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Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

reuters.com

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Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

#551

Post by pdabbadabba »

llamaimperative wrote: post #532
pdabbadabba wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think the IDF considered whether civilians would be harmed, or have a good possibility of being harmed? Presumably that would be why they didn't use bigger explosives. Or -- taking a step back -- why they used this tactic rather than dropping bombs from the air.

Eh, deniability and international response is another reason not to drop bombs from the air.

I'm not sure deniability is something Israel is prioritizing here. They know that the world will immediately know that nobody but Israel would/could have done this.

But avoiding civilian harm and managing the international response are definitely interrelated goals here, to say the least.

Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

#552

Post by meepmorp »

xenospn wrote: post #439
mrtksn wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well poisoning is an antisemitic talking point, its used as an excuse to target Jewish people by claiming that Jews are secretly poisoning the well from who their people during water.

I’ve never heard that phrase before. Did you come up with it?

Jews poisoning wells was a common antisemitic accusation for centuries (and still - Mahmoud Abbas made a very similar, unsubstantiated claim in 2016) Also, accusations of murdering Christian babies to make matzo, generally worshiping the devil and desecrating communion hosts, etc.

Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

#553

Post by mmh0000 »

geysersam wrote: post #160
tptacek wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allegedly hidden well enough that a casual X-ray of the pager wouldn't have revealed it.

Interesting that it wasn't discovered by any bomb sniffing dog in Lebanon. They had thousands of devices. There must be at least a few bomb dogs in Lebanon right?

Simply because "bomb" dogs, like "drug" dogs are a scam to give the police a legal excuse to violate your rights. The dogs don't detect bombs/drugs, they detect cues from the controlling officer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detection_dog#Criticism

  The law was reviewed in 2006 by the New South Wales Ombudsman, who handed down a critical report regarding the use of dogs for drug detection. The report stated that prohibited drugs were found in only 26% of searches following an indication by a drug sniffer dog. Of these, 84% were for small amounts of cannabis deemed for personal use.[27]: 29  Subsequent figures obtained from NSW Police in 2023 revealed that between 1 January 2013 and 30 June 2023, officers had conducted 94,535 personal searches (refers to both strip searches and less invasive frisk or "general" searches) resulting from drug detection dog indications, with only 25% resulting in illicit drugs being found.[28]

Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

#555

Post by bbatha »

invalidname wrote: post #84
paulnpace wrote: post #58

I see a lot of comments here that seem to imply there is knowledge that victims were exclusively members of Hezbollah.

These were devices purchased by Hezbollah for their internal communications. There are cell phones in Lebanon and they are cheap, people use these devices to avoid Israeli tracking. Otherwise you would use a cell phone. Explosions were very localized so in terms of civilian casualties this was probably very low.

That's true but doesn't really respond there are three levels to consider regarding this and whether Israel truly did minimize civilian casualties.

1. Were the pagers/radios distributed to only Hezbollah members or was Hezbollah the main purchaser of the lots? Plenty of professions (doctors) still use pagers.

2. Did Hezbollah distribute these only to militants or did members of its civil service receive these as well? Keep in mind that Hezbollah is a legitimate political party in Lebanon and provides social services and operates hospitals. They have plenty of members and leaders who have never personally lifted a finger to harm Israel.

3. Did Israel verify that these devices were in the hands of Hezbollah members at the time of detonation and that those members were isolated to minimize collateral damage? The answer to this is clearly no, the logistics are simply impossible to track who is holding 3000+ passive devices. And we've seen reports of civilian causalities including a dead child.

Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

#556

Post by jessriedel »

frankie_t wrote: post #243
knlam wrote: post #124

In the other thread, HN said Israel can only pull this trick only once and they just did it the second time

I guess it could still be considered the same one, just the continuation of it. I was kind of expecting a ground invasion after such havoc in communications has been wrecked. I guess if the "electronic" attack is still going on, maybe something else will still proceed...

But the point of the argument was that Hezbollah would immediately never trust their electronic devices going forward until they could secure their supply chain. The argument didn’t depend on the semantics between same and distinct attacks.

One can argue that there is some temporary remaining vulnerability for Hezbollah members who either didn’t hear about the first attack or had some insanely urgent need to communicate (and this vulnerability wouldn’t exist once they secure the supply chain). But I think the much simpler story is that these attacks aren’t possible only once; supply chain security is a continuum, and people will continue to balance risk of repeat attacks against the costs of security.

Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

#557

Post by pvaldes »

edanm wrote: post #543
113 wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> legitimate military targets during a time of war Israel and Lebanon are not at war.

But Israel and Hezbollah are at war, and these are (reportedly) devices used by Hezbollah operatives. A war Hezbollah declared, btw.

[flagged]

Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

#558

Post by juancn »

rowanseymour wrote: post #368
minkles wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering Hezbollah is a designated terrorist organisation in many countries, this probably should be considered an anti-terrorist operation. The targets are enemy combatants. Also notably, it clearly did not intentionally target civilians, although there may be civilian casualties which is uncharacteristic of a terrorist attack.

I assume by "many countries" you mean the US and its allies? Is that it then? Your definition of "terrorist" is whoever the West designates a terrorist? Ergo Nelson Mandela was a terrorist.

[There are a few](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_designated_terrorist_g...)

Surprisingly there are several Arab countries, including the [Gulf Cooperation Council](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Cooperation_Council), and the UAE.

Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

#559

Post by burningChrome »

lupusreal wrote: post #396
minkles wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it stops a third wrong.

It absolutely does not. The violence will continue with both sides dishing it out and feeling completely justified in doing so because of what was previously done to them.

Or one side accepts a two state solution and stops using its proxies to attack Israel. Unfortunately, there have been eight attempts to give the Palestinians their own state and its been rejected every time. In the 90's, Bill Clinton gave them practically everything they asked for and was still rejected.

The only condition they will ever accept is when Israel ceases to exist.

Which begs the question - who's really initiating and continuing the violence? Israel has offered peace. HAMAS and its proxies like Hezbollah have rejected it every time. It should be obvious there's only one side who wants peace and one side who only wants war.

Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

#560

Post by schlick »

csense wrote: post #535

Is this making anyone else really nervous about how much of our tech comes from China? I'm thinking a scenario like this: - China makes a rule that all cellphones leaving the country must go through an "inspection facility" (where the explosive hardware and the backdoor trigger chip will be installed) - A year after the next big iPhone release, China sends a huge convoy of warships and troop transports toward Taiwan,…

I'll just continue my tactic of never buying a new phone
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