Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon • Hacker News Board

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#441

Post by rat87 » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 2:46 AM UTC

jackling wrote: post #326

hersko wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think you are not allowed to do a military strike if civilians may be hurt?

Your comment is nonsense. What do you mean by “allowed”? Who is enforcing the rules of what is “allowed” and what isn’t? The fact is that Israel carried out an attack that severely harmed civilians. The question is whether it was targeted or whether it constitutes terrorism. My claim is that since Israel could not have possibly known who was in possession of the pagers at the time of the attack, and since the attack…

> did, in effect, target civilians.

That's ridiculous

> If you attack a military target that is surrounded by civilians, and that attack injures or kills those civilians, then those civilians were also targeted.

They are not targeted.

You could say that depending on number of innocent casualties or the likely number the attacked could be reckless and/or disproportionate in attacking in a way that was likely to cause such injuries. In certain cases you could claim they broke the laws of war although the laws of war are practical (they're not meant to prevent all deaths of civilians, the countries who agreed to them didn't intentionally make it impossible to fight including in defense).

And even if something is not a war crime you could still claim it might be immoral but that is a more complex argument.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#442

Post by tptacek » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 2:46 AM UTC

juliusdavies wrote: post #439

jackling wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

Do you want some deeply studied anthropological journal article on “The use of pagers in Lebanese society “? Do you know of any civilians anywhere in the world that currently use pagers? Who had the pagers and why they had the pagers is almost derivable from first principles at this point, never mind the international journalism on the subject.

I'm not deriving who had the pagers from first principles. They were military pagers, on a military network that Hezbollah fought an actual civil war to establish and maintain, with subverted devices that Hezbollah itself acquired directly. There's a lot of reporting on this. Israel did not booby trap the whole supply of pagers into Lebanon. The Hezbollah combatants carrying these pagers did not acquire them at a Beirut Cellular Retail Outlet.

Another way to say this is that if you have evidence/reporting suggesting that Israel did in fact set explosives in pagers that were broadly available to Lebanese civilians, my argument falls apart.

I think Hezbollah is inexcusably evil, far worse than Israel is, but I'm not particularly interested in defending Israeli governance; I have no commitment to the proposition that Israel doesn't commit atrocities (in fact, I think they commit rather many of them). So I'm fine with my argument collapsing; I'm just waiting for evidence to topple it. The trouble the preceding commenter is having with me is that I can't find a story that squares the circle of the numbers they're trying to present.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#443

Post by jackling » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 2:52 AM UTC

rat87 wrote: post #441

jackling wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is nonsense. What do you mean by “allowed”? Who is enforcing the rules of what is “allowed” and what isn’t? The fact is that Israel carried out an attack that severely harmed civilians. The question is whether it was targeted or whether it constitutes terrorism. My claim is that since Israel could not have possibly known who was in possession of the pagers at the time of the attack, and since the attack…

> did, in effect, target civilians. That's ridiculous > If you attack a military target that is surrounded by civilians, and that attack injures or kills those civilians, then those civilians were also targeted. They are not targeted. You could say that depending on number of innocent casualties or the likely number the attacked could be reckless and/or disproportionate in attacking in a way that was likely to cause…

I agree with your last point, but tbh, the exact idea of "targeted" is splitting hairs IMO. I'm not arguing that civilians were the primary target, but not caring that they were around, and being fine with their death as long as the combatant was dead, in my view makes it seem that Israel's enemies are not the combatants of Hezbollah, but generally just the Lebanese people.

If someone droped a nuke on a city to kill 1 person, does it matter who that person was specifically targeting? Does the distinction if his intended target matter at all? I would think you and I would agree that obviously it doesn't matter at that point, but then I ask, at what point does that distinction matter?

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#444

Post by rat87 » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 2:55 AM UTC

Cyph0n wrote: post #260

breppp wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/pagers-drones-how-... Here is Hezbollah boasting to Reuters before the pagers attack, about how it moved to using pagers and couriers to counter Israeli intelligence. As you can guess, with the advent of mobile phones in the 2000s, pagers became obsolete in Lebanon

[flagged]

The idea that only criminals or terorists have pagers is ridiculous(you mentined doctors). But Israel didnt target pagers in Lebanon. They sold equipment for Hezbollah internal use om their own network (they convinced Hezbollah to pay a front company for the walkies).

That is the opposite of indicrimante.

as for

> white Judeo-Christian variety

Judeo Christian is a silly concept. Either say christian or say Abrahamic. While most casulties were affiliated with Hezbollah and therefore overwhelmingly Shia Muslim enough of the general public of Lebanon is Christian that they would make at least some of civilian bystanders injured. Also Lebanese people aren't any whiter in average skin color then the average Israeli

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#445

Post by jackling » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 3:01 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #435

oa335 wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just start from the premise that Israel targeted exclusively handheld military comms devices that would in ordinary practice only be in the custody of Hezbollah combatants, and from the additional premise that the explosions in the strikes were relatively small, so small that the overwhelming majority of the Hezbollah casualties were wounded and not KIA. Then try to make another story make sense. We have significant…

Premise 1: The pagers were military devices, but based on what we know about them, it is impossible to assert that all were in the custody of Hezbollah combatants at the moment they exploded. One would need to prove that the pagers were physically on the combatants’ persons—and not, for example, sitting on a coffee table or elsewhere—at the time of detonation.

