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barbazoo

> From Israel's perspective, this supply chain attack was undoubtedly a clever move

From The Guardian [1]:

> Eight killed and 2,750 wounded

Was that a clever move if you're killing "only" 8 potential adversaries?

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/sep/17/middle-ea...

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It looks like a trigger that can only be pulled once.

Thus, choice of the optimal time could be influenced by a lot of things:

- knowledge of other Hezbollah imminent action making comms disruption right now of great importance

- recognition that the vulnerability had been discovered and was about to be remediated

- via other "eyes on" prime targets, knowledge that just one or two top leaders were briefly in especially-vulnerable positions (like sleeping alongside their pagers)

- etc

And, there will be a "long tail" of damage to Hezbollah's usual communications practices & trust in devices/suppliers. Some marginal recruits may even be deterred from joining a battle against an opponent which can carry out this sort of attack – though of course, others may be emboldened.

> And, there will be a "long tail" of damage to Hezbollah's usual communications practices & trust in devices/suppliers.

It appears pager use was a solid choice. Even on full supply chain compromise the amount of explosives fitted couldn't kill even 1% of targets. A cellphone would be packed with much larger payloads able to kill much more people. Their failure was the lack of proper inspection before distribution.

I’d be surprised if the amount of explosives was influenced by physical constraints. The aim wasn’t (and never is) to kill. It was to disrupt command and control. If even half the leadership lost hands, eyes, ears or mouths, there literally is no other option of similar effectiveness available.

But on the other hand. They needed the pagers to work for half a year or more (and still only about 3k/5k seem to have been active). Think about tech-support-but-evil trying to fix one that a boss dropped and discovering the explosives inside

I think the purpose is to terrorize your opponents. Sometimes getting seriously wounded is even worse than getting killed, from the perspective of Hez. Now they need to handle thousands of wounded members, which is much more expensive than dead ones.

Who said the injured are all Hezbollah members? From the above Guardian coverage:

"Among those killed is an eight-year-old girl from Bekka Valley, Abiad said, according to Al Jazeera."

This CCTV footage shows one of the devices exploding in a busy supermarket:

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/dozens-hezbollah-m...

Terrorizing your opponents is one thing, but indiscriminately detonating bombs in public spaces is just plain terrorism.

indiscriminately? They were all used by Hezbollah operatives by definition. It is the most targeted operation if there ever was one.

Indiscriminate in the sense that bombs have an area of effect beyond the person carrying them, so they couldn't possibly account for collateral damage when firing them all at once, and a conscious decision was made that any unlucky civilians are fair game. Indiscriminate in the same sense as dropping a bunker buster on a residential block because you believe there's a handful of terrorists inside, or nuking two cities to "encourage" a military surrender.

If you believe this tactic was just, then I trust that if Mossad obliterated your child in the process of assassinating an enemy of Israel who happened to be nearby then you would be able to forgive and forget, since it was for the greater good and they tried their best. Even if they were targeting the wrong person, as it sometimes goes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer_affair

Incidentally when they later killed the actual target of that operation they did so by detonating a 100kg car bomb on a public road, also killing 4 civilians and injuring 16 others.

"unlucky civilians are fair game" that's been an unfortunate fact of war since, well, war was invented. maybe you should more angry at the people who started the war and put people in harms way, instead of complaining that one of the most precise operations still had unintended civilian consequences.

taking the moral high ground is easy when you are not the one making decisions, and while the lesser of two evils (in your car bomb example) doesn't make sense on a personal level, it does make sense on a macro level

> maybe you should more angry at the people who started the war

How far back are we willing to go for that? Who evicted whom? When? How many times? In what order?

That's not what "indiscriminate" means.

Indiscriminate attacks are those [0]:

(a) which are not directed at a specific military objective;

(b) which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; or

(c) which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by international humanitarian law;

and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.

The fact that the pagers were obtained by Hezbollah to be used for their communications, and consequently could be expected to be exclusively in the possession of combatants means the attack was not indiscriminate.

Causing collateral damage does not make an attack indiscriminate. The standard for permissible collateral damage is that an attack must not cause loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian property, etc. that is excessive in relation to the anticipated concrete and direct military advantage [1].

The fact that it was so specifically targeted, combined with the small size of the explosive charges means collateral damage could be expected to be minor. And the evidence so far suggests that to have been accurate. The death of a single child is tragic, but negligible in comparison to the military advantage gained by thousands of combatants dead or wounded.

