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Comment by respondo2134 | Hacker News Reader

I don't see this as a smart move (let alone strategy) in any time frame. As a third-party observer greatly removed from the conflict I used to view Israel as an island under attack from terrorists. Now I'm struggling to see the differences between their activities and blowing up airplanes or launching rockets from schools and hospitals. You can say I'm naive, and why would Israel care about how I feel, but as a country and a people they only exist as long as we're their benefactor, and I don't think I'm alone in how I feel.

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> Now I'm struggling to see the differences between their activities and blowing up airplanes or launching rockets from schools and hospitals.

Well, the obvious difference is that blowing up airplanes or launching rockets at residential areas intentionally targets civilians in order to spread a maximum amount of terror among the civilian population while blowing up pagers that were used for coordinating attacks against Israel very specifically targets operatives involved in such activities.

Some of the initial footage shows such a device going off while innocent bystanders remain unharmed. You can't get any more targeted than that.

Yes, such a pager might have ended up in the hands of a non-involved person, but given the facts known so far that's very unlikely, because there's a reason those people were carrying these devices on them: They were afraid of being tracked down by Mossad in the first place.

They were lucky someone wasn't carrying one on a plane

Do we know whether or not they embedded gps tracking into the bombs?

I would think they would have that ability, not just to avoid a horrible accident like blowing up a plane, but also to gather valuable tracking intel on a terrorist organization.

My understanding is that pagers are typically radio Rx-only, and that it is not possible to track their location like a cellular device -- which is likely why Hezbollah chose to use them.

Though it would be possible to add this ability when the hardware was intercepted, a transmitting device is also easy to detect.

Two way pagers have been a thing since the 90s. You're limited to replying with a very short alphanumeric message.

That said, pagers don't continuously ping the tower like cell phones do. They can stay receive only until the moment you chose to send a message.

The AR924's in question are POCSAG pagers; broadcast from base stations and receive only at the pager end. Two way pagers are a thing but use an entirely different protocol for communications.

Most of the flight would be out of range and I’m not even sure that explosion would take out a plane. Plus it would probably be powered off because Hezbollah is serious about flight safety.

> I’m not even sure that explosion would take out a plane

I take it you would have no problem being on a plane with one (or even multiple) of these pagers going off then? What kind of argument is this?

I wouldn’t want to be near it anywhere so what’s the difference between a plane and a grocery store?

The comment implied Israel was risking blowing up an entire plane when we were discussing whether it was targeted or not.

Go play in the other room, the grownups are talking.

I wonder if it would endanger the plane. A 20g explosive sitting in the pocket of a person will clearly cause serious injury, but I am unsure if it has penetration power to actually go through the plane body. I am reminded of mythbusters experiments with small amount of explosives to block up doors, but I don't recall how much they needed in the end.

Poking holes in the fuselage of a jetliner isn't going to take down a plane. Consider the cases of a turbine fan blade taking out a window, the case where the MAX door panel blew off, the cases where the cargo door came off, and the 737 "convertible" case. You'd have to take out a large part of the structure to bring it down.

Take a look at all the photos of B-17s taking severe combat damage yet returning home. Jetliners are a lot more redundant today than the B-17s were.

However, if the hole took out the flight controls, or set a fire, then the airplane has a big problem.

In some of the cases you mentioned, there were passenger deaths due to being ejected from the aircraft. I'm on mobile or I'd link exactly which incidents but I remember at least two cases from when I was bored in a lecture and read through most of Wikipedia's "list of deaths in aircraft incidents" list or whatever it's called

Yes, there are passenger deaths from some of those incidents. But the plane wasn't brought down.

>Poking holes in the fuselage of a jetliner isn't going to take down a plane. Consider the cases of

These are all fake news. According to Hollywood, a single bullet from a gun will cause an airplane to break apart in mid-air. You can't honestly expect me to believe Hollywood movies get physics wrong.

Similarly, as soon as a car's wheels leave the ground, it bursts into a fireball according to many TV shows I've seen.

What about the person sitting next to the target?

Naturally the close quarters will results in multiple people being harmed. The question is more about the physics and if the explosives has enough penetrating power to go through the walls of the plane.