Premise 2: The physical location of the pagers directly affects the pattern of civilian injuries. Hospitals reported that many of the injured were civilians, including children, women, and non-combatants who were at home, at work, or in public areas. Even pro-Israel outlets, such as the Times of Israel, reported the same distribution of casualties.

Footage from Reuters, Al Jazeera, AP, and local Lebanese reporters shows numerous injured civilians with bandaged hands and faces, including people hurt inside homes, markets, farms, and workplaces, as well as children with hand and facial burns.

Now I would pose the question to you, why is your (likely novice) understanding of explosives and the footage you seen enough to overwrite the opinions of the hospitals and government of Lebanon?

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#446

Post by tptacek » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 3:03 AM UTC

jackling wrote: post #445

tptacek wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just start from the premise that Israel targeted exclusively handheld military comms devices that would in ordinary practice only be in the custody of Hezbollah combatants, and from the additional premise that the explosions in the strikes were relatively small, so small that the overwhelming majority of the Hezbollah casualties were wounded and not KIA. Then try to make another story make sense. We have significant…

Premise 1: The pagers were military devices, but based on what we know about them, it is impossible to assert that all were in the custody of Hezbollah combatants at the moment they exploded. One would need to prove that the pagers were physically on the combatants’ persons—and not, for example, sitting on a coffee table or elsewhere—at the time of detonation. Premise 2: The physical location of the pagers directly a…

Premise 1: I accept that they could have been on coffee tables! The problem isn't that I'm sure every pager was in a combatant pocket; it's that they were microcharges (we have videographic evidence!), and unless most of the pagers were for whatever reason not on hand to a combatant but rather for some reason close to a civilian, the Lebanese civilian/combatant casualty figures can't be made to make sense.

Premise 2 just repeats Premise 1, from what I can tell.

The footage argument doesn't rebut any claim I made. You're treating this as if it's an argument that the pager strike was clean, or even morally justifiable; I have made neither claim.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#447

Post by jackling » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 3:04 AM UTC

juliusdavies wrote: post #439

jackling wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

Do you want some deeply studied anthropological journal article on “The use of pagers in Lebanese society “? Do you know of any civilians anywhere in the world that currently use pagers? Who had the pagers and why they had the pagers is almost derivable from first principles at this point, never mind the international journalism on the subject.

It’s almost like explosives… explode, and hit the people and surroundings near them. Shrapnel travels. You’re trying to derive who had the pagers from first principles, yet you don’t seem to understand how a bomb actually works.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#448

Post by justin66 » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 3:08 AM UTC

Interestingly just nine days ago someone here shared a link to the US's Law of War manual for military personnel. It's pretty good for what it is. Since countries base this stuff on the same international treaties they've all signed, it's a guide to Israel's conduct during war (or just about anyone's) as well as the US's.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46147605

https://media.defense.gov/2023/Jul/31/2003271432/-1/-1/0/DOD...

The question of whether what Israel did with the pagers was legal is not really controversial, or rather, it's not unclear what the law is. Find out the exciting answer in 6.12.4.8 Booby-Traps and Other Devices in the Form of Apparently Harmless Portable Objects Specifically Designed to Explode. (spoiler alert: of course what they did is illegal)

In case you were wondering what the big deal was the other day about the US bombing shipwrecked "narco terrorists" there's 7.3 RESPECT AND PROTECTION OF THE WOUNDED, SICK, AND SHIPWRECKED.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#449

Post by unyttigfjelltol » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 3:20 AM UTC

oa335 wrote: post #429

tptacek wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Here is an excellent and HN-worthy writeup of the argument for legality, and the counterargument that it was an improper booby trap.[1] It seems to me most of the polarizarion on this board could have been avoided had the original article recognized (as does the one linked here) "that the legality or illegality of the pagers attack can only be determined on the basis of a detailed factual analysis and that the relevant facts are still not fully known."

I disagree with @dang's decision to leave the original link up, as it is nearly valuless in framing this discussion.

[1] https://lieber.westpoint.edu/well-it-depends-explosive-pager...

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#450

Post by tptacek » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 3:25 AM UTC

jackling wrote: post #447

juliusdavies wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you want some deeply studied anthropological journal article on “The use of pagers in Lebanese society “? Do you know of any civilians anywhere in the world that currently use pagers? Who had the pagers and why they had the pagers is almost derivable from first principles at this point, never mind the international journalism on the subject.

It’s almost like explosives… explode, and hit the people and surroundings near them. Shrapnel travels. You’re trying to derive who had the pagers from first principles, yet you don’t seem to understand how a bomb actually works.

(1) We have videos of the explosions and their scale.

(2) We have Hezbollah's own claims about how many of their fighters were actually killed.

(3) We have Hezbollah's own photographs of scores of injured Hezbollah fighters --- people not blown apart from the explosions, further backing a claim that all sides to the conflict are making (far more casualties than KIA).

(4) We know how small the pagers were (indeed, exactly what pagers they were) and what the explosive was.

To the extent Lebanon is reporting higher civilian casualties than Hezbollah fighter casualties, the balance of evidence is that at least one of two things is happening: either Hezbollah is dramatically understating its own casualties, or Lebanon is dramatically overstating civilian casualties.

later

(Or we're just misreading the statistics! Pretty normal outcome for a message board discussion!)