[0]: https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule12

[1]: https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule14

Where in aforementioned international humanitarian law, step (c), is it preordained that one child's collateral death is negligible? See, therein lies the crux of the issue. The definition itself is wise enough that you can't just lawyerese your way through the issue.

In your scientistic rationalization using weaselwords like "expected to be exclusive", "the [subjective] standard for permissible..", "a death is [objectively] negligible", and so on, it is rather the case that your explanation is so laden with prejudiced pseudoreasoning that you are blind to it and unwittingly helping to spread ideological misinformation.

A non "weaselwords" version:

A country has a right to defend its citizens. It can go to war to do so. War is horrible and civilians die.

Your version is called jingoism.

It's funny, everyone on Hacker News at least completed high school in principle. But there's so much brave conservatism that high school education should have infused students with enough critical thinking to make them think about what they're really saying, regardless of how complex or simple their version of words is.

This applies to both sides

Literally no war ever has avoided collateral damage. Trying to hold Israel to that standard is absurd and pretty transparently anti-Semitic.

> Indiscriminate in the sense that bombs have an area of effect beyond the person carrying them

AFAICT the stock pager models are ~95 grams, and people are suggesting 3-5g of added explosives. If they used RDX, then 3g would be ~5.5 cubic centimeters, which seems like rather a lot to try to squish into a small pager unless the design also replaced the standard battery with a smaller one to make room.

In contrast, a M67 fragmentation grenade uses ~156 grams of explosives.

Basically I'm saying it sounds like the bombs are small enough that it's not quite fair to call them "indiscriminate", especially if the trigger logic involves a Hezbollah radio network that nobody else would be using.

operatives

A lot of people seem to think Hezbollah is purely military in nature because of the 'terrorism' label. The organization was founded to respond to Israel's invasion of Lebanon, and while it is a militant organization it also has seats in the Lebanese parliament, engages in a lot of non-military activities, and does not have simple politics - for example, it has condemned Al Qaeda and ISIS for terroristic attacks.

Labels such as 'terrorists' are as often designed to confuse as to inform. Reductionist categorization makes people easy to manipulate.

They have an assault rifle in their flag. Make no mistake about their purpose.

Well, Guatemala has (older) rifles in theirs too...

And yet it doesn’t look like an obvious terrorist symbol

I think you are mistaking your emotional reflexes for objective truth. Weapons on flags historically connote a message of 'don't mess with us'. The IDF's logo is a sword and an olive branch, and is more or less the same as the logo of the Haganah...a pre-independence paramilitary organization that was considered terroristic at the time when Palestine was still a British possession, and which killed hundreds of people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haganah

The issue is not that weapons are shown. The issue is that it’s a fist holding an assault rifle. It’s very plainly a call for violent action. And frankly I think it’s kind of stupid to argue otherwise.

Regardless of your opinion of the IDF, their flag is clearly a very different vibe

Lets not mention about the many shuriken in the American flag.

2 American state flags depict people holding guns as well. I won't mention which two lest it lead to an outbreak of hostilities. And wait until you hear about the symbology of the US flag, or listen to the US national anthem!

More seriously, quite a few other countries have guns on the flag, reflecting a turbulent recent history. As I mentioned, Hezbollah was formed in response to the invasion and occupation of Lebanon just over 40 years ago, which was not a violence-free event. Let's not even get into swords on flags.

There's a tendency among some people to draw their conclusion first and then summon reasons for it afterwards, reasons which often lack consistency. Our violent history is glorious; theirs is deplorable. Consider, for example, the Irish Republican Army; like Hezbollah, it's considered a terrorist organization by US, UK, and many other jurisdictions. But due to the huge number of Irish American people and the subsidence of that political conflict in the last few decades, lots of Americans think the IRA is cool, while reflexively lumping Hezbollah in with other Islamic groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS.

In short, I think things like 'their flag has a gun on it' are the opposite of helpful or insightful.

Americans generally don’t know what the IRA is. Hezbollah is actively involved in anti western terrorism. That is perhaps why Americans think they’re terrorists.

Americans generally don’t know what the IRA is

I think anyone over the age of 30 probably does.

Mozambique, too. We should bomb them.

It's even got the bayonet fixed so there's no confusion about their terrorist intentions.

I agree Mozambique has a shitty flag. I don’t think we should bomb them.

An NGO that launches missiles at towns and cities would seem to be the definition of a terrorist organization.