The bigger risk to the plane (and passengers) would likely be if the person carrying the explosive was working in the airport and the explosion occurred during a critical moment, like when a pilot is taxiing.

A pager wouldn’t have been able to connect to any networks at altitude.

Pagers don’t “connect” to networks.

What do they do, then? Are you implying that connections can only exist as a two way relationship? Are rivers not connected to streams, tributaries, etc?

Receiving data from a network is a connection, no matter how you want to define it.

Yes, I am definitely implying that a connection only exists in a two way relationship. Don't be obtuse.

Don’t be vague then. What do pagers do, if not connect?

The towers resend the message for a while so that they get through - some guy might be in a plane on approach to Beirut right now his pager coming into range as they land ....

From what I can find, the targeted pager-model can receive UHF messages in the 450~470MHz range. That could reach passenger jet cruise altitudes if the transmitter is strong enough.

I think it's safest to assume Hezbollah are using strong transmitters, because they'll want to be able to broadcast across rather large areas and in a way that resists potential jamming.

On the flip side, I'm having a hard time imagining these as threats to an entire airplane, given the tight constraints on how much explosive power can be secretly snuck into a functioning pager.

Penetration of 450-480MHz through the shell of an airplane would, on the ground,require a transmission strength of approximately .4dB/m at a distance of 1 kilometer, which is doable by most measures, but would quickly become unrealistic as the plane gained altitude.

https://pure.tue.nl/ws/files/68269081/560768.pdf

I was thinking about this, but then it probably wouldn't even get past a security xray scan. Which makes me think, in the 5 or so months these were reported to being in the wild, one never boarded a plane?

Hamas terrorists boarding commercial airplanes? With their secret pagers on them?

Somehow I don't think so.

> Eight killed and 2,750 wounded

Such a pager did end up hurting non-involved people, in great quantity.

I know there is a documented case of a non-involved person getting injured, but do you have evidence that this attack was not 99% effective? The attack vector was the device specifically used only by involved people.

A 9 year old child was killed, proving this attack wasn't as targeted as you think. However Israel is happy to accept any amount of collateral damage as long as it doesn't happen to them.

Any child death is tragic, but this is really one of the most targeted strikes in the history of warfare. It is safe to believe that everyone that was given a pager for secret communication by a terrorist group, is associated with such group, probably in a military capacity. Furthermore, videos show that extremely close bystanders are left unhurt.

I think this only goes out to show that criticism towards Israel waging warfare is not really about the way that warfare is fought, but really on the right of Israel to fight at all. As no one in history has achieved a more precise attack in urban setting towards a non-uniformed organization ever.

> but this is really one of the most targeted strikes in the history of warfare.

You are making that up and quoting yourself. There was not a single fire-control system onboard these pagers; there was no visual designation of the target, and no confirmation that it was being carried by it's owners. The target was broadly designated and not even discriminated on a case-by-case basis. A button was pressed, and consequences including the death of a child are now in play.

Israel has the capability to field targeted strikes on their own using domestic Litening and SPICE munitions (not to say they don't end up targeting civilians anyways). The unforunate bottom line is that this was an indiscriminate and presumptive attack that generally relies on a complete disregard for collateral damage. Innocent bystanders died, ones that would not be targeted by any morally accountable soldier in the command-and-control loop. That means an error was made, in civilized armies.

Your terrorist group is their legitimate government. In Lebanon today their legitimate government was attacked by a terrorist group.

Hamas may be the “legitimate” government of Gaza (or at least the most recently elected one), but Hezbollah is not the legitimate government of Lebanon; it’s a minority party with outsized influence in parts of Lebanon due to its militia and intelligence services.

Mine was a semantic point rather than one picking sides. I don't have a dog in the race.

There is no comprehensive information yet on the ratio of civilians to militants maimed by this attack, and any claims otherwise are propaganda.

If an enemy had exploded small remote controlled bombs in American supermarkets and homes targeting members of the American political parties, the sponsors of terrorism and oppressive dictatorships in many foreign countries, there is no question we would characterize it as a terrorist attack.

Who though? Who, exactly?

What is the quantity? Reports are the beepers were purchased directly by Hezbollah for their use.

