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Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

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Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#401

Post by viccis »

tptacek wrote: post #378
viccis wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it only focus on Hezbollah military officials? Hezbollah is a political party. This is like package bombing US congressmen, Presidential cabinet members, etc. Which would be considered a terrorist attack obviously (and was when Israel sent our politicians, including our President, mailbombs shortly after WW2)

It's technically and sort of a political party. It's also an occupying military force in Lebanon; it is foremost an instrument of the IRGC. It's useful to understand that Hezbollah is Shia-supremacist organization, and Shia muslims constitute a minority of the Lebanese population.

That doesn't really distinguish it from Israel's government. s/Lebanon/Palestine/g, s/IRGC/USA/g, and s/Shia/Jewish/g

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#402

Post by zeofig »

baskin31 wrote: post #363
zeofig wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, since conveniently the attacker also gets to define who is a civilian.

When one quotes Health Ministry for numbers of casualties and deaths, that is relying on HAMAS for information. To knowingly use sources that have demonstratbly be shown to be false, inaccurate, or misleading makes one also unreliable.

HAMAS? We're talking about an attack in Lebanon my friend, not Palestine.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#403

Post by tptacek »

viccis wrote: post #401
tptacek wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's technically and sort of a political party. It's also an occupying military force in Lebanon; it is foremost an instrument of the IRGC. It's useful to understand that Hezbollah is Shia-supremacist organization, and Shia muslims constitute a minority of the Lebanese population.

That doesn't really distinguish it from Israel's government. s/Lebanon/Palestine/g, s/IRGC/USA/g, and s/Shia/Jewish/g

I don't agree, but we don't have to agree on this point to recognize the illegitimacy and coerciveness of Hezbollah and the IRGC. Even factoring Israel's most recent strikes in, the largest military losses Hezbollah has incurred in the last 10 years weren't with Israel, but rather in Syria, on behalf of the Assad regime, a client of the IRGC's, where Hezbollah (and the Lebanese security forces Hezbollah dragooned into the conflict) gleefully targeted civilian populations.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#404

Post by sporkxrocket »

tptacek wrote: post #398
tkel wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were Israel, I would have not invaded Gaza, which would have resulted in far fewer civilian casualties, and also would have ended the strikes by Hezbollah. Also, if you look at the data on attacks by Israel against Lebanon, they are disproportionate, Israel launching 10x more airstrikes, even going so far as to level entire city blocks of apartment buildings in Beirut. I remember just on the first day of attacks…

The military dynamics of the Israel and Hezbollah conflict are an indictment of Israeli's Gaza campaign. When Israel is clear-eyed, strategic, and effective at confronting a serious military adversary, it looks like the Hezbollah conflict: ultra-targeted rapidly disabling strikes. That Israel instead systematically leveled an entire civilian metropolitan area to combat Hamas makes the the claims about the Hezbollah s…

Actually it's Hezbollah that has been practicing very targeted, military only strikes against Israel. Israel on the other hand has killed thousands of Lebanese people and displaced over a million. That's just since the Oct 7th attacks. Prior to that Israel carpet bombed Lebanon on multiple occasions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Hezbollah_confl...

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#405

Post by krautburglar »

dang wrote: post #97
krautburglar wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, your flag function is abused to no end, and you don't really do anything about it. One of the earliest comments I've made was one on semi-recent X11 history, and got flagged for it, because apparently everything is political now. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45796728

I agree with you that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45796728 should not have been flagged, and have fixed that now.

The post isn't the point. The point is that you have people abusing the flag mechanism. Maybe you should start ignoring their flags when they abuse it?

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#406

Post by tptacek »

sporkxrocket wrote: post #404
tptacek wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The military dynamics of the Israel and Hezbollah conflict are an indictment of Israeli's Gaza campaign. When Israel is clear-eyed, strategic, and effective at confronting a serious military adversary, it looks like the Hezbollah conflict: ultra-targeted rapidly disabling strikes. That Israel instead systematically leveled an entire civilian metropolitan area to combat Hamas makes the the claims about the Hezbollah s…

Actually it's Hezbollah that has been practicing very targeted, military only strikes against Israel. Israel on the other hand has killed thousands of Lebanese people and displaced over a million. That's just since the Oct 7th attacks. Prior to that Israel carpet bombed Lebanon on multiple occasions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Hezbollah_confl...

This is obviously false. Hezbollah was indiscriminately firing artillery into Israel and managed to kill, among other people, 12 Druze soccer players in the Golan Heights.

I don't know how far off we are on our assessment of current Israeli governance, but I'd bet it's not as far as you think we are. But I'd also guess we're wildly far apart on Hezbollah, which, along with Ansar Allah in Yemen, are some of the most amoral and illegitimate military forces on the planet.