Even if Hezbollah made the order, it would be difficult to be confident all would be distributed to operatives as opposed to sold to other civilian users.

It is a dirty (i.e. collateral civilians, maim instead of kill or deter, etc.) tactic and should be the sort of thing banned by Geneva Conventions.

The busy supermarket saw people standing directly beside the target perplexed and completely unharmed. This was extremely localized.

If the child story is true (which is always in question), presumably they were tragically playing with the pager or the like at precisely that time.

However the footage of the attack is overwhelmingly fighting-age males exclusively. As far as military operations go, that is remarkably targeted.

if someone next to you in a supermarket was wounded from an explosive like the video shows, do you think perplexed and completely unharmed would be a good description for your experience? Maybe we saw different videos, but it's pretty hard to make such a generalized statement from a few seconds of video.

Yes? Clearly the people directly beside the target were physically unharmed and confused about what happened. For all they knew the guy had an e-vape explode or something.

Maybe in the future they'll carry some emotional damage or something, but living in a country de facto in a state of war with a formidable nuclear-power neighbour, while governed by a terrorist organization that indiscriminately fires rockets into civilian areas essentially daily, carries that risk, right? I doubt such an operation was a surprise to anyone.

> if someone next to you in a supermarket was wounded from an explosive

that "someone" is an enemy combatant currently fighting a war

if they were wearing a uniform would you stand next to a soldier during an ongoing war?

if you were a soldier would you hide in a group of civilians?

there's a lot of blame to go around and Israel is far from clean, but the Hezbollah members are clearly also putting people in harms way by using them as a shield against attacks like this

> The busy supermarket saw people standing directly beside the target perplexed and completely unharmed. This was extremely localized.

I saw that video too and I'm happy the bystanders in that case were unharmed but that was 1/2000 (or 5,000?) explosions. I wouldn't necessarily extrapolate the supermarket video to the other several thousand explosions.

Also, being a martyr on a poster with everyone celebrating you can be an attractive recruitment tool to young men. But seeing the broken beggar without eyes that people pity isn't going to be quite the same enticement to recruit for your terrorism org.

I actually think that an unintended consequence is that Mossad has permanently flagged the vast majority of Hizbullah's followers, an entire generation, on Lebanese soil.

The wound patterns will emerge for the vast majority of victims: arms, hands, eyes and hips ? Time will tell.

The Lebanese army, and the IDF, now suddenly can tell between civilian vs combatant.

If I was wounded (or even witnessed this in real life), I would go from civilian to combatant instantly. Israel just attacked a bunch of civilian population centers. This will be seen as a huge strategic mistake, both in terms of new combatants created on the ground and continued loss of good will for Israel abroad.

The only reason IL can do it, is because the general population in Lebanon hates hezbollah, it is basically a proxy control power from IRAN.

Look at this to understand how big part of Lebanon sees Hezbollah https://www.instagram.com/brigitte_gabriel/reel/CyT_RanK1gi/

I think you are missing context. 10 years of civil war and many more decades of animositiy and of strife, are not reversed overnight , even due to an event like this. For example, Israël has lobbed missiles before, and that had its collateral damage, but also didnt change a thing or win new allies to Hizbullah.

Even some druze (historically neutral sectl were kidnapped and killed in the Oct 7th events.

Now, for the 1st time in 100 years, every single rival of hizbullah is able to instantly recognize enemies, in the open.

Obe thing im certain of, Israel has managed to reset the board in its conflict with Hezbollah.

Israel has no support outside of hardcore Zionists. I don't know if you've checked out the global reaction to this terrorist act that Israel just pulled, but they just multiplied the intensity of their enemies (i.e. the rest of humanity) 10X.

Even if all that is true, for all intents and purposes, it's a moot point.

The only people that share borders with Israel matter. That is Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. 2 of those 4 have firm peace agreements in place, and have converging interests to control their extremist interests. Syria has its own issues and a defacto govt ban on extremists. Lebanon just had its entire terror contingent permanently labeled.

If you notice my statement, 3 of the 4 of israel's borders were more or less under acceptable control. Now, Israel has likely managed to reset the board for the 4th and final border.

Again, time will tell if the long term consequences you envision matter in any way. I contend they dont, in comparison to the gains they just made.

What's the Lebanon "terror contingent"? Hezbollah (not terrorists, but resistance) is fighting Israel as we speak, so surely you don't mean them?

