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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

#181

Post by arp242 »

edanm wrote: post #159
hmcq6 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Has there been any period where the borders between Israel and its neighbors have been peacefully respected by both sides? The Oslo Accords, but right wing Israelis assassinated their own PM to prevent a peace deal. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1993-2000/oslo#:~:text=... .

That's a misleadingly small part of the story of why there's no peace today. Israeli went on to elect multiple other PMs to continue working towards a peace deal. Rabin was assassinated in 1995, but Barak met with Araft in 2000, 2001, Olmert was trying to make a deal all the way up to 2007. And in the meantime, famous military hawk Sharon actually withdrew all settlements and military presence from Gaza, supposedly g…

Oslo accords were almost entirely concessions from the Palestinian side. There were no meaningful concessions on the Israeli settlement policy. Not only that, you had stuff like Ariel Sharon encouraging people to settle all the land while they can. It was hard to really take in good faith.

And yes, with Arafat and the PLO seen as "selling out", as well as Baruch Goldstein's terror attack fanning the flames, Hamas was born and started their suicide attacks. I am not approving any of that of course, but the notion of "it failed because Hamas terrorism" is outright historical revisionism.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#182

Post by orwin »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #84
orwin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's the definition of a terror attack. The really bad part is how lauded the Mossad was for it's 'precision' by the western media. Geneva convention violations, random children killed because Hezbollah militant were shopping/walking nearby, really 'precise'... On the other hand killing only 5 children for two hundred opposants, and not at least twice as much is proof that Mossad is a hundred of time more preci…

> it's the definition of a terror attack No, it's not. We don't have to twist the definitions of prohibited acts of war for a war to be deplorable. Legal warfare is still horrendous. > random children killed because Hezbollah militant were shopping/walking nearby, really 'precise' To be clear, if those same targets were hit conventionally--by air-launched missile, for instance--that would somehow be better?

Yes it is, see https://www.britannica.com/topic/terrorism

> terrorism, the calculated use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective.

They want to push the non-Chia in Lebanon against the Chia, probably hoping for an organisation like "Phalanges Libanaises" to come back and restart the civil war. If a new civil war start, it will be the second Israel deliberatly started in lebanon (yeah, the "Phalangistes" did the massacre, but the Mossad actually planned it and gave the target (mostly palestinians btw). This time it will be harder though.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#183

Post by NoGravitas »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #87
arp242 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

And Israel explicitly and proudly targets Palestinian and Lebanese civilian targets, as well as UN peacekeepers. They will deny it in US-facing communications, but are remarkably candid with their domestic media.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#184

Post by orwin »

tptacek wrote: post #58
orwin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's the definition of a terror attack. The really bad part is how lauded the Mossad was for it's 'precision' by the western media. Geneva convention violations, random children killed because Hezbollah militant were shopping/walking nearby, really 'precise'... On the other hand killing only 5 children for two hundred opposants, and not at least twice as much is proof that Mossad is a hundred of time more preci…

A terror attack definitionally targets civilian noncombatants, deliberately.

No, a terror attack is an attack that create a fear amongst noncombatants in order to push political objectives.

Easy example: Attacking a hospital that healed an enemy combatant is a terror attack, even if you missile is very precise and only kill the combatant and people sharing his room. You didn't aim for civilians, but your goal with this attack is to coerce civilians (doctors and nurses here) into refusing to heal combatant again, using fear. That's the definition. In both the French dictionary, and britannica (https://www.britannica.com/topic/terrorism).

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#185

Post by joezydeco »

mortenjorck wrote: post #38

Curious why this is currently flagged. It’s an in-depth look at what is almost certainly the most sophisticated and consequential physical supply-chain attack in history, and will be covered in security textbooks for years to come.

Pretty sure our own NSA is doing way more advanced stuff. This is just a peek (from 10 years ago):

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa...

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#186

Post by edanm »

arp242 wrote: post #181
edanm wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a misleadingly small part of the story of why there's no peace today. Israeli went on to elect multiple other PMs to continue working towards a peace deal. Rabin was assassinated in 1995, but Barak met with Araft in 2000, 2001, Olmert was trying to make a deal all the way up to 2007. And in the meantime, famous military hawk Sharon actually withdrew all settlements and military presence from Gaza, supposedly g…

Oslo accords were almost entirely concessions from the Palestinian side. There were no meaningful concessions on the Israeli settlement policy. Not only that, you had stuff like Ariel Sharon encouraging people to settle all the land while they can. It was hard to really take in good faith. And yes, with Arafat and the PLO seen as "selling out", as well as Baruch Goldstein's terror attack fanning the flames, Hamas was…

> Oslo accords were almost entirely concessions from the Palestinian side. There were no meaningful concessions on the Israeli settlement policy.

This is just not true. The Palestinians didn't have any recognized governing body before the accords; the accords made the Palestinian Authority the official representative of the Palestinian people, and outlined the areas from which Israel would withdraw and that would be governed by the PA completely. This all happened and is still the situation.