Found it: multiple reports say 5,000 pagers

Incredible, Israel can use tiny bombs in the personal possession of terrorists and they'll still be accused of warcrimes.

Whatever words you're reading when you look at mine might be incredible, what I wrote is almost 3000 wounded in the crossfire, including children.

You're ignoring that and pretending they're accused of something else. Why?

I'm confused, how do you know the 99% of those wounded aren't Hezbollah operatives?

How many innocents would get harmed during a more conventional military strike against the same group of operatives?

I would be fairly surprised if Hezbollah opsec guidelines didn't say that you must have the pager at you at all times, and make sure it can't be accessed by others.

This is likely the most precise large scale military strike of all time. You can't control for everything - some pagers might have been in the hands of innocent people - but it sure seems like an ideal attack vector.

Why are you assuming those 2700 people weren't Hezbollah? Who else was carrying the pagers to avoid Israel location tracking?

Anyone who got resold / loaned those devices, those who were next to blast radius of those devices while going with their lives, any relatives who were unfortunate enough of having an hezbollah member in their family.

This is basically just one step above a chemical attack, and can only be excused as "the end justifies the means" by the interested parties.

> Anyone who got resold / loaned those devices

Aren't the pagers specifically for transmitting Hezbollah instructions / orders?

Why would a Hezbollah member sell/loan such a device to a non-Hezbollah member?

Beacuse it's a pager, and they're rather common in most of Egypt, Turkey and middle east countries for medical support and first-time responders.

I mean, the reason Hezbollah switched to those devices was also because they're readily available in the country.

I'd be extremely, extremely surprised if this was a "targeted" shipment rather than a generic batch that was expected to a certain degree to be bought by hezbollah members.

> I'd be extremely, extremely surprised if this was a "targeted" shipment rather than a generic batch that was expected to a certain degree to be bought by hezbollah members.

Why?

Because they're not S.P.E.C.T.R.E. It's a separatist group whose more extreme members resort to terrorism, not much differently than IRA, Basque Nationalists or Bosnian Indipendentists.

Their supply channel is the same as the civilian population, they're not shopping for vibranium from Hydra.

It would be interesting if we could trace the local distributor for those devices and see where they were available at retail, it would probably match the areas in Lebanon where members of hezbollah are commonly located.

> It's a separatist group

Are you talking about Hezbollah? If so, you're really wrong.

Prepare to be surprised. Hezbollah ordered 5000 pagers specifically for distribution to only their own terrorists for coordinating group activities.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-planted-exp...

Why would you use 80s technology that allows you to circumvent Israeli tracking, and get that from Hezbollah if you're not in cahoots with them? People in Lebanon can afford smart phones.

With the people next to the blast radius you have a point, but when targeting guerilla fighters that blend in with civillian populace it's hard to not inadvertantly target innocents too. But a small explosive device that is used by enemy soldiers and kept close to their bodies is the best way to avoid innocent casualties.

Also, Hezbollah hiding between innocents doesn't mean Israel shouldn't defend themselves. If you hide behind civillians you're the one to blame for casualties, not the party that defends against you

I guess you've never been in most of middle east. Pagers, shortwave radios and "80s technology" are still widely deployed among the general population.

Hospitals at least use it extensively still in Europe.

The NSA fights terrorism. Terrorists use encryption to evade the NSA. That does not mean that everyone who uses encryption is a terrorist.

This isn't about pagers generally, this is about a particular batch of 5,000 pagers ordered by Hezbollah. They weren't distributed to random Lebanese citizens.

Where is your evidence for your claim? Doctors and children are among the dead.

We'll need to await more info about the second wave of explosions from other devices, but the first wave was widely reported to be from a specific order of 5,000 pagers for Hezbollah, see e.g. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-planted-exp...

Again, these guys don't go to distributors saying "Hello, we're evil Inc, we want your devices for our nefarious plans!" - they were coming from a batch imported trough local resellers like...basically every other consumer retail channel.

Without taking in consideration that "Hezbollah" as a loosely defined group ranges from conservative politicians and institutions to bona fine terrorists.

These devices were being shipped in equal measure from the guys sending rockets to Israel to the local equivalent of those preppers who like to spend their weekend eavesdropping the police radio waiting for WWIII.

