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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

#421

Post by richardfeynman »

hearsathought wrote: post #291
richardfeynman wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> 1. What's the similarity in your view between "zionist rationalization" and "nazi rationalization"? Penchant for rationalizing away acts of genocide and dehumanize peoples. The only difference is zionists dehumanize actual semites ( palestinians) while nazis dehumanized european "jews". Zionists/"Israelis" are actual anti-semites. While nazis were anti-european "jews". Heady stuff. > To me this sounds like more ant…

You seem to think that asserting something makes it true. I particularly love that you call yiddish speakers, americans and dutch "germanic people" - a novel claim, haha.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#423

Post by tptacek »

ignoramous wrote: post #420
tptacek wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason foreign military organizations don't routinely target active duty US military generals isn't that they're worried about being dragged into some mostly-fictitious courtroom to answer for their misdeeds. It's that the United States armed forces will very quickly reduce their entire organization, and much of the surrounding area, to its combustion products. There aren't a lot of opportunities in life you get…

> US military ... worried about being dragged into some mostly-fictitious courtroom to answer for their misdeeds... Acutely aware of this fact, yeah. > There aren't a lot of opportunities in life you get to use the word "annihilatory"; this is one of them. Not wrong. None of the former great empires that fell were as military capable as the super powers of the modern era. > And in the immortal words of William Munny…

And all I have to do to operationalize this logic is to accept the premise that the idea of a nation-state is synonymous with genocide.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#424

Post by Seattle3503 »

FridayoLeary wrote: post #418
sporkxrocket wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is holding Israel accountable for it's very well documented war crimes "blatantly biased"?

There you go. There is no state organised war crimes going on, just normal war. If you can't understand the distinction that's your problem not mine. In my opinion Israels actions in Gaza fall well within the actions of a legitimate war, to the extent warfare can be legitimised. I'm not commenting on individual cases, and anyway those are not relevant to my argument.

> In my opinion Israels actions in Gaza fall well within the actions of a legitimate wa

The point of the ICC is to resolve this sort of question via a thorough legal process, just like we have in so many democracies around the world. Israel wouldn't be on trial, Netanyahu would. I presume you are talking about him at least. And if he is innocent then he should have his day in court.

And yes, fully embracing the ICC would be a radical shift for the entire world. We would be bringing in a lot of people other than just Netanyahu. The idea is that no one is above the law, no matter how important they may be.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#425

Post by therobots927 »

dang wrote: post #362
therobots927 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

We stopped using the word 'civil' years ago. Commenters here need to follow the rules, and the rules don't go away when the topic is a tough one. On the contrary, they apply more , as https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html makes clear.

Happy to follow the rules when free discussion is allowed. Watching this topic get censored aggressively on here during some of the darkest months for Palestinians eroded my respect for your “rules”.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#426

Post by jackling »

tptacek wrote: post #419
jackling wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twelve civilians killed and 4,000 injured does not indicate a precise attack. There is no credible figure for the number of combatants killed or injured. The Times of Israel reported that 1,500 fighters were injured. Taking these two data points together, a majority of those injured were civilians rather than combatants. Where are you getting the claim that this was “probably the most precisely targeted large-scale m…

Right, if in fact 1500 Hezbollah fighters were injured, any claim that over 1500 noncombatants were injured is suspicious. We have video footage of the explosions (along with a directional sense of the wounded vs. KIA count of the strike). It is not plausible that more noncombatants were injured than combatants, given the pagers were strictly military comms devices.

Both the 1500 and 4000 number were confirmed by Lebanon, and no reputable watch organization has credibly disputed them, you're not citing evidence just conjecture on how you believe everything went down due to a relative small bits of information.

> along with a directional sense of the wounded vs. KIA count of the strike

I am not sure what this means.

To add, you're making it impossible to argue anything against your claim. We're discussing how the pagers hurt civilians and if they were properly targetting combatants. You're saying no matter what, since you know the pager was targetting combatants, the evidence that civilians were hurt must be false. Your logic circular.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#427

Post by [deleted] »

sp4cec0wb0y wrote: post #88
bunji wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intended targets of the exploding papers weren't civilians. Very few actual civilians ended up hurt by the detonations, much fewer than attacks by conventional weapons. It's about as targeted an attack as one can achieve from a distance. As an act of warfare, Israel did a splendid job on this. Thoroughly impressive work.

You're telling me that the 2,800 injured were mostly Hezbollah operatives? Was this sourced and verified anywhere? What is the rate of combatant to non-combatant casualties is this instance compared to "conventional weapons"?

[deleted]

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#428

Post by MrMorden »

impossiblefork wrote: post #242
zug_zug wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let me just understand your position here. Suppose the US declares war on Venezuela. Suppose a venezuelan living in America just looks up a bunch of US generals addresses online, and then sets all their houses on fire killing them in their sleep in their McMansions in suburbia. Are you saying that's a valid military strike, and therefore can't possibly be terrorism? Suppose this person is so successful he kills 1,…

I'm pretty sure even that is allowed, yes. Obviously he must wear a uniform while actually conducting the attack though.

If he wants to be treated as a POW rather than a spy should he be captured.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#429

Post by oa335 »

tptacek wrote: post #367
jackling wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that Israel has no idea where those pagers were at the time of the attack, civilians were directly hurt by the explosions: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/survivors-of-israels-page...

Israel had in fact very clear intelligence that the specific pagers they were detonating were overwhelmingly going to be in the custody of combatants. This was very probably the most precisely targeted large-scale military strike of the last 100 years. That's not a value judgement; it's a descriptive claim.

Do you have any sources at all for your assertion “This was very probably the most precisely targeted large-scale military strike of the last 100 years”? It is hard to engage with your statement in any reasonable fashion without knowing where you are getting your information.
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