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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

#111

Post by tptacek »

xg15 wrote: post #110
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…

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 t…

I think it's uncontroversial that Likud opposes a 2-state solution, for what it's worth. I think you're going to find a lot of people taking Israel's side in the existential question of whether it should defend itself as a sovereign, and/or respond to mass-casualty attacks from paramilitary militias in territories it occupies, but far fewer people endorsing Israel's leadership. "I support Israel's right to exist but Netanyahu belongs at the Hague" is a pretty common position.

The issue is: it doesn't get you anywhere in the Israel/Hezbollah conflict. I believe Israel has awful, possibly criminal leadership. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't respond to full-scale military attacks from neighboring near-peer militaries.

I think tallying up the morals of each side of this conflict is really unproductive, but in the spirit of just digging into the details here, I feel like it's worth pointing out that the details on Hezbollah's side of the scale are grim. Not in its conflict with Israel, but with the broader region, where it has killed civilians with great gusto.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#112

Post by ks1723 »

JoeyBananas wrote: post #82
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…

What makes you think that the Iraq war was not terrorism? You're comparing Israeli terrorism to United States terrorism. Israel and the United States are a prominent terrorist alliance, and they have been terrorizing the Middle East for decades.

It seems the Middle East has been terrorizing itself a lot as well:

https://www.fondapol.org/en/study/islamist-terrorist-attacks...

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#113

Post by arp242 »

tptacek wrote: post #109
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…

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 hadn't continued their settlement policy with no hint or perspective or any compromise. Remember the constitutional changes and protests over them? That was mostly over the the far-right wanting to expand the settlement policy even further. Even before Oct 7 several government ministers seemed to support the outright ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and Gaza. Fun people.

This is not just "fanning the flames", it's the root of the conflict. That was really my main point; I don't think you can just talk about number of civilian casualties without also recognizing that Israel's policies are the fuel on which the entire thing burns. That is: at its core it's a conflict of Israel's choosing. Without it you might have the small terror group or lone nutjob, but nothing like we see today.

It doesn't help that Israel gets a huge amount of military support, to the point where it can just do anything without significant cost in lives or material. Look at the casualty ratios – "military peers" is rather a stretch IMHO.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#114

Post by EasyMark »

wiz21c wrote: post #2

So did Mossad listen to the pagers ? I mean, instead of putting a bomb inside, spying would make more sense to me...

That seems like a big risk to take though? The best scenario is they get these out to all the leaders and do what they did. Why would you risk that with “random” signals coming out of the pagers occasionally that might get spotted by the some Hezbollah member who also is good at radio/digital comms. It seems unlikely they did anything other than what they did which was set them all up for a crotch bomb.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#115

Post by throawayonthe »

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…

[dead]

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#116

Post by tptacek »

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…

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 shoot back; after almost a full year of large scale rocket attacks, it was starting to look weird that they hadn't already. Hezbollah presumably just expected them to shoot back less effectively.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#117

Post by xnyan »

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…

Are the Israeli civilians killed October 7th also collateral damage?

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#119

Post by kasey_junk »

tptacek wrote: post #68
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…

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 for one am much more comfortable with the military nature of the radio/pager attack as legitimately military now than I was in the days after it happened.

But I completely agree with your last point. It makes the Gaza invasion look _more_ like collective punishment than it already did (which is pretty wild).

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#120

Post by tptacek »

kasey_junk wrote: post #119
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 for one am much more comfortable with the military nature of the radio/pager attack as legitimately military now than I was in the days after it happened. But I completely agree with your last point. It makes the Gaza invasion look _more_ like collective punishment than it already did (which is pretty wild).

In the same spirit I should say I'm in a much different place with respect to Gaza now than I would have been 6 months ago; I might not have fully agreed with your take back then, but clearly do now.
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