Unfortunately real life is a bit messier than a Tony Scott movie, and we didn't harm 5000 evil terrorists ready to destroy America and Israel from their Cobra underground lair, just a bunch of random people - a few of them genuinely bad guys (how many? thousands? hundreds? less than ten?), and everyone else who may or may have not sympathized with a group that may or may be not considered a terrorist organization, depending on who you ask.

"Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah says the group’s leadership was mostly spared during Tuesday’s attack targeting pagers that killed several members in Lebanon as they were using older devices while “new ones were sent elsewhere.”

Interesting, can you share a link for this quote? I can't find it anywhere.

https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/lebanon-explosions-h...

Thanks!

Mainstream sources are saying it was a specific shipment of 5,000 pagers, which Hezbollah ordered from Gold Apollo (a manufacturer, not a local reseller), that was tampered with.

Are you claiming that these sources are wrong, and Hezbollah actually bought them from some retailer who happened to have 5,000 units of tampered inventory?

Hezbollah employs doctors (heck, it runs hospitals) and Hezbollah personnel (in any of the political, armed, or social services parts of the organization) presumably fairly often live in households with children.

"Doctors and children are among the dead" isn't inconsistent with "this came from an order of devices specifically for Hezbollah" (it does cast doubt on "this was a precisely-targeted attack on Hezbollah combatants", but that's a very different claim.)

Yes I'm assuming not every Lebanese is a terrorist, which seems to be problematic to some. In particular 8-year-old children are probably not.

Almost 3000 wounded are not a problem if they're Hezbollah, no? The child is tragic of course, but one dead child when targeting enemy soldiers is more ethical than the dead children in deliberate attacks on civilians, which is what Hezbollah is doing.

Why are you pretending otherwise? Is it the bigotry of low expectations? Arabs/Muslims can act very reasonable and humane too, so there's no reason to measure them with a different yard stick

> Almost 3000 wounded are not a problem if they're Hezbollah, no

They are a problem in both cases. Stop the whataboutism.

The act of modifying and/or deploying the devices was targeted. That’s it.

Carrying out an explosives attack across a large geographic area that includes public spaces, with no specific intelligence on the location of the devices, or who is within the blast range, is the exact opposite of targeted.

What on earth would be more targeted than compromising pagers that only Hezbollah military is using?

At some point the criticism really gets absurd. There probably was collateral damage, yes. This is what you have to account for if you start wars against another nation. Repeatedly.

Opposite of targeted are the missiles that hit northern Israel.

For these people, there will never be an attack good enough, targeted enough, or proper enough

It's because they're not motivated by fairness but a pre existing idea of who is good or bad

In terms of collateral damage it seems much better than even the most precise missiles, though.

> You can't get any more targeted than that.

We can nuke a dictator. It's going to blow up everything within miles, evaporating millions of people, but it can't get any more targeted than that. Deal with it.

Seriously, tho, it's infuriating that a government literally triggered explosion among general public, right in front of innocent eyes. This is an act of terrorism, harming the lives of innocent people who've been largely unrelated to the conflict.

> blowing up airplanes or launching rockets at residential areas intentionally targets civilians in order to spread a maximum amount of terror among the civilian population

Which is exactly what Israel has been doing for decades by

installing an apaitheid regime https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_apartheid

colonizing palestinian land https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli-occupied_territories

kicking hundreds of thousands of people off of their homes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba

putting guns on their head day in day out https://www.msf.org/palestinians-face-harassment-and-violenc...

running on them with tanks while their families must watch https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6385?s=35

destroy the graves in an attempt to dehumanize even more https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_razing_of_cemeteries...

and on and on and on since a time when none of us was even born. Let's not pretend Israel is the good guy here. There are no good guys, and while I don't accept the acts of Hezbollah, what is a colonized people being genocided to do when the world doesn't care about them being denied human rights ?

> running on them with tanks while their families must watch https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6385?s=35

Wow. Just, wow!.

They run a tank over the mother until assassinate her in front of their four children? Really?

I'm speechless. This is an absolutely hideous act

Many people fail to see this. You can't compare a terrorist attack that intentionally targets civilians with no apparent military target to a legitimate attack on a defined military target that unfortunately results in some collateral damage.

