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Comment by chrisco255 | Hacker News Reader

While a clever attack it's also highly likely there was collateral damage to nonviolent or noninvolved bystanders.

Already confirmed as there is one 8 year old girl reportedly in the fatalities. This attack will add to the stereotype that Israel attacks indiscriminately.

Is "stereotype" the right word when it accurately describes what's been happening? Amnesty International, the UN, and even the president of the United States have described their attacks as "indiscriminate".

Tbh I only use the word stereotypes because speaking in absolutes here leads to really grimy political discussions with under the guise of semantic or technical discussions. Anyone with eyes can see that Israel acts with protection of the US military and has no reason to be specific with their targets, even while being scolded by that military

Definitely sad when there is collateral damage. But I don't see how it is possible to fight a war with absolutely zero collateral damage - do you? Hezbollah started firing rockets at Israel on Oct 7 before they even responded.

It is better not to fight a war at all, but this is not always an option.

Watch some of the videos, they are remarkably targetted. One man is standing at a checkout line in a grocery store, 2 women near him. He looks at his pager before it explodes. The women around him are unharmed.

If the man is unarmed, I don't think they can be considered a legitimate target. If that is the case, then you could argue all Israelis who have a military background are legitimate targets and that includes most of the population.

The concept of legitimate targets is from the Geneva convention.

> A fundamental premise of the Geneva Conventions has been that to earn the right to protection as military fighters, soldiers must distinguish themselves from civilians by wearing uniforms and carrying their weapons openly

Hezbollah fighters clearly aren’t doing this and this is whether the fundamental argument around how Israel behaves comes from - what is a legitimate target and rules of engagement when the fighting force blends itself into the general populace? For all the criticism, Israel by some accounts does seem to do better than the US in similar circumstances when they were in Iraq and Afghanistan in terms of protecting civilian populations. And for all their criticism (some well deserved some not) they could certainly be even more indiscriminate in their targeting.

> Hezbollah fighters clearly aren’t doing this

What do you mean? I am not in any way supporting Hezbollah but their soldiers are definitely "wearing uniforms and carrying their weapons openly." Hamas and Hezbollah are not the same. Hamas is more decentralized though so that doesn't happen as often in that case. Hezbollah soldiers are also salaried and more properly equipped by Iran/Syria.

The biggest difference between Hezbollah and Hamas is that in Hezbollah's case, their soldiers are more motivated by money rather than ideology. They treat it more like a "professional" job, work for promotions, and dress accordingly. It's a significantly more top-down structure too.

Hezbollah has been accused of employing similar tactics of hiding among civilian populations and hiding military equipment in civilian buildings which makes sense both given that Iran is backing both these groups and from a strategic view if you’re fighting a significantly more advanced enemy.

As for ideology vs money, it’s hard to distinguish which motivates them more va Hamas given these movements started from seed money and personnel from the Iranian revolutionary guard.

But certainly hezbollah started indiscriminately shelling Israeli civilian targets and Israel is responding by targeting military personnel and infrastructure. It’s up to the Lebanese government to control Hezbollah (which they cant) and Hezbollah is responsible for collateral civilian casualties that stem from attacking them

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/rjhi11ibu0

https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/03/21/idf-hezbollah-stores...

What's the country of Hezbollah? There's clearly not one. It's Lebanon. Hezbollah is a group inside a State not a State.

There are a bunch of very good reasons why groups doing that are outside the law.

To paraphrase a guy on the 'tube, intelligence officers are seldom armed with more than a ham sandwich but are still legitimate targets.

Link to the video (which AFAICT contains no gore, but is obviously not pleasant):

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/17/world/video/hezbollah-pagers-...

That's just the videos that have been published and the ones that happened to be captured by CCTV. If 1000 devices were indiscriminately detonated, even a 5% collateral damage rate would mean up to 50 innocent people harmed, maimed, or killed. At 15%, 150, and so forth.

That would still make it the least indiscriminate long-range attack in the history of warfare.

Give me another example of a military that injured/incapacitated over 1000 enemy combatants from hundreds of miles away with so few civilian casualties.

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