> legitimate military targets during a time of war
Israel and Lebanon are not at war.
Israel and Lebanon are not at war.
A war Hezbollah declared, btw.
We may be free to choose but we are not free to choose the consequences of our actions. Even when they affect the innocent we associate with. If this is a new thought to you read a few more books.
Here are some suggestions... The Holy Bible Hillbilly Elegy The Narnia Series The Hobbit The Lord of the Rings
I never said otherwise, not sure why you think I did?
We’ll know more in the coming days on the impact, but I too feel uncomfortable even as someone who’s mostly supportive of Israel.
Not sure why you think that? If reports are true, these were relatively small bombings that only impacted people carrying a pager that was specifically handed out to Hezbollah members, and presumably only military members. There was collateral damage, but far less than there would be by even the most surgical of surgical strikes (which usually refers to sending in highly targeted missiles to take out, say, only a single apartment).
Of course we might learn that that isn't accurate, but that's the story as I currently understand it.
We don’t know at this time what percentage of these pagers were sold to and in possession of civilians.
So unlike a single phone, it certainly seems more indiscriminate.
Again, if we want to wait a bit more and see more reporting, then update, I'm all for it. But it's been a few days, and Hezbollah has already claimed that most of the people killed by pagers were their members, iirc. We also all know of the horrible and tragic death of one 9-year-old girl.
I haven't seen any reporting suggesting that there were many civilians harmed. I've certainly heard many people claiming that civilians could've been harmed, but I'd think that if there were many civilian victims, in this day and age of social media and instant communication, we'd have heard about them. I at least haven't.
Again, totally willing to change my mind. But my prior is to trust Israel to not do some kind of indiscriminate attack. Add to this reporting saying that this was targeted, add to this that several days later there aren't stories of massive civilian casualties - for now, I think it was a targeted attack.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-planted-exp...
Its a govt within a govt.
Hezbollah is not Lebanon.
Lebanon is not Hezbollah.
That said, Hezbollah and Israel have been in active bloody combat against each other since 1985.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Counci...
True, but much of that was spent by Hezbollah fighting in the Syrian Civil War on behalf of Assad (their historical benefactor in Israel).
Now that the civil war is de facto over with Assad in control of most of the country except rump Turkish and de facto Israeli (Jabal al Deize) exclusion zones, Hezbollah returned to antagonizing Israel.
The Israel-Hezbollah conflict was bound to happen even if 10/7 didn't happen.
Maybe not, but the combatants holding those devices were at war, no?
The attack wasn't as targeted as you seem to think. It also hit health workers and bystanders. Approx half the casualties are civilians (including children).
According to Humans rights watch: https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/18/lebanon-exploding-pagers...
> Thousands of pagers simultaneously exploded across Lebanon and parts of Syria on September 17, 2024, resulting in at least 12 deaths, including at least two children and two health workers, and at least 2,800 injuries, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health.
Citation needed for that. None of the news reports, even the heavily biased ones, have reported mass civilian casualties.
"two children and four health workers in a hospital in southern Beirut were among the 12 people who were killed on Tuesday."
- Public Health Minister Firas Abiad in a press conference
I expect more detailed reports will be shared over the next few days about the total casualty.
We dont know until we get more reports, like you said, it could be higher... but it could also be lower.
Children (and potentially health workers, as opposed to men of fighting age) are much more likely to die of such an explosion than men of fighting age. In other words, children will be significantly overrepresented here.
Would you hold this opinion if it was an operation by Taliban fighters on US soldiers at home on leave?
1. Hezbollah only mourned 10 out of the 26 killed so far, claiming them as members (one of them being a medic). So the 50% seems to still hold, even leaving some room for malice and mistakes.
2. Most of the explosion incidents and injuries are coming from residential areas in Beirut so statistically the percentage of civilians injured as "collateral damage" is likely high considering many of those carrying these devices were going about their life, either with family or in public places at the time.
Wrong. You claimed:
>>> Approx half the casualties are civilians
Casualties doesn't mean "those who died", it means "Injured or killed".
If you have to use a definition for a word that differs from the dictionary for your argument to work, it's your argument that is broken, not the dictionary.
Your entire argument in this thread is based on not knowing what "casualty" means.
First let's acknowledge that at least 50% of those killed are civilians and many were also injured. That's a fact, you aren't debating that, right? When you mention `my entire argument` you just mean this part "Approx half the casualties are civilians" in my original comment, correct?
What is the criteria for the evidence to satisfy your doubts? If you're demanding the government of Lebanon (or any other party) to classify Lebanese citizens who were admitted to hospitals based on their political agenda, then making such judgment is not possible even if they wanted to. To be frank, in the eyes of the government, they are all civilians, since many other political parties have arms too, if that's what you want. But of course, you don't agree with that classification and at the same time you've no counter-argument.
To be clear, this argument is more flawed. You don't know the total dead. Do you really think a militant terrorist organization in a non democratic country would immediately and/or accurately report how devastated their combat capacity is?
No, I'm specifically calling out your "50% of casualties were civilians" as pure and unadulterated nonsense.
> What is the criteria for the evidence to satisfy your doubts?
There is no way to spin this negatively: 3000 enemy combatants were targeted and 12 civilians were killed.
This must be the lowest percentage of civilian collateral in the history of warfare, and you're blithely trotting out '50% casualties' as a talking point.
I wanna see what percentage of collateral Hezbollah managed, because this is a war, you understand? Enemy action in war always has collateral, and I want to see what percentage you considered acceptable from Hezbollah.
It's not even close. And the only way it even seems like a reasonable ratio is equivocating "targeted" with "killed".
But attacks have had as low as 0% civilian collateral casualties, so even if it was 3000 combatants and 12 civilians killed, it wouldn't be the lowest percentage of civilian collateral in the history of warfare.
> I want to see what percentage you considered acceptable from Hezbollah.
War crimes on one side don't excuse war crimes on the other, and criticizing Israel for an indiscriminate attack does not imply accepting all, or even any, of Hezbollah's attacks as "acceptable". There is a good argument that at least one side must be wrong in war, there is no good argument that at least one side must be right.
Who's equivocating? 3000 combatants were targeted, 12 civilians were killed.
Where's the equivocation?
> War crimes on one side don't excuse war crimes on the other, and criticizing Israel for an indiscriminate attack does not imply accepting all, or even any, of Hezbollah's attacks as "acceptable".
Targeting enemy combatants does not in any way satisfy the criteria for "indiscriminate".
There was no "indiscriminate", there was no "mass casualties".