Many people fail to see this because they have an intact moral core. Conducting a military operation that has a fully predictable rate of civilian casualties is morally equivalent to targeting those civilians.

Israel has utilized a rate of expected civilian to militant casualties in Gaza at the rate of 100:1 [1].

[1] https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

> Conducting a military operation that has a fully predictable rate of civilian casualties is morally equivalent to targeting those civilians.

By that logic only the absolute number of (expected) civilian deaths matters... which can't be right.

If it were true, then exploding a city bus (1 soldier, 10 civilians) would be more moral than striking a military base (1,000 soldiers, 11 civilians.)

It would also suggest a kind of blame-shifting if one side decides to install their missile launchers in the playgrounds of elementary schools or whatever.

You are simply incorrect. “Rate” is a ratio, not an absolute number.

But to your point, Israel’s ratio in Gaza was as high as 100 civilians to 1 soldier in the shopping mall (or more accurately, refugee family shelters).

> “Rate” is a ratio, not an absolute number.

No, you've cut off the crucial second half of the sentence, which says a military operation with known risks of civilian deaths "is morally equivalent to targeting those civilians."

The phrase "those civilians" refers to a countable quantity of them.

Perhaps you meant to write "morally equivalent to targeting that proportion of civilians"?

This isn't pedantry, but what are you arguing?

Assuming that's a plural "you", I would paraphrase the subthread like this:

_________

(1) zer0x4d: "Many people fail to see that morality depends on intent, there is a qualitative difference between deliberate and incidental collateral damage."

(2) abalone: "No, only people suffering from broken moral cores think there's a difference. An attack when they knew a predictable rate of collateral damage is morally the same as deliberately targeting those civilians who died."

(3) Terr_: "It's based on the number of civilians who die? That doesn't make sense. Consider these scenarios, where even though fewer civilians die, the intent/planning of the act makes us judge it as morally worse."

(4) abalone: "Incorrect, I said it was about comparing the two rates of death."

(5) Terr_: "Well, that's not quite what you wrote earlier, is this other version closer to what you meant to convey?"

(6) beedeebeedee: "What is being argued?"

(7) Terr_: [Error: Recursion depth exceeded]

Hi Terr, the "you" was singular (and in reference to you, in particular). You paraphrase the subthread well enough, but your first comment within it misinterpreted what Abalone said.

> > Conducting a military operation that has a fully predictable rate of civilian casualties is morally equivalent to targeting those civilians.

>By that logic only the absolute number of (expected) civilian deaths matters... which can't be right.

Abalone (as well as myself, many others, including the signers of the Geneva Convention) is concerned about the use of force against a civilian population where it is predictable that there will be a high rate of civilian death. Abalone says that is morally equivalent to targeting those civilians and Abalone is correct (it is, in fact, a war crime). It is not necessarily about absolute number of civilian deaths, so your counterexample does not succeed.

I think the argument boils down to "what does it mean to target civilians?"

if 100 die to get 1 soldier, that sounds like targeting civilians. If 1 dies to get 100 soldiers, that sounds like (to me and many others) a successful and targeted attack with minimal collateral damage.

The argument being made sounds like if you know there could be 1 death that you should not target the soldiers and that there is no difference in that case to the 100 civilians to 1 soldier and as such, if any civilian could have been estimated to be collateral damage then no military action should have been made.

I think that is supercilious and discounts reality. Civilians are going to get killed and war is terrible. There is a difference in targeted ratios.

There are many points on this grey line, and we often fail to recognise those in the middle. For example, between your two points is a very significant type of action that this one may well fall under: an attack on a military target that you are fully aware will result in significant collateral damage.

> you are fully aware will result in significant collateral damage.

and the terrorists deliberately place themselves in a position where attacks on them results in massive collateral - aka, they want a human shield.

Israel also do bad things. Maybe it flies under the radar of being called terrorism by the west - but look at west banks settlements, jailing kids forever for throwing stones, turning Gaza into something that makes Mad Max look like a dream in the name of self-defence, appartheid conditions in Israel and the occupied territories. Offensives on Gaza before Oct 7 - 2023 was particularly bad, and the general embargo aroudn Gaza that made life pretty rotten before the current war - etc.

