the use of sexual violence by Palestinians?

The answer is that the purpose of denying the sexual connotation of the word sabaya is to sanction Oct. 7 as a legitimate military operation under the laws of war, rather than an orgiastic human rights massacre.

In other words it's all part of the determination on the part of "anti-Zionists" in the west to portray Hamas as a legitimate resistance movement against imperialism, like the Vietcong say, rather than what it is: an Islamist terror group bent on the killing of Jews, the destruction of Israel, and ultimately the triumph of Islam worldwide.

Whereas al-Qaida and IS are understood to represent wanton cruelty and inhumanity, in pursuit of a utopian ideology, the violence groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad resort to is deemed understandable—for some, even justifiable—since its context is a struggle for national liberation. Without this fictional distinction, Israel’s war against Palestinian terrorism would have to be regarded as legitimate.

And that can never be admitted.