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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

#201

Post by neodymiumphish »

arp242 wrote: post #113
tptacek wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

I’ve heard constant talk about there being a UN resolution that’s gone completely unenforced, which involved UN occupation in southern Lebanon to ensure protection from Hezbollah control and attacks targeting Israel. Is there any validity to that? If such a large policy isn’t being enforced to support Israel, does that not somewhat validate most of Israel’s seemingly-aggressive actions in Lebanon, since the area isn’t being protected as expected?

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#202

Post by tptacek »

neodymiumphish wrote: post #201
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…

I’ve heard constant talk about there being a UN resolution that’s gone completely unenforced, which involved UN occupation in southern Lebanon to ensure protection from Hezbollah control and attacks targeting Israel. Is there any validity to that? If such a large policy isn’t being enforced to support Israel, does that not somewhat validate most of Israel’s seemingly-aggressive actions in Lebanon, since the area isn’…

I think just about everybody intimately acquainted with UNIFIL believes that UNIFIL serves mostly to put soldiers from other countries in harm's way as a performative gesture by the UN (it has a long history). UNIFIL was chartered to prevent Hezbollah from obtaining the position it has today, and later to prevent the militarization of southern Lebanon. It has failed comprehensively. Both Hezbollah and the IDF are actively hostile towards it. The UN should withdraw from Lebanon.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#203

Post by runarberg »

tptacek wrote: post #196
runarberg wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History disagrees with you. Apartheid states—even nuclear armed ones—have in the past dissolved into a one democratic state of all their peoples.

Israel's policies may change (do note that a distinction is being drawn here between Israeli Arabs, who enjoy Israeli citizenship, freedom of movement, voting rights, Knesset membership, etc and Palestinians, who do not). The state of Israel is not going to dissolve, because there are no plausible pressures that can be brought to bear to make that happen.

Post WW2 history does not treat kindly the kinds of atrocities currently being committed by Israel. I don’t know of any state which actually survived being a perpetrator of a genocide (at least not as a continuation of a functioning state). Khmer Cambodia did not, Rwanda did not. The closest is probably Serbia (but they were merely complicit of a genocide committed Republika Srpska which now only exists as a part of Bosnia-Herzegovina) or Indonesia (which survived as a dictatorship before transforming to Democracy in a revolution 15 years after the East-Timor genocidal rampage; a revolution largely caused by the genocidal behavior).

If Israel is going to follow the pattern of perpetrators of modern genocide it will either voluntarily change, be invaded and forced to change, or hang on as a dictatorship for a couple of decades and change in a revolution. In any case an Israel as we know it would have to be a historic first if it would persist as this pseudo democratic apartheid state as we know it today for the next two decades. In other words—looking at history—chances are very much in favor of Israel dissolving.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#204

Post by aguaviva »

edanm wrote: post #163
xfax wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A two-state solution is a fever dream if the occupier is uninterested in it. We’ve seen that repeatedly for the past 75+ years in actions and literal words. So the question is, if you were the subjugated population, what would you do?

> A two-state solution is a fever dream if the occupier is uninterested in it. We’ve seen that repeatedly for the past 75+ years in actions and literal words. First, the Palestinian territories have not been under occupation for 75 years. Second, there was a real effort at arriving at a two state solution made by Israel. It's often debated who is "at fault" for no solution having been reached, but without rehashing i…

First, the Palestinian territories have not been under occupation for 75 years.

Only in its internal propaganda. The UN and even Israel's strongest allies consider all 4 areas to be occupied, and illegally so.

(With Gaza one try to could quibble that there was no "effective" occupation from 2005-2023, but even that was never true in regard to control of Gaza's borders).

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#205

Post by markus_zhang »

janalsncm wrote: post #118

If these pager explosives were invisible to x-ray machines then hopefully the TSA has a way to detect them. Seems like a pretty clear attack vector.