Israel do enough operations that ticks the "look we killed soldiers guys!" box and they really like to get media attention on that. Otherwise it is "Hamas was hiding there". Hard to verify - they may be right sometimes, but I bet not all the time based on the the number of deaths and the amount of destruction in Gaza.

> jailing kids forever for throwing stones

This isn't happening. Kids are being jailed for throwing stones, yes. Just like you or I would be jailed if we threw a rock at a cop. But it is not "forever".

> Some of the initial footage shows such a device going off while innocent bystanders remain unharmed.

This is anecdotal and misleading. There are reports of civilians maimed including the murder of a child. This is entirely plausible due to the indiscriminate nature of these bombs with respect to immediate bystanders.

If an enemy had set off thousands of small bombs in American supermarkets and homes, maiming thousands of whoever was nearby and killing children, we would undoubtedly call it a mass terrorist attack.

2000+ bombs hurting 2000 fighters and one child? I'd argue that almost no war is without collateral damage, but this one action might be uniquely low in the amount of collateral damage done.

> This is anecdotal and misleading

I saw 5 videos and in every case only the person carrying the pager was hurt. Even people less than a foot away weren't harmed. Look at the video on the front page of nytimes.com right now to see what it's like. Highly targeted at Hizbullah soldiers, no bystanders hurt. The exact opposite of "indiscriminate".

You're working yourself up into some righteous anger about this, which is fine, that's your choice. But at least recognise that that's what you're doing. You need a certain narrative to be true so you're twisting facts to suit that.

> no bystanders hurt

This is incorrect. There are reports of maimed civilians and a murdered child.

There is no comprehensive information yet on the ratio of civilians to militants maimed by this attack, and any claims otherwise are propaganda.

Sure, there has been at least one civilian death, and others might be reported later. While we don't have numbers yet, the evidence so far suggests a low ratio of civilian casualties, probably much lower than what's possible using convention warfare against an enemy embedded in a civilian population.

There are 100,000+ northern Israeli's who are refugees inside Israel because Hezbollah is firing hundred of rockets indiscriminately daily at civilian targets, but Israel doing something specifically targeted at higher level Hezbollah operatives makes you feel like Israel is doing exactly the same thing? All while you don't even yet know the reason for the Israeli op (was it to stop an imminent Hezbollah action? Seems odd that this also impacted so many operative in Syria, doesn't it? Why aren't people mentioning that this was larger than Lebanon?)

Why? Why is Hezbollah firing rockets into Israel?

You don't mention Gaza or Palestinians, yet it's right there (and been there for 75+ years).

Hezbollah is firing rockets to conduct terrorism on the civilian population living in the area. Are you are OK with terrorism if you feel it's justified?

And you don’t mention Iran

> Why is Hezbollah firing rockets into Israel?

Hezbollah states that their aims include destroying Israel, instilling a Muslim government in the land, and converting the people to Islam.

They have explicitly said that they will never coexist peacefully.

Nice, using Islam as a scapegoat. Lebanon is a democratic republic that has 43.4% Christian population. If that is their intention, why not focus on their country first rather than attacking Israel?

Lebanon had a civil war along religious lines. There are many Lebanese Christians in the USA that could help you with what seems to be a misunderstanding about the country.

Hezbollah's founders writings at the time are available online, and that they are clear about their goal being the rule of Islam. Their slogan was 'The Islamic Revolution in Lebanon'. They were founded as an Islamic revolutionary group, that is very core to who they are. Highlighting that is hardly 'using Islam as a scapegoat' whatever that means.

You are mentioning a civil war that happened a decade ago that is by no means exclusive to Hezbollah. I couldn't care less what their founders wrote, but, strangely, they care about the rule of Islam in Israel when their president is a Maronite Christian and their party is one of the parliament members. I can agree that they are Iranian proxies for war against Israel, but it's far from installing Islamic rule. I mean they are also responsible for the secular movement that comprised many religious factions [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Resistance_Brigades

I'm referring to a time when Hezbollah was founded. Kind of important to an organization, it's founding, and it's reason for being founded, don't you think?

