puts a minigun on my dryer
come and take it, I dare you
My ied is gonna make me billions. Improvised explosive dildo
Honestly, the real question to me is how many innocent people were maimed, injured, or killed in this attack. This is incredibly indiscriminate, even though the idea is that only the bad guys are holding the pages or walkie-talkies, but if they’re in a cafe they’re not the only ones getting hurt. Think of it as attaching an explosive to a thousand Hezbollah people, and then exploding them as they wander through a city. That’s the true crime, the potentially disproportionate massacre of innocent civilians.
Honestly, the real question to me is how many innocent people were maimed, injured, or killed in this attack.
Quite a bit fewer than 0.1% of the individual detonations appear to have harmed anyone except the Hezbollah operative assigned to the pager, so this doesn’t actually appear to be a question. The attack was extremely discriminate and targeted.
but if they’re in a cafe they’re not the only ones getting hurt.
In every case in which one of these went off in a cafe, the intended target was the only one hurt.
That’s the true crime, the potentially disproportionate massacre of innocent civilians.
But that isn’t what happened. The opposite happened.
Several of the victims were children. They went off in crowds. There was no way they could control that many devices with precision when they set them off all at once like that.
Several of the victims were children.
The fathers of these dead children will simply have to live with the terrible consequences of their involvement with antisemitic terror (who are we kidding, they don’t care.)
They went off in crowds.
In every such case only the agent was harmed. You’re proving how targeted the attack was.
The fathers of these dead children will simply have to live with the terrible consequences of their involvement with antisemitic terror
So the children have to pay for their father’s crimes? This isn’t really a justification, and they don’t not care, now they have a real reason for retaliation—starting the cycle of hate all over again.
Says who?
Says Hezbollah, and all reporting from Lebanon.
Source? Not being shitty but serious
Hezbollah publicly announces their war casualties so they’re the source
I don’t know how to explain that any more clearly. If you’re still puzzled, I recommend asking a question instead of posting a single word
They are asking for the source of your statement that less then 0.1% of the victims where valid targets. Since most have seen evidence to the exact opposite of that statement.
Oh and although I can put links to back that statement up, I will not. (Since that is the presiding fashion here apparently)
They are asking for the source of your statement that less then 0.1% of the victims where valid targets
Hezbollah is the source. That’s three times I’ve said so. What about that is still unclear?
Do something about it, then.
Oh man this letter is going to be worded so sternly!
this is the ultimate test of these institutions and their letters just shows they failed.
Respectfullysubmitted,United Nations
“This letter is so VIBRANT with EXTREME ANGER that it will explode… but only metaphorically.”
I bet they’re gonna BLAST them! In a literary sense
What is the UN human rights chief supposed to do about it?
He did all that was in his power:
Volker Türk told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council there must be an independent and transparent investigation of the two attacks in Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday where these devices exploded, reportedly killing 37 people and injuring more than 3,400 others.
They could all say they are going to disband if Israel doesn’t stop. Why even have the UN if they can’t do anything
Or better yet expel isreal
How would you react if the UN becomes the world government, so that they would finally have the power to stop wars and hunger that people always complain about?
Precisely.
I may be ok with that depending on the governing structure they came up with for a world government. Like would it be a democracy? Socialism? It really depends lol
But right now it seems very ineffective if America or Israel does something horrible they can just veto or whatever and nothing gets done.
As an American myself I would love it if the UN actually had powers to keep my government in line. they sure as hell don’t listen to the will of the people.
First of all, that’s also not in his power.
Secondly, how would disbanding the part of the UN that investigates human rights abuses help Palestinians?
Edit: Wait, you think the entire UN should be disbanded over this?
The UN is the only reason we haven’t had a nuclear war yet. Otherwise, countries wouldn’t have a neutral world forum.
No I think the un is mostly useless.
They are united about nothing
That’s not what the UN is for… it’s not a military force… it’s a round table for nations to work their differences out via words and not nuking each other.
People like to criticise the UN but the alternative to having the UN is having no UN. We’d be fucked
They are…
They’ve had arrest warrants out for a while, but they do t have their own police force to enforce it
It relies on member states arresting them when they enter their country. It why Bibi hasn’t been going anywhere besides America. Biden is one of the few leaders willing to side with Israel over the UN
You won’t be so smug when people stop buying iPhones.
In one sense this is much worse, and more terrifying than the run-of-the-mill IED’s used by militant groups. Having to be suspicious of everything around you would be maddening. It’s indiscriminate mass psychological warfare, where the collateral damage goes way beyond the people actually carrying the devices.
OK, I’m gonna tell a little story that we used to tell in my part of the country. In my part of the country they grow a lot of watermelons.
So there was this watermelon farmer who got upset that everybody kept sneaking into his fields at night and taking watermelons.
