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How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

reuters.com

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Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#101

Post by JumpCrisscross »

dttze wrote: post #97
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you strip away the violence and Islamic extremism and all of that then the uncomfortable reality is ... they're not wrong in their core objections Sure. Wars' aims usually aren't irrational. Both sides seem to be somewhat flippant about collateral damage. But Hamas and, to a lesser degree, to my knowledge, Hezbollah stand out for explicitly and proudly targeting Israeli civilians. > why I think you can't really…

[flagged]

> Hamas or Hezb target civilians more than the IDF

Never claimed as much. The point is Hamas and Hezbollah explicitly target civilians. (The October 7th raid had a modest CCR of 2:1 inasmuch as there were 766 civilian and 273 security casualties [1]. Break down some of the raiding parties, however, and the CCR is much higher. Comparable to some of Israel's worst raids, or Russia's war in Chechnya.)

> IDF has killed orders of magnitude more civilians than either

This is how multiplying a big scalar by a smaller ratio works.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Israel%E2%80...

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#102

Post by ls_waiting »

throw32i3ii wrote: post #12

Key components are 6 grams of white pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) and "highly flammable material" as a detonator. PETN was developed in 1906, and is accessible to more advanced hobby chemists. So we have explosive device that passes through airport security scanner. And can be made at home by dedicated individuals... What are the implications for air travel?

I mean, the implication is that they either tested the pagers on an airport's security scanner (pointing to state built explosive devices making their way onto consumer flights).

Or they tested them on their airport security scanners (and the question of why this group needs an airport security scanner to test things on).

Either way, the implications for air travel are not all that great!

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#103

Post by [deleted] »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #96
xnyan wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The Israelis blew up pagers belonging to members of a known terrorist organization. And the people who happened to be next to them when they went off?

> the people who happened to be next to them when they went off? Collateral damage. Same as in any war. This discussion belies a naivete about how wars are fought. War--theconventional, legal, internationally-sanctioned kind--is horrible. The moment any side commits to war, it's committed to committing atrocities. You can't fight war without being shockingly cruel and inhumane. We have certain limits that have been i…

[deleted]

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#104

Post by dvt »

dttze wrote: post #100
tptacek wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These takes are problematic because it's clear to most observers that the attacks were, by the standards set by ground combat in Fallujah, NATO air operations in Kunar Province, or operations against ISIL in Inherent Resolve, the pager/radio attacks were drastically more discriminating, and caused a tiny fraction of the noncombatant casualties. This, of course, is also a distorted standard capturing only NATO/aligned…

[flagged]

Please keep this stuff on reddit. HN is one of the last few remaining high-quality social websites precisely because we shun comments like this. It should go without saying, but if you disagree, please do so in a civil manner.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#105

Post by [deleted] »

tmnvix wrote: post #74
tharne wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Leon Panetta, the former head of the CIA, said that the indiscriminate nature of these attacks makes him consider these attacks to be a form of terrorism: This was the exact opposite of "indiscriminate". The Israelis blew up pagers belonging to members of a known terrorist organization. People love to try an claim that they're anti-Israel and not antisemitic, but no other country in the world would be held to this…

I haven't seen any actual data on who died as a result of this attack, but is it confirmed that it was essentially only members of Hezbollah's militant wing? I've heard reports that that wasn't the case. Are other members of Hezbollah considered legitimate targets? From memory, the Iranian ambassador had one. Were they a legitimate target?

[deleted]

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#106

Post by [deleted] »

JoeyBananas wrote: post #77
bhouston wrote: post #66

Leon Panetta, the former head of the CIA, said that the indiscriminate nature of these attacks makes him consider these attacks to be a form of terrorism: https://thehill.com/policy/international/4893900-leon-panett... Volker Türk, the UN commission for human rights "explained that international law prohibits the use of booby-trapped items used in daily life, and 'it is a war crime to commit violence intended to spre…

There's absolutely no doubt that it's terrorism.

[deleted]

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#108

Post by dttze »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #101
dttze wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Hamas or Hezb target civilians more than the IDF Never claimed as much. The point is Hamas and Hezbollah explicitly target civilians. (The October 7th raid had a modest CCR of 2:1 inasmuch as there were 766 civilian and 273 security casualties [1]. Break down some of the raiding parties, however, and the CCR is much higher. Comparable to some of Israel's worst raids, or Russia's war in Chechnya.) > IDF has killed o…

You’re assuming every death on the 7th was by Hamas or other Gaza factions, which is false.

