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Comment by Sabinus | Hacker News Reader

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

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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?

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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 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!

> 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.

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...

> 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.

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.

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.

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