My thought: what if some extremists, who are not in short supply given the current condition decide to do a copy-cat attack on major airports simultaneously? Are the machines guaranteed to identify each one of them? I mean the tech doesn't look too hard even for dedicated individuals, let alone quasi-state actors.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#206

Post by hmcq6 »

edanm wrote: post #178
hmcq6 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not a colonist by any standard definition. Yes they are. It's true that before the British Mandate of Palestine the population of Syria Palaestina was 3-11% Jewish (Mizrahi Jews) but most of the Jewish population of Israel is not indigenous to that region of the world (like how the Ashkenazi Jews are from Europe and Eastern Russia). > Apartheid - more complicated. It isn't, Amnesty International and the Human…

> It's true that before the British Mandate of Palestine the population of Syria Palaestina was 3-11% Jewish (Mizrahi Jews) but most of the Jewish population of Israel is not indigenous to that region of the world (like how the Ashkenazi Jews are from Europe and Eastern Russia). Firstly, Jews are originally indigenous to that part of the world, they were ethnically cleansed from that area by Rome. This is not even di…

> Firstly, Jews are originally indigenous to that part of the world

No, that's not how this works. My 23&Me says my family came from Africa (as did all people), then southwest Asia then Europe but that doesn't give me the right to go to one of those countries and claim land.

> The standard colonial pattern is [...] That is just not what most people are thinking of when thinking of colonialism.

Man, you can't quote me talking about the British Mandate of Palestine and then say they're not colonizers. Literally before the Holocaust Britain was arming Jews to go colonize Palestine. Yes, Jews fleeing the Holocaust did find refuge in Palestine but fleeing an ethnic cleansing of their own doesn't make the colonization that was already ongoing more legal.

I'm not even gonna address the rest of this point by point, you're just insisting that a 2 state solution is the only way because a 2 state solution is legalized perpetuation of the colonization.

A 2 state solution is not the only way, it is colonization.

No, Hamas does not want the death/expulsion of all Jews, that's simply a lie.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#207

Post by tptacek »

runarberg wrote: post #203
tptacek wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel's policies may change (do note that a distinction is being drawn here between Israeli Arabs, who enjoy Israeli citizenship, freedom of movement, voting rights, Knesset membership, etc and Palestinians, who do not). The state of Israel is not going to dissolve, because there are no plausible pressures that can be brought to bear to make that happen.

Post WW2 history does not treat kindly the kinds of atrocities currently being committed by Israel. I don’t know of any state which actually survived being a perpetrator of a genocide (at least not as a continuation of a functioning state). Khmer Cambodia did not, Rwanda did not. The closest is probably Serbia (but they were merely complicit of a genocide committed Republika Srpska which now only exists as a part of…

I don't know what any of this is supposed to mean. This kind of rhetoric is what jams up curious discussions about what's happening in the region; Syria and Yemen host actual genocidaires --- in Syria's case, of Palestinians in refugee camps --- and have killed civilians in the last 20 years greater multiples than the IDF has in its entire history. But somehow, Israelis notice, it's only Israel that needs to worry about what history will say about it. Your list of comparable states is wild.

You need to find a rhetorical device for calling out Israel's war crimes in west Asia that doesn't involve attempting to line Israel, and only Israel, up alongside the Rwandan Interahamwe. I think reasonable people who you stand a chance of persuading recoil from these kinds of analogies, and they're right to do so.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#208

Post by edanm »

hmcq6 wrote: post #197
edanm wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you can make a list of terrible acts committed by almost any military, especially if you go back 76 years to before it was a state. It is very clear that some soldiers in the IDF, like in any army, have committed war crimes.

It's not "some soldiers", Netanyahu and others at the top have signified their intent to commit genocide with their repeated dehumanization of Palestinians as "Amalek". The Israeli Minister of National Security was a member of a recognized terrorist group. It's not some bad apples, the leadership in Israel is rotten to the core. But it's clear that no matter what I say you're gonna excuse it. Throwing a baby into an…

> But it's clear that no matter what I say you're gonna excuse it. Throwing a baby into an oven in front of the father is some next level nazi shit. If you'll excuse that you'll excuse anything.

I didn't excuse it. I said it was a terrible act.

It was also committed more than 70 years ago, technically before Israel was even founded. Quite literally 3 years after millions of Jews were systematically burned in Nazi-Germany's ovens. Do you think Germany's actions in WW2 are relevant if discussing Germany today?