And these abstractions are useless and only serve to obfuscate the horrors of war.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#109

Post by tptacek »

arp242 wrote: post #85
tptacek wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These takes are problematic because it's clear to most observers that the attacks were, by the standards set by ground combat in Fallujah, NATO air operations in Kunar Province, or operations against ISIL in Inherent Resolve, the pager/radio attacks were drastically more discriminating, and caused a tiny fraction of the noncombatant casualties. This, of course, is also a distorted standard capturing only NATO/aligned…

I think the bit that this misses is that the root of all the problems we've seen over the last few decades is that Israel keeps doing their settlement thing. In spite of decades of pretty much the entire rest of the world – including the US – saying they should not be doing that. I don't approve of Hezbollah or Hamas; but if you strip away the violence and Islamic extremism and all of that then the uncomfortable real…

So --- and I think this is take that pisses off both sides of this conflict --- I really don't think moral struggles or the definition of "terrorism" is at all illuminating in this conflict. Both sides deploy the term to discredit the other; in neither case does it matter.

Two important things to understand about Hezbollah are that is the dominant military power in Lebanon, and that is directly supplied, enabled, and controlled by the IRGC QF. Hezbollah is in a plausible sense a military occupier of the state of Lebanon; as an illustration of that fact, look at its full mobilization in support of the Syria/Iran axis during the Syrian Civil War (a Hezbollah conflict that went largely unreported in the west, but caused integer multiples more civilian casualties than anything we've seen reported in the last 12 months).

This is an open conflict between two military peers. Over the last year, Hezbollah has fired on average dozens of rockets every day, at a cadence sufficient to evacuate much of Northern Israel to hotel rooms and temporary housing. My point isn't that you should respect Hezbollah less for doing so, or that it is therefore a terrorist organization. Rather: Hezbollah is a world-tier military force (by many accounts the most effective in the Syrian wars) that has opened a front on a neighboring country.

These are two warring armies. "Deserve", as William Munny would say, has nothing to do with it. If it helps, Israel has been coasting on arguments that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization for years, and I'm no more interested in those arguments.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#110

Post by xg15 »

arp242 wrote: post #85
tptacek wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These takes are problematic because it's clear to most observers that the attacks were, by the standards set by ground combat in Fallujah, NATO air operations in Kunar Province, or operations against ISIL in Inherent Resolve, the pager/radio attacks were drastically more discriminating, and caused a tiny fraction of the noncombatant casualties. This, of course, is also a distorted standard capturing only NATO/aligned…

I think the bit that this misses is that the root of all the problems we've seen over the last few decades is that Israel keeps doing their settlement thing. In spite of decades of pretty much the entire rest of the world – including the US – saying they should not be doing that. I don't approve of Hezbollah or Hamas; but if you strip away the violence and Islamic extremism and all of that then the uncomfortable real…

My understanding, after having learned more about this topic in the last year, is that this runs much deeper in the Israeli political establishment than Israel's image in the west would suggest.

E.g., I found it notable that Likud's founding charter explicitly rejects a two-state solution, fully endorses the settlement policy and calls for an Israel "from the river to the sea" - in 1977! [1] (More recent updates to the charter are more ambiguous though)

That, btw, is itself already the "moderate" position in contrast to Likud's predecessor parties - which were platforming on extending Israel into the (back then occupied) Sinai [2] or taking over all of Jordan [3] (due to it having been the other half of Mandatory Palestine).

Every country has its fringe groups with extremist views, except in this case, the groups became the dominant government party.

A recent tweet [4] from Netanyahu in response to Macron also makes it clear that the "we conquered it fair and square, so it's ours now" mindset is still alive and well today.

None of that excuses the atrocities done by Palestinian groups - but it definitely calls into question who is the escalating side in this conflict. It also makes the west's one-sided support for Israel appear increasingly jarring and at odds with it's own values.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likud#Ideological_positions

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_Greater_Israel

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revisionist_Zionism

[4] https://x.com/IsraeliPM/status/1846242196531339413

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