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Comment by buran77 | Hacker News Reader

> “These attacks represent a new development in warfare, where communication tools become weapons, simultaneously exploding across marketplaces, on street corners, and in homes as daily life unfolds,” UN human rights chief Volker Türk told the Security Council last Friday. “Authorities have reportedly dismantled unexploded devices in universities, banks, and hospitals.”

Calling it just "warfare" greatly detracts from the terrorist nature of this scandal.

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This was no different than any other terror attack. The person pushing the button had no visibility into who was holding the device and who would be injured in the blast radius. These sorts of attacks have always been possible, and most counties have not chosen to go this route due to the trickledown effect on society at large if they lose confidence in the safety of things they use every day,

I'm not at all worried that any of my electronics are about to explode. Same reason I'm not worried my wedding will be blown up by a drone strike - I don't let terrorist infiltrate my society. If my family gets blown up because my neighbor was storing a cruise missile in his living room - he's my enemy. Not the person that blew them up.

This didn't happen only in living rooms... this was among the civilian and non-involved populace. It happened outside their homes, inside restaurants, inside malls.

So, if someone sets off a bomb in a mall...to kill a terrorist... it's not a terrorist act?

And do these people really have the POWER to not let terrorist infiltrate their society?

That's exactly it, it could have been sitting on a coffee table with kids playing around it. Terrorists bad, governments stooping down to the same level is also bad.

> So, if someone sets off a bomb in a mall...to kill a terrorist... it's not a terrorist act?

No, by definition a terrorist act is done to cause “terror”

These were assassinations with collateral damage

If the person blowing them up takes out the entire city block that happens to include my family, then the person blowing them up is also my enemy. Your family dies as collateral damage and your reaction is "enh, they did what was necessary"? What if your wedding is blown up by drone strike because of some analyst's mistake, or choice to err on the side of "probably terrorist"?

> some analyst's mistake

You are seriously downplaying how such decisions are made.

I'm sure there's more checks and verifications and signoffs than just "Bob says go!" I'm also sure that such processes are still very fallible [0], as demonstrated by any number of friendly fire incidents over the last few decades [1], or the London Metro Police shooting a Brazilian electrician on the train [2], or the IDF shooting three Israeli hostages trying to surrender [3]. Some mistakes, some bad decisions, some practices allowed that hadn't gone wrong until now... if my innocent family is dead because of that, I'm definitely not going to excuse them because someone else started the fight. And my willingness to allow for accidents in the fog of war is going to shrink every time such accidents are repeated, or revealed to be policy rather than mistake, or just an unwillingness to do anything to avoid them.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bombing_of_the_C...

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

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jean_Charles_de_Me...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Alon_Shamriz,_Yotam...

[edit: fix formatting and correcting info]

From the Zionist playbook to term any opposition to their occupation terrorism, and excuse collateral damage. Consistency further demands you support Trump who wanted to penalize families for the actions of individuals. Sorry, collective punishment is a war crime even if your bloodlust supports that.

What visibility do you have when you drop a bomb on a building?

When you fire a gun in combat at a target?

People who have no idea how warfare actually works have unrealistic expectations about this.

The trickle-down effect is intentional and important. Terrorists are using off the shelf technology to kill civilians and communicate. They should know that they can be hit anywhere. This is an organization that killed hundreds of Americans and fires at civilians ±25 rockets per day.

https://github.com/golergka/golergka/blob/main/israeli-pager...

The difference is:

1. Who is targeted

2. Objective of the attack

3. Value of military objective compared to expected collateral damage

In other words, everything. This attack is one of the most targeted and surgical attacks of this caliber in the history of warfare. Seeing comments like this on HN really kills my faith in humanity.

That's not what terrorism is. People seem to have forgotten in war you're allowed to kill anyone on the other side that is engaging in war against you. There aren't any times outs or safe spaces.

That's war starting wars is a bad idea.