So he came up with his great idea that he put a sign at the edge of the field that said one of these watermelons is poison. Now he knew that no one could take a watermelon cause they wouldn’t know which one was poisoned. He was quite proud of this idea.
So we came back in the morning to see how his sign worked. And sure enough no watermelons have been taken overnight.
However, he noticed the number one on his sign had been crossed out and somebody had put two.
However, he noticed the number one on his sign had been crossed out and somebody had put two.
That is both genius and a total Bond villain origin story.
How is it “indiscriminate” if solely Hezbollah operatives were targeted?
A booby-trapped baby stroller is indiscriminate - it goes off when anyone touches it, friend, foe, or child. Israel attacked the communications of its enemy and literally nothing else. That’s inherently discriminating between friend and foe.
It’s indiscriminate because Israel doesn’t know who is in proximity of the device when it explodes, or even if the target is nearby. It’s no stretch to think one of the targets could have been frisking a journalist or aid worker when their device detonated.
That being said, the “indiscriminate mass psychological warfare” comment I made was about how the effect of blowing up common devices as an act of war will have negative psychological effects on everybody who was nearby and probably even those in Lebanon who were not nearby, and potentially even Lebanese people who were in other countries who have family back in Lebanon.
It’s indiscriminate because Israel doesn’t know who is in proximity of the device when it explodes
But they do know. They know that it’s an agent of Hezbollah, or else they would not have been issued a pager by Hezbollah.
It’s no stretch to think one of the targets could have been frisking a journalist or aid worker when their device detonated.
Ok, but that didn’t happen, so clearly it is a stretch. You’re asserting that Mossad achieved better than 99% target accuracy by accident, but the fact that it’s better than 99% proves it was no accident at all. It was a deliberate and discriminate attack on a terror network responsible for more than 8000 indiscriminate attacks on Israel in this year alone.
Alleged agent of Hezbollah receives the pager. Alleged agent places it on a table at home. Alleged agent’s innocent daughter picks it off the table and uses it as a toy prop. Signal is sent, pager explodes, and kills the daughter.
There’s an plethora of situations that could occur that result in an explosive pager being deployed while in the hands of someone not a Hezbollah agent, and that’s if we take it at face value that Mossad can identify who is and isn’t a Hezbollah agent. Wouldn’t be the first time they’ve been overzealous and killed an innocent person. May they be judged accordingly by their Maker.
Alleged agent of Hezbollah receives the pager. Alleged agent places it on a table at home.
Anybody with access to secure coms knows that they’re not permitted to allow others to access the device, including family members. So your situation is inherently implausible and ultimately comes down to the agent themselves not following the rules, with devastating consequences to their family.
There’s an plethora of situations that could occur
But they didn’t occur. So they couldn’t have occurred.
that’s if we take it at face value that Mossad can identify who is and isn’t a Hezbollah agent.
No, we just have to take it at face value that Hezbollah can identify who is and isn’t a Hezbollah agent. So that they give them a secure pager. Why wouldn’t that be the case?
I’ll also propose a counterargument: Mossad, the IDF, and Israeli gov’t in general doesn’t give two shits about collateral damage, how many innocent civilians they kill, and whether or not the intended target is a Hezbollah agent (or Hamas, for that matter). If they kill a thousand innocents for every genuine terrorist, that’s a good day in their book. “Innocent before proven guilty” doesn’t exist in their world view. Guilty by association is.
If that’s not true, they’ve got a lot of work ahead of them to improve their public image. The whole lot of them are no better than the terrorists they claim to be fighting against
Mossad, the IDF, and Israeli gov’t in general doesn’t give two shits about collateral damage
But that’s false. You’re just imagining that.
There wouldn’t still be a war in Gaza if that were the case.
If they kill a thousand innocents for every genuine terrorist, that’s a good day in their book.
Why one? Why not zero?
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Bullshit, unless you’re privy to the internal workings of alleged Hezbollah agents. Where’s your documented proof?
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So you claim that 10 year old girl who died was a Hezbollah agent? I’d sooner think you’re spewing more bullshit.
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See #2.
Bullshit, unless you’re privy to the internal workings of alleged Hezbollah agents.
No, I just have to know that they believed they were using secure coms. And they did believe that.
So you claim that 10 year old girl who died was a Hezbollah agent?
No, her father was. He didn’t have to hand her the pager and knew it was against operational rules to do so, but he did it anyway and now she’s dead.
It should have been him. I’m sure he’s relieved it wasn’t. Imagine the kind of piece of shit who’s relieved when his daughter dies in his place!
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Don’t you just have to watch out for your Hezbollah-supplied devices?
Also, fat chance they could pull the same thing off again
Yeah, Hezbollah absolutely fired their IT guy after the second time it happened.
