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Comment by prepend | Hacker News Reader

> Israel not only pushed them into the middle of a war that is not their war, without their consent or knowledge;

Weren’t they already selling pagers to Hezbollah? It seems like they were already in the war as a supplier of goods to a terrorist organization.

I wonder if this is why Israel made this move because the manufacturer was already breaking international sanction by supplying Hezbollah so they have little recourse.

If I was the CEO of Gold Apollo, I’d be investigating why my franchisee was selling stuff to Hezbollah in the first place.

But it’s beepers and only 5,000. How expensive is this at the end of the day? It’s probably the last time a company lends then brand name for a small amount.

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> Weren’t [Gold Apollo] already selling pagers to Hezbollah?

Selling pagers to Lebanon citizens is legal if I'm not wrong.

Not necessarily. At this moment, all suggests that somebody (Ehem, Mossad) was impersonating a reseller of the brand [1]. How do they knew that the buyers were from Hezbollah?. Did the buyers wear a t-shirt?. What if somebody was buying it to resell it later and bank some profit?. This stuff could ended being sold to innocent people, or distributed by all the schools of Lebanon.

[1] New facts can change this picture and I may be wrong about this.

> If I was the CEO of Gold Apollo, I’d be investigating why my franchisee was selling stuff to Hezbollah in the first place.

Agree. Definitely, the maker should make a move about that, just to be sure. And to be very transparent about that investigation.

> Selling pagers to Lebanon citizens is legal if I'm not wrong.

This is true. But only the thousands of Hezbollah pagers blew up, right? There are a lot of details needed to see if they knowingly supplied Hezbollah or just sold a big batch to a random customer. I assumed, perhaps falsely, that a 5000 pager order for Lebanon is pretty specific and does anyone really use pagers any more? My thinking was that this is a specific tech used by Hezbollah. Although it is a consumer tech, maybe pagers are super popular in Lebanon. But 3000 people were injured so I thought that the vast majority of these pagers were used exclusively by Hezbollah.

My point is their stuff was already in a war. Israel making them explode doesn’t seem to change that.

> only the thousands of Hezbollah pagers blew up, right?

Hopefully! Just out of curiosity I had a look for that brand of pager on eBay, but didn't see any. I'd hate to think that there were a few rogue units out there that had potential to cause harm!

They were most probably devices sold at retail in areas where members of hezbollah are located.

You could be right

After ABC news, "an AP photographer in the city of Sidon saw a mobile phone shop damaged after devices exploded inside".

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/gold-apollo-p...

It may be legal but with little or no civilian demand due to preference for cell phones. The only person I know with a pager is an on call doctor.

> Weren’t they already selling pagers to Hezbollah?

Apollo pagers are everywhere and sold through resellers through out the world, even in the US. Let’s not do Hasbara-style speculation

> Weren’t they already selling pagers to Hezbollah?

I don't have info about those specific models, but this is pagers and not rockets. If someone makes an order for 5000 units I can't image you'd have an expectation to do a background check with references.

It's basically like ordering 5000 units of Raspberry Pi, would you consider that a military export?

Raspberry Pis ending up in Russian weapons used in Ukraine is currently an issue actually, which it's illegal to export them to Russia.

For the US, at least, I am forced to confirm that those 5000 raspberry pis aren’t going to a terrorist organization. Isn’t the EU the same way? So it’s not that it’s a military export, but that it’s a sanctioned organization (Iran and Hezbollah).

How are you realistically able to do this though? It's not like they can't order batches to some neutral-country intermediary and then ship them from there.

It's about assigning liability and making it more difficult, not a definitive solution.

Communications equipment is commonly restricted for it's potential military use.

The company was just an letter box. Apollo HongKong produced these devices: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x50wwGjX2Ao

Only the military wing of Hezbollah is considered a terrorist group by the EU, so a Hungarian company could legally sell them equipment provided it was to the political or social arms of the organization (how they determine this with an obviously fluid org like that I'll never know).

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