>The person pushing the button had no visibility into who was holding the device and who would be injured in the blast radius.

You sound like someone who is amazed and flabbergasted by the Iranian ambassador having (and being injured by) one of those pagers.

A joke I saw:

"Why did the Iranian ambassador have a Hezbollah pager?"

"Because he left the Hamas pager at home."

I don't who is responsible for this amazing surgical attack. If someone thinks he can fight terrorist hiding missile under people homes without any coletral damage he probably never suffer terrorist attacks

Terrorism implies the targets are non-combatants, and that was intentional. That's not obvious here.

Opening the door to supply chain attacks like this is a huge problem, but I'm not sure it was illegal under IHL.

The targets included non-combatants intentionally. Was trying to hijack a plane and hit the Pentagon not a terrorist attack then since the Pentagon is full of military members?

>The targets included non-combatants intentionally.

No, it didn't.

Answer my other question

It's not applicable. I don't feel any need to answer a complete non-sequitur.

Sure it did. Setting off bombs in residential areas will always have non-combatant casualties.

"Intent" mind reading or not. This is what happened and is a terrorist act.

Setting off bombs frequently results in non-combatant casualties no matter where it happens. Hezbollah has no "military bases" so I don't know what you expect.

The existence of non-combatant casualties doesn't make the strike illegal.

The attack on the Pentagon was illegal because it happened without an act of war and was unprovoked. This is an organization that fires 25 missiles on civilians every day. It's enabled by all of its people, also the desk clerks who enable this. If you're working for a terrorist organization that fires on civilians and killed hundreds of Americans then you should expect some payback.

Your last sentence could literally be pulled from some terrorist "Why we attacked you" screed if you just swapped out "Americans" for some other group.

That's how the terrorists phrase it so yes. But that's taking them at their words rather than taking them at their actions.

The biggest difference is: in this case the terrorists get the payback. The people who are actually guilty/related to that. Organizations like Hezbollah target civilians and fire blindly at entire regions.

There are quite a lot of other differences, I suggest avoiding false equivalencies of this sort.

It's not a false equivalence. Both Hezbollah and Israel have been firing blindly at entire regions and knowingly hitting civilians behind the claim that there is a military target intended somewhere in there. The difference may be ideological, geopolitical, etc. but it is not that one side follows the rules and the other breaks them.

Again, repeating terrorist claims on face value. You choose to believe people who tried to deny killing 12 children in a soccer stadium. People who helped Assad stay in power. People who killed countless Lebanese people, their own fing people... Over Israel. Why?
I get that Israel has a lot it needs to improve on, but it has been remarkably "clean" compared even to American war standards e.g. https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urb...
It didn't bomb civilian areas knowingly, that would constitute a war crime and would immediately trigger the Leahy Law that would block all aid to Israel https://www.state.gov/key-topics-bureau-of-democracy-human-r...
If there was a shred of actual *real* evidence of Israel intentionally targeting civilians it would be in US courts right now trying to enforce that law. The fact is this is all online propaganda where facts don't actually matter and proof isn't necessary... Speaks volumes...
> The difference may be ideological, geopolitical, etc. but it is not that one side follows the rules and the other breaks them.

If your ideology is global Sharia law then sure... If you hate the West then sure. It's just ideology. Their ideology is that Israel should be wiped out. The ideology of Israel is that it's already there and should remain there. I don't think calling this "different ideologies" is a legitimate stance.

Pretty much every legal expert I've seen thinks the targeting of the attack is perfectly legal. The primary legal issues will be whether or not it legally constitutes a "booby trap", which may be illegal.

IMO, it's a categorical error to say that putting an explosive in a secure pager purchased in bulk order by an internationally recognized terrorist militia is equivalent to rigging a door to explode when anyone (no matter who) opens it. Yes, the actual wording of the law doesn't do a great job of delineating the two situations, but let's not pretend there's not a difference.

