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Comment by golergka | Hacker News Reader

Can you explain how ultra targeted, small explosive charges quack terrorism? I have been reading comments like this yesterday, and I'm completely bewildered as to how any sane person could come to this conclusion.

Did you consider the US operation to take down Bin Laden an act of terrorism too?

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Can you imagine being in a supermarket and detonations go off dropping people? At least 8 children have died in the pager attack.

The US did not detonate personal devices using a supply-chain infiltration, I am specifically talking about this tactic. If you feel the need to bring another conflict into this, you don't think you have an argument to stand on. Imagine this was Hezbollah detonating hundreds or thousands of devices in Israel?

> Imagine this was Hezbollah detonating hundreds or thousands of devices in Israel?

If these were devices used predominantly by IDF, I wouldn't consider it an act of terror either. However, Hezbolla prefers to indiscriminately target civilians.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/druze-shock-war-be...

Since we're bringing other conflicts into this... How come Ukraine is able to put in every effort to avoid civilian death when their opponent deliberately uses cruise and ballistic missiles on residential areas?

Because of the political will. Russia doesn't care, they never investigate nor prosecute their military for war crimes. Ukraine does.

My implication is that Israel is using tactics falling under the same umbrella as those used by terrorist organizations.

A targeted attack focusing on users of a combatants equipment? What terrorist has ever operated with such a fine tooth comb? Its quite a far cry from the usual mid east terrorist playbook of a child with a bomb vest walking into the market.

Because Ukraine was fighting on it's own territory, not the territory of the enemy. Just today, Ukrainians have blown up the Russian arms silo the size of a small town, and I don't doubt that a lot of Russian civilians have died. There's also been a lot of casualties around Kursk. There's been a lot of civilian casualties in different attacks on Crimea too. Quite a few people died when Ukrainians attacked the Crimea bridge.

And, of course, Ukranians are within their rights and do not break any laws of war. Just as Israelis.

Just as Israelis.

Except for the 503,000 living in the West Bank, the 220,000 or so (post-1967) residents of the East Jerusalem, and the 25,000 living in the Golan Heights.

(Counting the Fourth Geneva Convention under the rubric of "laws of war").

In addition all the members of the IDF and settler groups committing war crimes currently in the West Bank and Gaza.

What a Ukrainian settlement looks like when taken by Russia is predominantly on the scale of heavily damaged to totally leveled. Whereas Ukraine has taken localities without huge artillery and bombing preparation and have supplied locals hiding in the largely intact settlements with food and water, about whom Russia had forgotten - furthermore they shell and bomb towns with both Ukrainian soldiers and Russian civilians in them.

Ukraine targets exclusively war-fueling infrastructure including refineries, ammo/petroleum depots, military airfields and yes, key logistics routes like said bridge that was built by an invading country spanning over to occupied territory.

Israel has set off explosives with the knowledge that statistically many hundreds of bystanders will be in the blast casualty radius in public and private spaces. That is magnitudes more negligent and accepting of civilian casualties in comparison.

> What a Ukrainian settlement looks like when taken by Russia is predominantly on the scale of heavily damaged to totally leveled. Whereas Ukraine has taken localities without huge artillery and bombing preparation and have supplied locals hiding in the largely intact settlements with food and water, about whom Russia had forgotten - furthermore they shell and bomb towns with both Ukrainian soldiers and Russian civilians in them.

There is a lot of cities captured by Russia that have near zero damage, because UAF not used them as fortresses. There is even a mem inside UA about cities-fortresses.

> Ukraine targets exclusively war-fueling infrastructure including refineries, ammo/petroleum depots, military airfields and yes, key logistics routes like said bridge that was built by an invading country spanning over to occupied territory.

Belgorod has near zero military infrastructure. Yet missiles shell residential areas on regular basis. Death toll of civilians in this area is quite high already.

> How come Ukraine is able to put in every effort to avoid civilian death

Ukraine, which regularly shells civilian areas of Belgorod? That Ukraine?

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/belgorod-city-where-war...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62042455

Literally every week there is a several civilians dead in Belgorod area from Ukraine missiles deliberately fired on residential area.

Do you have news sources for that? Had a look but all I can find is a couple of reports from 3 weeks ago totalling 6 civilians (which is still bad!)

I'd like to see sources also, please.

I won't defend Ukraine's actions in this case -- but the sum total of reports I've seen suggest a far lower total. You will also definitely need to provide support for the assertion of "missiles deliberately fired on a residential area" (as opposed to being intercepted and then landing in those places).

> At least 8 children have died in the pager attack.

why do children have Hezbollah pagers ?

To be ultra targeted you actually have to know where your target is when your bomb goes off. When you detonate thousands at once, you're simply accepting the civilian casualty risk.

"They are hiding behind civilians" (tm)

This risk is so low it is ultra targeted. Once again, the usual ratio of civilian casualties to combatant casualties in a modern war, per UN, is 9:1. In Gaza war, this ratio is 1-2:1, so even there, Israel is already producing 5-10 times less civilian casualties.

In this case, it's thousands of enemy combatants and (at the most, according to journalists in Lebanon and therefore under Hezbolla power) a couple of dozens of civilians. Can you calculate the ratio here? Where else have you seen a military operation of this scope and with this kind of civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio?

>Once again, the usual ratio of civilian casualties to combatant casualties in a modern war, per UN, is 9:1.

>it has often been claimed that 90 percent of the victims of modern wars are civilians,[1][2][3][4] repeated in academic publications as recently as 2014.[5] These claims, though widely believed and correct regarding some wars, do not hold up as a generalization across the overwhelming majority of wars

>In Gaza war, this ratio is 1-2:1

>The Palestinian Health Ministry has estimated for most of the conflict that around 70% of the dead are women and children; these numbers have been corroborated by the United Nations and the World Health Organization. [74][75][76]. On the other hand, according to the Israel Defense Forces, an estimated less than 1:1 ratio has been reported [3][4].

I guess it depends on who you are listening to.

> ultra targeted

How positive are we that by standards didn't get the same batch of devices?

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