Unfortunately, Hezbollah was, up until 2024, waging a largely PR-based war on Israel (their "puppet" adversary; their true adversary was Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham in Syria, where they spilled more blood and lost more men and materiel than in every conflict they've had with Israel over the last 20 years), and people have --- for understandable reasons --- antipathy towards Israeli leadership. So Hezbollah, like the Houthis, have a western cheering section, made up almost entirely of people who have chosen not to understand anything about what makes either organization tick.

You can come up with lots of military atrocities committed by Israel, because Israel has in the Gaza conflict committed many atrocities. None of it will legitimize the IRGC's Shia-supremacist totalitarian occupation of Lebanon or their genocidal occupation of Yemen. The civil wars in Syria and Yemen (the real military fronts in the last 2 decades) claimed an order of magnitude more lives than anything Israel did, which is truly saying something given the horrifying costs of Israel's botched, reckless, amoral handling of Gaza.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#407

Post by philipkglass »

krautburglar wrote: post #405
dang wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45796728 should not have been flagged, and have fixed that now.

The post isn't the point. The point is that you have people abusing the flag mechanism. Maybe you should start ignoring their flags when they abuse it?

That's already implemented. I overused flagging at one point in my account history and my flags stopped having any effect. I eventually emailed the moderators and pledged to be more judicious with my flagging if they'd give me the power back, and they gave it back.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#408

Post by sporkxrocket »

tptacek wrote: post #406
sporkxrocket wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it's Hezbollah that has been practicing very targeted, military only strikes against Israel. Israel on the other hand has killed thousands of Lebanese people and displaced over a million. That's just since the Oct 7th attacks. Prior to that Israel carpet bombed Lebanon on multiple occasions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Hezbollah_confl...

This is obviously false. Hezbollah was indiscriminately firing artillery into Israel and managed to kill, among other people, 12 Druze soccer players in the Golan Heights. I don't know how far off we are on our assessment of current Israeli governance, but I'd bet it's not as far as you think we are. But I'd also guess we're wildly far apart on Hezbollah, which, along with Ansar Allah in Yemen, are some of the most a…

I've been following this very closely from the start. Hezbollah was targeting radio towers and IDF personnel. Hezbollah denied that it was their rocket that hit the Druze and they certainly didn't have any other attacks that matched that type of target. Again, it's well documented that Israel has caused orders of magnitude more civilian damage and casualties than Hezbollah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Hezbollah_confl...

> On 4 December 2024, the Lebanese Health Ministry reported that since 7 October 2023, Israeli attacks killed 4,047 people, including 316 children and 790 women, and injured 16,638 others

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#409

Post by tptacek »

sporkxrocket wrote: post #408
tptacek wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is obviously false. Hezbollah was indiscriminately firing artillery into Israel and managed to kill, among other people, 12 Druze soccer players in the Golan Heights. I don't know how far off we are on our assessment of current Israeli governance, but I'd bet it's not as far as you think we are. But I'd also guess we're wildly far apart on Hezbollah, which, along with Ansar Allah in Yemen, are some of the most a…

I've been following this very closely from the start. Hezbollah was targeting radio towers and IDF personnel. Hezbollah denied that it was their rocket that hit the Druze and they certainly didn't have any other attacks that matched that type of target. Again, it's well documented that Israel has caused orders of magnitude more civilian damage and casualties than Hezbollah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%…

You haven't responded to any claim I've made other than to advance a claim that Hezbollah, which fired tens of thousands of mostly unguided rockets into Israel, did not in fact kill 12 Druze children in the Golan Heights.

Our premises may be too far apart to usefully discuss this. The core of my argument (the comparative military and civilian body counts in Syria and Yemen) aren't going to be easy to refute by appeals to Hezbollah's PR. (You may also have responded to a by-2-minutes-or-so earlier version of my comment; we may be responding to each other in too-close succession and talking past each other.)

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#410

Post by BobaFloutist »

phantasmish wrote: post #263
BobaFloutist wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The prohibitions on booby-traps are that they're indiscriminant, not that they involve mundane objects. I totally get the instinct to condemn the attack, since it's truly, deeply viscerally horrifying (not to mention terrifying!), but most of the rules about how you're supposed to conduct war basically boil down to 1. Make a reasonable effort to avoid disproportionately harming civilians 2. Don't go out of your way t…

Given the apparently-terrible injury-to-death ratio, another angle to attack the legality of the action might be that the weapons were first and foremost effective at maiming, not killing, which is generally frowned upon by the laws of war (if they were intended as lethal, their success on that front was so bad it might fall into "guilty through incompetence" sort of territory) (I agree the targeting per se seems to…

>the weapons were first and foremost effective at maiming, not killing, which is generally frowned upon by the laws of war

Can you cite something for this? Most people would rather be (even permanently) injured than killed, so I'm not sure why using the minimum necessary force would be frowned upon, other than it typically being incredibly difficult and impractical.

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