When the law was written, the distinction between "civilian use" and "military use" was far far more clear than it is today. Militaries around the world use off the shelf commercial equipment today. A "commercial radio issued to military personnel" doesn't feel like it should be given a pass as being "civilian" because the type of object it is can be purchased by anyone. In practice it was specifically handed out as a military-use item to members of a military organization.

These weren't civilian pagers, they were specifically tied to Hezbollah's comms network which is separate from Lebanese civilian infra.

Which makes it even more clear that the pagers shouldn't be classified as "civilian objects", yes.

> That's not obvious here

The method of delivery is too imprecise to guarantee only (or even mostly) the combatants are targeted. A targeting system that was "blind" by design (intention) was almost guaranteed to harm civilians inside civilian buildings, and it did. Terror is a big component of terrorism and the goal of terrorizing civilian population with random explosions and death around them was definitely achieved. In effect this was a slightly more targeted version of bombing a hospital because some military targets are there. Also from the quote above:

> “Authorities have reportedly dismantled unexploded devices in universities, banks, and hospitals.”

I don't know if people are picking up the context shift here.

It's true the UN is unanimously anti Israel for most of its existence. This isn't a change. And of course Israel ignores the UN, also not a change.

The Lebanese/Hezbollah better wise up. The Israelis outgun them by inconceivable degrees, and like the Palestinians, were only saved from the usual historical result of annihilation by the politics of oil for the last 75 years.

However:

1) the USA is oil independent with shale oil, and has no functional interest in the region anymore

2) the Saudis, who no longer have the us military as de facto mercenaries on demand and longtime funder of anti Israel groups, need a military power against their biggest threats (Iran and turkey), and are now allies with Israel.

3) yes saudi oil is still important to China,Japan, and Europe, but EVs and alternative energy are poised to make oil a strategically insignificant product in the coming decades, one that can be easily sourced by major militaries without caring about the muddle east.

Anyway, so people arguing about who is the terrorist and who is the valid nation state are arguing from the context of an international trade system that gives a damn about the region being stable.

Israel knows the new rules: nobody cares, just like nobody cares about the Tigers war and nobody cares about Armenia Azerbaijan and whatever other hotspots around the world. Hezbollah and Palestinians need to wake up to this reality, even though the sad fact is that they won't as long as Iranian funds are the only thing that keeps the lights on for them.

Most of the world cares. Like they did when South Africa was merrily apartheid-ing. Only the American establishment doesn’t care, but hopefully that will change with progressives hitting a critical mass.

This attack has nothing to do with terrorism. I've grown tired of seeing this claim again and again, and wrote everything up here if you're interested.

https://github.com/golergka/golergka/blob/main/israeli-pager...

Oh it's not terrorism if it's done by a US-backed vassal state. /s

This would be a lot easier if Israel really was a vassal. Then we could decree that they halt the offensive and settle with the Palestinians. As it is, this ally has their own goals which don’t always align with the goals of the US.

It's more like the US is a vassal of Israel. Obviously, we bend over backwards for Israel

That and the inherent risk of fucking with a supply chain. I saw a lot of people covering for Mossad saying they were sure it was going to Hezbollah so it's all fine.

I guess people trust and simp for intelligence agencies now or maybe there was a lot of operatives in that thread... who knows.

To be fair, the supply chain angle was probably the main point of the attack- it’s a psychological flex in the highest order, you can’t even trust your equipment anymore.

I wonder if we should come up with a term for an attack whose goal is to sow fear and distrust rather than accomplish a concrete military objective.

That's pretty much certain: First the pagers, then after they have a chance to switch devices the walkie talkies were detonated the same way.

That's generally what sets terrorism apart from "regular" crime. Of course, if you're a civilian anywhere near one of these pager-bombs when were triggered it's going to have the same effect.

The blast radius of trust is much larger though. If we don't have a reliable way of stopping similar attacks in the future then it's pretty bad for everyone, not only for Hezbollah.

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