Fact Check: Video of captured woman mistranslates captor as threatening 'rape'
A video of men with weapons speaking Arabic purported to be Hamas militants with what appears to be a captured Israeli woman has been shared online with English and Hebrew subtitles that falsely claim one captor says she is going to be raped.
Militants from the Iran-backed Hamas group
attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostages, according to the Israeli government.
The onscreen subtitles in the nine-second
video, which are mistranslated from Arabic to English and Hebrew, read: “No, no, take her back, this is not a prisoner, this one is for rape. Go back to your place!”
In an Oct. 22
post on messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter, one user captioned the video: “Hamas posted its own videos boasting of the rape of Israeli girls. After the rape they were murdered. How low do you have to sink to defend these scum?”
The subtitles, however, do not represent the remarks made in Arabic.
At no time in the video is rape mentioned, according to a Reuters translation of the Arabic audio on the video, nor do any of the men say the woman is going to be raped.
In the video, one man says: “No, no, she is a female captive, leave her, leave her, she is a female captive. Take her back, take her back, she is a female captive. Go back to your place!”
He uses the Arabic term “sabia”, translating to “female captive” or “female prisoner of war”.
A video of men with weapons speaking Arabic purported to be Hamas militants with what appears to be a captured Israeli woman has been shared online with English and Hebrew subtitles that falsely claim one captor says she is going to be raped.
www.reuters.com