You are trying to obfuscate Hezbollah's public statements calling for Islamic rule. Hezbollah wants Islamic rule and Sharia law for Lebanon, they are very clear about this. Currently realities that they have to put up with do not change that. They are also clear all of their actions and philosophy is consistent with and based on Islamic teaching. Again it is not deceptive to point out they are an Islamic organization.

Yeah but what pissed them off so much? (spoiler: it was Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon)

From the first two sentences on wikipedia

> The 1982 Lebanon War began on 6 June 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon. The invasion followed a series of attacks and counter-attacks between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) operating in southern Lebanon and the Israeli military that had caused civilian casualties on both sides of the border.

You asked "but what pissed them off so much". Maybe it was the PLO operating in Lebanon, not sure.

> Why is Hezbollah firing rockets into Israel?

Why, Israel sent them a page and they are merely returning the call, as would be the right thing to do among polite company.

By firing thousands of rockets indiscriminately into civilian areas? That is polite, civil, and worthy of a joke to you?

Well, yesterday’s actions aren’t really gonna fix that situation for those 100,000 Israelis now though are they? It wasn’t designed to make that border region safer overnight because those rockets are going to keep coming even more often now. Hezbolah might even get so pissed off they go all out and rush the border.

It absolutely alleviates the situation. The rockets were going to be fired either way. Now with a few dead, a bunch of wounded, and a communication channel disabled, it's going to be harder to coordinate future rocket attacks.

There are old stories of the Russians planting mines inside children's toys during some of the later cold war conflicts. This is starting to feel a bit like that. Nobody had any way of knowing who was holding those pagers when they sent that packet but they still distributed thousands of munitions throughout the populace and pressed the red button. Now there are probably at least a hundred or so still out there that haven't exploded and are just live UXO sitting in people's desk drawers.

I'd say it's pretty fucked.

It is morally fucked to compare trapping children's toys with trapping the communications devices of soldiers in a war.

So you can guarantee every single pager went to a solider of war? By that logic, soldiers in the Ukraine war also use cellphones and drones so it's A-OKAY to implant bombs in those products too?

There are acceptable levels of collateral damage.

You can bomb an ordnance storage facility even if there's a hospital right next to it (or, in fact, right not on top of it).

They've made sure the pagers were used by Hezbollah first and foremost, tough shit if few were given to kids to play.

And yes if Ukrainians were able to blow up all drones within say 50km of the front lines on the Russian side they'd be justified to do that, even if some were in civilians' hands.

You've been victim of what's called manufactured consent.

Why hasn't Israel allowed any investigations in Gaza, not showing evidence they're using to obliterate practically all of Palestine now, not allowing foreign journalists in either to document things?

This is just a bunch of non-sequiturs.

It logically fits, you're just avoiding and trying to control the goal posts/scope of what's talked about.

You'd prefer we mostly only talk about Oct. 7th and afterward, right?

No, we sure can go all the way back to 1948 and talk about how Israel gained territory in a series of defensive wars, Palestinians and their Arab allies getting their asses handed back to them every single time.

We'll sure find some occurrences of Israel chasing away Arab civilians early on, but that's beside the point. This attack, and the absolute majority of Israel attacks of the last decades, target enemy combatants, and civilians only ever suffer collaterally. Israel never mounted an attack on civilians, and went very far in reducing civilian casualties when attacking combatants - roof knocking and all that.

Cool, let's go further back than that - but I'll start it off with putting a thought exercise forward to you, with this scenario:

Due to your compassion for the displaced Palestinians, most of which who's homes have been obliterated - if they weren't "killed" themselves,

What % of your assets/land/property that you own will you be willing to give the Palestinian citizens to support them after this atrocity?

Remember, in this scenario you're not being forced to give this - it's out of the goodness of your heart. What percentage would you give?

How about 54% of everything you own?

And so in conclusion, I'm most curious if you will avoid answering because you'll see my point and your answer will out you as a hypocrite?

I'll have followup questions if you're willing to engage and not fearful to engage in discussion.

How 'bout 0%? I have zero compassion with displaced Palestinians - they were wronged, but what they did after was so much wronger.

We both know how Palestinians repaid those who was kind to them- by Lebanon Civil War and Black September. Israel was ready to cede what it won in defensive wars, they got out of Gaza, built infrastructure and invested in businesses to provide jobs.