> I am not approving any of that of course, but the notion of "it failed because Hamas terrorism" is outright historical revisionism.

That is not the reason the peace process failed - it failed because the Palestinians at some walked away without agreeing to a deal, or giving a counteroffer that Israel could weigh. Multiple times. Had they agreed, there would be a peace in place today.

But the terrorism is the reason the Israeli Left eventually lost much public support - because the Right just said, correctly, that all attempts at peace and all concessions have been met with refusal and more violence.

I'm not saying Israel didn't do anything bad or was always the best negotiating partner, and I think settlement activity should've been stopped (and really, should never have happened in the first place!). But this notion that there was never any real chance at peace, that Israel never even tried to negotiate, etc, is something that people have only started saying in the last couple of years, it's not what anyone at the time was saying.

You don't have to trust Israelis for this, trust Clinton, trust the other Americans, trust plenty of historians who've looked at the deal.

As for historical revisionism...

> And yes, with Arafat and the PLO seen as "selling out", as well as Baruch Goldstein's terror attack fanning the flames, Hamas was born and started their suicide attacks.

It takes like two minutes on Wikipedia to show that this is not true. Hamas was founded in 1987 and carried out its first terror attack in 1988, about 6 years before Goldstein's terror attack.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#187

Post by CapricornNoble »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #130
dttze wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> You’re assuming every death on the 7th was by Hamas or other Gaza factions We are rounding civilian casualties to integers. This is a necessarily inexact science. > these abstractions are useless and only serve to obfuscate the horrors of war I could not agree with you more.

> We are rounding civilian casualties to integers. This is a necessarily inexact science.

I think what he's suggesting is that of the Israeli casualties on October 7th, we have no accurate breakdown for how many were caused by IDF implementing the "Hannibal procedure". It's possible the answer is "A LOT".

https://archive.is/4mtXW https://archive.is/romMZ (Haaretz articles)

One case in which it is known that civilians were hit, a case that received wide coverage, took place in the house of Pessi Cohen at Kibbutz Be'eri. 14 hostages were held in the house as the IDF attacked it, with 13 of them killed.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#188

Post by HDThoreaun »

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…

You have to think about the counterfactual. If Israel hadn’t utilized the pagers what would they do instead? The obvious answer is that they would bomb the residences where these people live. That would cause much much worse collateral damage than the pagers did.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#189

Post by CapricornNoble »

edanm wrote: post #167
arp242 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 reality is ... they're not wrong in their core objections. Israel has consistently maintained that no, actually, the core problem is that Hezbollah and Hamas exist, and once we get rid of these people all the problems will be gone. Let me offer you a counter-perspective on this. Isr…

> And they are probably right! Israel remvoed the settlements from Gaza, removed all military presence from Gaza, and the Gazans elected Hamas, which took over the Gaza strip (killing all PA members), then spent 15 years shooting rockets at Israel continuously

It probably would have been a good idea to:

NOT bulldoze Gaza's airport ( https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/08/31/344329313/... )

NOT bulldoze the foundations of Gaza's seaport ( https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/148375... )

Enact revenue sharing for the offshore natgas income partially extracted from Palestinian waters ( https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/08/how-gaza-marine-de... )

Of course the outcome will be the same as Gaza if the period after negotiations fail is contemporaneous with "grind their economic opportunities into the dust....literally". If an asshole moves into your master bedroom and you want him GONE.....but he proceeds to hook you up with a FAANG job that prints money (and no, "aid" is not the same as the self-respect that comes with controlling your own destiny via hard work)....you'll be more inclined to tolerate living with him, after a period of extended mutual disdain, of course.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#190

Post by runarberg »

tptacek wrote: post #116
arp242 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really don't think moral struggles or the definition of "terrorism" is at all illuminating in this conflict Yes, I fully agree. To be blunt, it's boring semantic wank. No one is here is an angel. Everyone has serious legitimate grievances and no one is smelling of roses. This should be obvious to anyone who isn't a hyper-partisan. But that doesn't mean we can't say all of this could have been avoided if Israel ha…

It just doesn't mean anything. I disagree with you about Hezbollah's motives, but that's besides the point. No country in the world could ignore militarily what Hezbollah has done over the last year. To call the missile attacks an act of war would be to understate dramatically the campaign they've undertaken. You can believe Hezbollah's motives were pure and their campaign fully justified. Israel was still going to s…

> No country in the world could ignore militarily what Hezbollah has done over the last year.

Only Israel reacts to terrorism with a genocidal rampage. No other country behaves like this. And it only behaves like this because it has been enabled by their allies, and the international community, who consistently let their crimes go unpunished, including but not limited to their settlement policy.

On the flip side, no colonized people in the world (except maybe Tibet) would ignore what Israel has done over the last decades. Decades of colonial occupation usually results in resistance and that resistance usually includes terrorism.

Israel’s behavior is not normal, by any measure, Hezbollah or Hamas’ behavior on the other hand is consistent with resistance group of colonized peoples.

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