I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding but it sounds like you are implying membership of Hezbollah is deep dark shameful secret in Lebanon. The designation of Hezbollah as a "terrorist organization" is great for outside political propaganda, but the actual reality is they are a major and open faction in political life in Lebanon as both paramilitary group and political party - as is my understanding. Basically Sinn Fein/IRA.

Lebanon is very generous. They have their zones, mostly in the South, Bekaa, and a specific part of Beyrouth. It is also true they have a political wing. But they also have covert enforcers outside those zones and that is what everyone else is most fearful of. They have been involved in sectarian killings tit-for-tats, for many years. Most famously, the murder of PM rafik hariri.

So, otside of those Hizbullah zones, its actually not common to see the Hizbullah yellow flags openly displayed. Or a car bumper sticker. It is for good reason. There was a civil war before, and memories run deep.

They're much bigger than the IRA.

Oh sure, Israel is famous for caring about the difference between civilian and combatants.

I think the simplest explanation here is that pagers are small and light and don't have that much free space inside them, and it's hard to fit enough explosive into them to reliably kill people. The figures I saw was only a few grams of explosive could be fit in them. If you look at the photos and videos that have been coming out today you'll see what the injuries look like; they're not as catastrophic as getting shot with a bullet, or anything close to a real explosive with orders of magnitude more explosive in it like an artillery shell, rocket, aerial bomb, etc.

I would guess Israel would have preferred more lethal pagers, but the required amount of explosive simply didn't fit. So the resulting deaths are from the people who got really unlucky, whereas getting wounded was the modal result.

you're looking at the wrong videos. I saw videos with people's hands blown off, massive holes in their bodies, etc. reportedly something like 15-20gr of Pentaerythritol tetranitrate. Massive wounds.

I suspect it's going to matter a lot where the pager was relative to the person at time of explosion. Someone holding it in a closed fist vs reading it vs in a backpack vs in a pocket could all have very different wound patterns.

there's also going to be a bunch of plastic shrapnel either way. reports were saying that people's eyes were being hit, I think most likely by plastic shrapnel.

> I would guess Israel would have preferred more lethal pagers, but the required amount of explosive simply didn't fit.

They would have preferred cellphones.

The death toll isn't the goal. They're after the 2nd order effects, now there are ~3,000 operatives that are marked by a scar that is relatively distinctive. They also have substantially disrupted their communication protocols and caused psychological damage.

Hezbollah members in Lebanon are not necessarily perceived as bad people - why would the scar be a problem ? Hezbollah claims it’s a resistance movement to Israel, they’re now wearing a scar caused by Israel in a mass coordinated attack, which will further legitimize Hezbollah.

I agree with the disruption of communication protocols and psychological damage though.

The scar marks an operative. Israel has a huge amount of video footage, now they work backward and see where that person went, and who they talked to.

Is it all of Lebanon though? I think Christian and Druze Lebanese don’t like the Hezbollah much anyway. Sure the Shiite south does but no one else.

I don't get it. Why does Lebanon need to resist Israel? When in recent history has Israel attacked Lebanon or threatened it in any way, except in retaliation or defense against Hezbollah acts?

In the first Lebanon war, Israel invaded Lebanon to strike against PLO. At this time, Hezbollah did not really exist, or was at least small and insignificant. It grew as a force in opposition of Israel's occupation.

If the ruling government of Lebanon allowed the PLO to strike Israel from Lebanese soil, what could they expect Israel to do?

This was in the middle of the Lebanese civil war in 1982 , the Lebanese government had no control over anything.

Furthermore, after the Israeli entered Lebanon in 1982, they didn’t fully leave the country until 2000, which is what caused the founding of hezbollah in 1982, and the perception of hezbollah as a resistance movement since then.

Basically the Lebanese see Israel has having attacked then occupied a part of Lebanon for about 20 years, between 1982 and 2000 - this is recent enough for most people to relate to it.

The Lebanese should then have a good answer to what they expected Israel to do with attacks being launched from Lebanese soil without the Lebanese doing anything about it. I understand, they were in the middle of a civil war, but that doesn't mean Israel has to be OK with attacks happening.

The occupation came as a result of continued attacks. And after Israel left in 2000, more and more attacks happened, culminating in the 2006 war.

The fact remains that if no there were no threats against Israel from Lebanon, there would be nothing for Lebanon to fear from Israel. It's repeatedly sought and made peace with every sovereign country with which is has no ongoing disputes.