Palestinians had countless opportunities to make peace and live a better life. They choose war every single time, made Dalal Mughrabi their hero, dug up water pipes and made missiles out of them.

These weren’t sold at a Best Buy.

They were purchased by a known terrorist organizations that any westerner would go to jail for having a financial relationship with .

The types of people they deal with to buy anything at all - including black market weapons and machinery - are dubious

The US does these exact same things to infiltrate Mexican cartels

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Two things: 1) This is war. It's not pretty and it's never not messy.

2) This is precisely why every human, and every leader of humans, should avoid war at all costs. The image of a "clean" war is a myth. Even the Allies in WWII were not immune to this, see the bombing of Dresden[1].

Whatever you think of either side in this, it's clear that neither is doing enough to end this.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden

Compared to carpet bombing and leveling whole cities, we have come a long way

No, we are not "good with it".

Becouse we don't do "eye for eye" in the West.

Becouse christianity formed our societes like this. With help of Romans...

Becouse we learned about separating religion from power, law, medicine, science, etc. Some tries to get rid of religion completly but that another subject.

And it is absolutely sure US agency would not do such thing on "USA soil".

But down there is a open battle in WW3 - Israel delivered something to Ukraine and next day rockets started falling on them, fired by suicidal ponies.

Even if up to 30% of casualties were civilian this would still be quite a surgical strike in my opinion. At 50% I would not say so anymore. Nobody knows yet anyways.

How could I possibly personally guarantee that?

If your standard for engaging in military action is that they must be able to prove to you personally that their target is really a militant, you are completely delusional.

Well we're up to two children dead

Yes. Except there are credible reports of Israel also doing this in the past. "Israeli fighter planes have also attempted to kill children by dropping thousands of booby-trapped toys on Lebanese villages and towns. The Israeli occupying forces have used this method through the years and continue to do so, the most recent example being when booby-trapped toys were dropped on the town of Nabatiyah, killing and injuring children and permanently disfiguring others." https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-180386/ https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/227779/Mariam%252C_res...

"Israeli fighter planes have also attempted to kill children by dropping thousands of booby-trapped toys on Lebanese villages and towns. The Israeli occupying forces have used this method through the years and continue to do so, the most recent example being when booby-trapped toys were dropped on the town of Nabatiyah, killing and injuring children and permanently disfiguring others." https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-180386/

>as a country and a people they only exist as long as we're their benefactor

Why do so many people think this? If the US stopped "giving" them "military aid" which is actually just disney dollars to spend in the US military industrial complex they would be out a small percentage of their defense budget.

> as we're their benefactor, and I don't think I'm alone in how I feel.

It's undoubtedly true the US supports Israel generally, but Israel is more capable of its own.

No one's alone in how they feel.

jesus, this is going to make taking electronics on aircraft damned near impossible now.

Surely airport security scanners scan for explosive material

The explosive scanning is the thing where they pull some people out of line and run a wand over you and your gear, then put it into a machine and wait a few seconds for the analysis.

To a point, but it's spot checks at best; a state actor has full access to the wide range of explosive compounds, surely there's some that wouldn't be detected (or that can be handled and packaged in such a way that it doesn't get detected)?

Just like everything else 90s the transparent iMac G3 look is going to be coming back only in the non-ironic prison use for having everything in a clear case (to check for contraband).

This is probably the biggest impact tbh. I wonder if the US public would support these actions if it knew it was going to come back on them with longer TSA lines.

When you don't treat people who are brutally uncivilized with civility, it isn't long before people forget who the bad guy is and where it all started. If you are a civilized society, you have to treat the uncivil with civility. You have to set an example.

Your perspective is that the Palestinians are brutally uncivilized?

I think it is more telling you made that assumption.

I was trying to bridge a communication gap by offering an interpretion. In truth I don't understand your comment at all, but I never go to stack overflow empty handed for example.

"Israel orchestrating an attack against the terrorists they're at war with makes me think less of them" is certainly an opinion. A batshit fucking stupid opinion, but you're entitled to it nonetheless.

Please don't vote.

They were never different. They just speak English better than the arabs.

you should really take a rigorous look into the history of early Israel and the ideologies of its founding members like Hertzl and Jabotinsky. They have always been terrorists.

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