They weren’t “ordinary devices”, they were encrypted pagers manufactured specifically at Hezbollah’s request for their own use.
We’re talking double secret probation. Super cereal shit man.
Constantly wringing my hands at the lack of adults in leadership. Accountability ends atrocity.
Yup, and it seems like more and more that it wasn’t explosives, but regular pagers tampered with to explode using parts they already contain as to not arouse suspicion.
It will be interesting to see how this impacts the reputation of Western electronics. There’s already unverified reports of Middle East markets abandoning western built phones end masse for Chinese ones.
Also wait until this technique gets into other malicious actors hands and we start seeing this attack happen everywhere. I don’t think Westerners understand what a Pandora’s box they’ve opened.
Yup, and it seems like more and more that it wasn’t explosives, but regular pagers tampered with to explode using parts they already contain as to not arouse suspicion.
Totally false.
“Yup, and it seems like more and more that it wasn’t explosives, but regular pagers tampered with to explode using parts they already contain as to not arouse suspicion.”
There’s no way this can be the case. Regular pager batteries do not explode. At most they can catch fire, but they don’t explode. There’s no way there wasn’t a high-grade explosive in each of the pages. The electronics may have been normal and triggered with regular software, but there had to be an explosive and a detonator in the pager.
What is a western-built phone? Practically all portable electronics are manufactured in Asia.
Yeah right…
Ukraine using publicly available camera Drones to drop grenades on russian invaders?
Bravo Ukraine! Very creative self-defending!!
Mossad putting explosives in items terrorists ordered to specifically to coordinate their terrorrism?
Booh! Not allowed, bad Israel!!
Israelis are the terrorists.
I don’t think they’re talking about buying something normal and turning it into a weapon. But buying something normal and getting a weapon instead.
And also, the drone allows you to pick your target.
You don’t know who’s holding or near the walkie talkie.
I’m not for or against it, I don’t feel qualified to make a judgement, but I can see the differences.
Exactly. If your drone shows children and you still Boom, you’ve chosen to commit a war crime. But with this plus the indiscriminate bombing of humanitarian centers in Gaza, it’s all war crimes all day every day. The numbers of dead children are exponentially higher than the numbers of dead Hamas, and once the critically injured innocents in Lebanon die the same may be true for Hezbollah.
You do know that Israel is not fighting against an invading force, right? That might be a slight difference when it comes to morality.
You do realize Hezbollah even having possession of those rockets was in violation of UN resolutions. The fact they’ve been launching them for nearly a year now is also a violation. Israel’s actions here are far more justifiable than Gaza.
That is in no way relevant to my point. Let me know when Hezbollah invades Israel.
They’ve been bombing Israel for nearly a year - since Oct 8, well before Israel went into Gaza. Actually, even before Israel completely recaptured the areas captured by Hamas in southern Israel.
What choice does Israel have other than to give up on 60,000 of their own citizens permanently displaced by Hezbollah?
Men with tactical coordination, trained and armed with automatic weapons, crossed an internationally recognized border by land, sea, and air. They launched thousands of ballistic missiles, killed, captured and held territory, and have repeatedly given assurances that they will do the same again and again.
If that’s not an invasion then we are just arguing semantics.
I can’t tell if you’re talking about Israel…
I think you missed an important qualifier in the statement you’re responding to. I feel if you reread the statement you’d find you’re probably both on the same page of this book.
Oh goody, more genocide apologist scum to block!
I don’t get this. It’s war, there isn’t much law. You can have agreements between countries, but is it really law if it’s not enforceable?
There’s plenty of law of war.
But you’re right, laws are worth northing if they’re not followed or enforced.
If no-one is going to stop Hezbollah, why would they stop Israel?
It’s enforceable. A war between two countries does not exist in a vacuum. The whole rest of the world can impose sanctions against the violator.
Whether they will in this case is another matter entirely.
Problem with sanctions is they haven’t proved Israel did this. Its plausible deniability
Part of plausible deniability is that it has to be plausible. There has been no plausible argument presented that Israel did not do the pager and walkie talkie attack. For that matter, there hasn’t even been a denial about it.
Then again a denial would also not be plausible. Either way, saying nothing is their best course of action.
Is that law though? No one is going to jail. Sounds more a contract or agreement.
Law between nation states is different than for citizens.
The difference is enforcement capabilities. Geopolitical enforcement is not impossible it just gets murky quick. So many different priorities.
Well, that’s up to debate.
In war there are still rules of engagement and expectations about things like “child soldiers” and “civilian casualties” and “collective punishments” etc….
But also, how much to those rules actually stop people?
Which rules are worth breaking if they prevent open war and millions of deaths?
No idea. Some deep philosophising and rationalisations around all of it is required regardless of your stance
There is international law and there are international war crimes. This could very well be a war crime. It needs to be investigated.