(There are, as I understand it, some minor territorial disputes along the border. I'm sure these can be quickly resolved through negotiation, if all parties are serious about it.)

Lebanon has a weak government. I think you could compare it with a house owner who does not have the means to evict uninvited guests, where the guests are much stronger and more powerful than the owner. This is both because the country consists of many ethnic groups and religions, and because it came to host a lot of Palestinian refugees and became base for the HQ of Palestinian resistance. Add on top of this widespread corruption. The situation is pretty dire.

Hezbollah are not Palestinian. They're Shia Lebanese. And they're engaging in warfare against Israel with no provocation.

Israel responds by targeting Hezbollah weapons, assets and militants.

That doesn't explain why the average Sunni Lebanese in Beirut would feel like they need to "resist" Israel.

I didn't say Hezbollah is Palestinian. Just that Lebanon have had to handle a huge amount of palestinian refugees.

Certainly Israel's invasion of Lebanon in the early 80s affected many inhabitants of Lebanon, not just palestinians.

I didn't say that the invasion didn't affect many Lebanese. Only that the Lebanese don't need to "resist" Israel, because it is not a threat to them, so long as they're not attacking it (or are in close proximity to those who are).

Hezbollah considers that they must fight Israel following the Gaza war. They’ve stated they won’t stop until the Israelis leave Gaza.

The average Sunni Muslim in Beirut either remembers, or has family who remembers what happened during the (unprovoked by the Lebanese) Israeli invasion and subsequent occupation. Today, most of the Arab world supports Hamas in the Gaza war, considering that the large number of civilians being killed is essentially mass murder. Mix these two informations, and you will find very little trust towards Israelis. Add today’s attacks and things get even worse.

It’s very easy to destroy trust, and very hard to build it. None of this has to be perfectly logical - it’s not how people work.

'Allah's Messenger said, "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him."'

(94)Chapter: Fighting against the Jews Sahih al-Bukhari 2926 Book 56, Hadith 139

(Part of Sunni Islam)

And they're engaging in warfare against Israel with no provocation.

Actually they were conceived and rose to prominence in direct response to this rather substantial provocation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Lebanon_War

Please read some history man. I urge you to do it. Google it.

I actually read quite a bit. Point me towards something specific if you will.

This is on target. Tagging collaborators certainly has advantages, not so much for invoking a social glare at home but helping to identify them to intelligence sources, certainly.

I doubt those 2,750 all have minor injuries. That's 2,750 targets, a lot of whom probably now now have missing fingers/hands, a chunk missing from their leg, face injuries.... Aka major injuries from having a small explosion on their belt or int their pocket. It's going to be 2,750 probably major injuries that will take a long time to recover from.

And then they will be 10x more dedicated to revenge. Where they may have sworn to destory Israel before, they weren't yet personally injured. It'a the same cycle of violence.

They're already looking to destroy israel prior to this incident.

So, Israel wants to give them more motivation?

you can't fill a full bag, there is no "more" to conceive of. They are fully convinced already that all Israelis should simply be killed or worse than killed.

Killing is one thing, but wounded soldiers/operatives are a much larger drain on resources than killing.

The wounded people need care, medicine, rehab, therapy, and feeding during their recovery.

This occupies significant resources of your enemy.

I’m not commenting on this specific attack, but talking in general.

It surely is because you corrode your target’s trust in technology. They moved from smartphones to pagers, now they’ll have to find even cruder types of communications.

Pagers fine. Even with full supply chain compromise left less than 1% targets dead. Although they need better inspection before distribution.

If you lost half your gut or a kidney or had your stomach punctured you may be alive, but you’re definitely not battle ready. And you may never be again. A device that explodes in such close proximity to a body is more than certain that it will damage some internal organ. All these thousands of Hezbollah militia are forever incapacitated. You didn't kill them, but they can't hurt you in the future if let's say you decide to mount a full scale invasion on Lebanon.

> less than 1% targets dead

By now. The final value will be higher.

2k/300M people died on 9/11 and our world has forever changed. 1% is waaaay bigger than that number. Terror spreads.

TBH Israel does not concern itself about killing bystanders generally and our western press will also laser focus on hezbullah.

It's not clear whether you're asserting Israel does or doesn't care whether it kills civilians, though I think you're saying it doesn't in general try to accomplish this.

