[flagged]
And the Mossad really has a terrible reputation, both for efficiency and for being relatively bloody. The assassinations of the nazi officials who had fled to South America are a founding myth (and a positive one, of course - no one should cry for spilled literal nazi regime blood). For a more recent example, you have the campaign of booby-trapped Hezbollah devices that killed or injured quite a few Lebanese civilians along with various militia members, which the Mossad and Israeli government more generally gleefully talked about.
You'll find far fewer similar stories about the CIA or even GRU - at least from any current events (e.g. the CIA's most heinous actions were usually only talked about years later, like their campaigns of terror in Latin America). The GRU's operations are also less talked about, no doubt to a great extent because it is an adversary, and we don't want to talk about how good our adversaries are.
It was quite possibly the most well targeted large scale military attack on a militia group in history, not to mention nonlethal to 99.5%, including Hezbollah members. What alternative military approaches do you suggest? While collateral damage is always tragic, it was almost inconceivably clean for what it managed to accomplish
If you want to discuss the merits of the operation, though: for one thing, Israel is not at war with Lebanon, so any attack on Lebanese people, even Hezbollah soldiers, is immoral (as are Hezbollah's attacks on Israel, even the ones that kill Israeli soldiers, are immoral). Secondly, even accepting that Hezbollah militia members are a legitimate war target, that doesn't make all members of Hezbollah legitimate targets. Even in war, attacking troops who are at home on leave, or attacking auxiliary personnel such as military doctors, is not considered a legitimate military target. How many of those killed were active duty military personnel, and how many were not? I would bet that the numbers are much worse than the 99.5% propaganda.
So why do all those rockets keep getting launched from Lebanon into Israel? Lebanon is either de-facto at war with Israel or is a failed state that has lost the ability to keep third party (Iranian Hezbollah) military from violating its ostensible neutrality.
We can and should condemn both Israel for indiscriminate violence against civilians, and Iran for escalating this conflict. It feels very weird to say "I don't think there's been enough international condemnation of Iran lately", given how much they've been condemned justly or unjustly my entire lifetime, but they really are both provoking a war whose consequences fall on Lebanese and Palestinians (and Israelis!), while also being a key supplier to Russia in their "illegal" war on Ukraine.
And especially not when we're literally talking about the pagers carried on their person. Basically by definition, if you are a Hezbollah member carrying a Hezbollah-issued pager on your person, and you get a message, and you actively pick up the device and look at the message - at that very moment you are acting in Hezbollah capacity.
This would be an easier complaint to make if Israeli intelligence hadn't assassinated a bunch of people by exploding pagers and then publicly taken credit for it.
I'm sure the thousand exploding pagers miraculously only managed to target Hamas members, and that no children or innocent civilians were maimed or injured.
Mossad got this reputation from back in the day with "Operation Wrath Of God", where in retaliation for the horrific Black September attack on the Israeli Olympic team they carried out a series of extra-territorial murders. History might forgive them that until they murdered a Morrocan waiter in Lillehammer by mistake.
(no excuse for generalized anti-semetism, though. People should stick to criticisms of things that Israel has actually done, not make them up)
https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-hezbollah-was-fooled-into-...
> and then gloats at press conferences with "IT WAS DEFINITELY US" t-shirts
https://www.timesofisrael.com/pms-office-confirms-netanyahu-...
It is not antisemitic, just daily news.
Look at the Pegasus spyware. Shit was sold by Israel to the Saudi's so they could track a journalist and chop him up.
Uses term "cartoonishly evil" to describe a scenario scarily close to a recent actual example.
The only way I can fathom this comment on HN is that it's masterful irony. And if that's the case, I applaud it.
If not: smh.
Edited to add two things:
1. It seems like the opposite of punching down, more like fearful respect of their capability.
2. I struggle to draw a line between criticising the efficiency with which an agency kills people and anti-semitism.
I would think that most people that consider themselves jewish, or a true believer of any religion, or just a well-adjusted non-denominational human (as rare as they are) for that matter, would respect the sanctity of life, and see the pursuit of murder, for any reason, as antithetical to their beliefs.