About 130 hostages remain in Hamas’s custody, about half of them are women. The New York Times recently published a gut-wrenching profile of one of the released hostages, Amit Soussana, who spoke about her experience of enduring torture, including rape.
In one video, Hamas operatives are seen with a hostage, and one of the terrorists calls her “sabaya.” Recently, a spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) mentioned that they are reluctant to release footage involving an employee of the U.N. Refugee and Works Agency (UNWRA), an organization specifically for managing Palestinian affairs, governed Gaza and assisted Hamas in building its military. The footage shows the UNWRA employee call the hostage a sabaya. The IDF and its spokesperson worry that releasing the video would cause stress on the hostage’s family.
Sabaya is an Arabic word that could literally translate into “young woman.” It is, however, used in reference to captive women, and terrorists use it to refer to sex slaves they capture from the enemy. It was a term that the Islamic State used to refer to women of the Yazidi tribe, an Iraqi ethnic minority who are an offshoot of Islam, and the world came to know about them for the serial rape that they endured under the Islamic State’s captivity.
Now, Hamas is using the same word about the women they have kidnapped, and it reminds us that they are no different than the Islamic State. The United States led a coalition to destroy the Islamic State, showing no mercy. Joe Biden seems to be too cowardly to do the same about Hamas. Luckily, Israelis are willing to do the job, and Biden should let them.
Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Chuck Warren only and not his co-host Sam Stone or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.