Israel's history is decidedly chequered in this regard, and there have been killings, including quite recently of demonstrators / protestors, and within recent years of journalists, by Israeli forces.

But there are also practices such as "roof knocking" in which an initial nonlethal warning is exploded above a building several minutes prior to a much more destructive strike:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roof_knocking>

Video of a roof-knock strike: <https://xcancel.com/AJEnglish/status/1710690655091990644#m>

The explosion seen doesn't significantly damage the building, that occurs in a later strike, shown as the first set of explosions here:

<https://yewtu.be/watch?v=ZFTK9V_mEjI>

(That clip follows with the initial roof-knock.)

And to be clear, much of Israel's subsequent air and artillery assault on the Gaza strip has been far less surgical, with vast numbers of structures destroyed.

By contrast, both Hamas and Hezbollah make extensive use of highly inaccurate missiles (totally unguided in the case of Hamas, guided though low-ish precision generally for Hezbollah) which are effectively aerial mines, striking randomly largely within civilian areas. This reflects both tactics and available means, so again the picture is complex. As I've written in an earlier comment on this thread, most hats are at best grey in these conflicts, rather than clearly white.

Not to get into it here, but i believe the fancy non-lethal warnings is done for the TV audience. There are so many incidents of bombings civilian areas stretching back for decades. And the statistics for the IDF killings of children alone are off the scale.

They are not only not caring about minimizing harm, they are getting away with 11 months of wanton destruction on a daily basis. Just this month, they have dropped mk84 bombs on civilian tents. What are you babbling about?

Wounded soldiers are often a bigger burden than killed ones. You neee to retrieve them, take care of them, and they may never be fight capable again. They are also a breathing reminder of the costs of war, and at the same time less likely to make others vow revenge.

If their comms are severely disrupted, yes. Even if it wasn't militarily effective, it's still quite a clever attack.

If this were coordinated with a ground attack on Hezbollah, it would be a great way to disrupt any defense right before it needs to offer resistance.

I'm surprised they used it out of such a concept. It is almost heartening, because it suggests no such attack is currently anticipated by Israel.

How do we know this didn't do this but in reverse, being used to disrupt an attack Hezbollah had planned? Edit: People seem to be ignoring the large amount of Syrian operatives this hit as well.

Or the sabotage was on the verge of being discovered and their options were either to use it at an inopportune time or lose the ability to use it at all.

And how many of those wounded are totally unconnected bystanders, who just happened to be standing next to the individual in the grocery store or wherever?

exactly. The most charitable way to look at this is Israel targeted a handful fewer bystanders than a terrorist attack. I can't imagine anyone thinking longer-term strategy thought thought this was a good idea.

Really isn't though. We don't know if there was an imminent action that Israel prevented by doing this? Did Israel do this instead of blowing up apartment blocks to target individuals, in which case this might be a much more limited collateral damage action than other methods might have caused. Without knowing Israel's motives one can't make any sort of judgement not sure why you are leaping to conclusions minus any actual information.

It's the psychology. Every sat phone and laptop is being opened up right now...

Idk who exactly was hit but losing a hand will definitely hurt ones ability to fight.

The point was probably to reduce accidental casualties. Also, the wounds can be quite severe. Finally, a device like a pager cannot hold a lot of explosive substance in its spare space anyway.

Killing isn't always the goal.

The effect of this "action" is the same as a bouncing betty. (I assume) The goal is to incapacitate and use resources.

I'm guessing it was to stop some tentative action on Hezbollahs and the huge number of Syrians that this attack got as wells parts that was about to occur.

500 blinded

> 2,750 wounded

Absolutely insane. Imagine this many Israeli had been wounder by Hammas attack.

Disgusting move from Israel to keep civilian causalities minimum! This is no excuse for 'collateral damage'

Nearly every single one injured was a Hezbollah militant. Regarding militant:civilian rates, this has one of the lowest civilian impacts of any option.

Most modern wars see MORE than 1 civilian death per militant death. This pager bomb was nearly entirely militants.

Israeli war in Gaza is the bloodiest happening right now.

These bombs went off right in front of civilian population with no regards to children or women.

Close to 3000 wounded. Wounded include children losing limbs.

> Wounded include children losing limbs.

That seems like an awful lot of explosive power for something that needs to be secretly added to a functional pocket pager without affecting external dimensions or adding perceptible weight.

Cautious skepticism is warranted, given how profitable some parties would find it to make such claims regardless of whether they are true or not.

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