> It's not "some soldiers", Netanyahu and others at the top have signified their intent to commit genocide with their repeated dehumanization of Palestinians as "Amalek".

Those were statements made the week after the horrible October 7th massacre. They were propaganda statements that should never have been made, but you call it repeated. And it isn't.

What has been repeated is the thousands of times that Netanyahu and others have said that Israel is only going after Hamas, not Gazan civilians.

> The Israeli Minister of National Security was a member of a recognized terrorist group.

Well that I can't argue with. That minister is a disgusting human being who is completely destroying Israel from within, even apart from the vile things he is doing against Palestinians. Luckily his impact on the war isn't huge, but he definitely has some impact, including scuttling ceasefire deals and pressuring for the war to continue.

He is vile and Israel should be ashamed he has any influence on Israel at all, let alone being in charge of the police. (Most Israelis agree about this, unfortunately the totally corrupt Netanyahu needs him for his own political ambitions, because all normal Israelis politicians refuse to work with him!)

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#209

Post by tptacek »

edanm wrote: post #165
tptacek wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weeks out, with more facts settled, it does appear that this was one of the most (if not the most) precisely targeted attacks in the history of modern warfare, measured either by ratio of combatants to noncombatants injured, or by the measures used to target it (which included creating a fake pager distributor that sold legitimate pagers to legitimate sources and selectively delivered compromised pagers specifically…

FYI I disagree that this necessarily means that in Gaza. Israel has spent 18 years fairly convinced that Hamas isn't a major threat and that Hezbollah is, so most resources were spent on preparing for war with Hezbollah. This is maybe even mostly correct. That means Israel was far more prepared to attack Hezbollah, and it shows. If the US were ever attacked by Russia, it has battle plans in place. If it were attacked…

Israel spent 18 years willfully not addressing Hamas the way it did Hezbollah, as a mechanism to prevent a 2-state solution. Israel is responsible for the fact that it did not have the level of seriousness and preparation for Hamas that it did for Hezbollah, knowing full well that it would ultimately end up fighting Hezbollah in the sparsely populated hills of southern Lebanon, and Hamas in dense urban areas. It is culpable for the civilian toll in Gaza that resulted.

What Israel's leadership did here goes beyond not caring about civilian lives in Gaza. They cynically abetted Hamas's strategy to sacrifice those lives in a bid to start a world war that would bring on the end times, knowing that Hamas was absolutely batshit crazy and would thus keep Palestinians permanently destabilized.

Please do not mistake me for someone who has any sympathy for the plight Israeli leadership finds itself in today. They belong in the Hague.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#210

Post by edanm »

aguaviva wrote: post #204
edanm wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A two-state solution is a fever dream if the occupier is uninterested in it. We’ve seen that repeatedly for the past 75+ years in actions and literal words. First, the Palestinian territories have not been under occupation for 75 years. Second, there was a real effort at arriving at a two state solution made by Israel. It's often debated who is "at fault" for no solution having been reached, but without rehashing i…

First, the Palestinian territories have not been under occupation for 75 years. Only in its internal propaganda. The UN and even Israel's strongest allies consider all 4 areas to be occupied, and illegally so. (With Gaza one try to could quibble that there was no "effective" occupation from 2005-2023, but even that was never true in regard to control of Gaza's borders).

> Only in its internal propaganda. The UN and even Israel's strongest allies consider all 4 areas to be occupied, and illegally so.

Oh, I meant that it hasn't been 75 years, not that the territories aren't occupied. They've only been occupied since 1967.

This isn't just a quibble btw - it's worth asking who the territories are occupied from. Because there was never a Palestinian state, and those territories belonged to Jordan and Egypt, who don't want them and have peace with Israel. Normally "Occupied" territory is territory that is contested by the country it was occupied from.

In this case it's more complicated, because the Palestinians that live on that land consider it theirs and have nationalistic aspirations. Which I 100% support, and absolutely think an agreement should be reached.

(Btw, itt is worth asking why, in the 20 years during which Egypt and Jordan had control over those territories, a Palestinian state wasn't created.)

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