Live data from Hacker News

Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

reuters.com

651–660 of 1001 posts

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

#651
post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Israel and Lebanon are not at war. Maybe not, but the combatants holding those devices were at war, no?

> but the combatants holding those devices were at war, no? The attack wasn't as targeted as you seem to think. It also hit health workers and bystanders. Approx half the casualties are civilians (including children). According to Humans rights watch: https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/18/lebanon-exploding-pagers... > Thousands of pagers simultaneously exploded across Lebanon and parts of Syria on September 17, 2024, r…

> Approx half the casualties are civilians

Citation needed for that. None of the news reports, even the heavily biased ones, have reported mass civilian casualties.

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

#652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> This was a deliberate targeting of terrorists, Negative. Anyone can use a pager or a walkie talkie. If this were to have happened in say the US, it would 100% be considered not only terrorism, but an act of war.

These were pagers sold to Hezbollah though, not random pagers.

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

#653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

They do, and have done so since the 1990s. You would know this even if from US TV news if you paid attention. I cannot help but wonder how many people's 'knowledge' of Hezbollah is based on pundits and the occasional movie with random 'terrorists' shouting in Arabic.

They are not part of the regular Lebanese army, but they are a straight up military force. The most obvious parallel I can think of would be the US Marines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah_armed_strength

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

#654
post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(a) Disrupt Hezbollah’s communications network and take out operatives. (b) The pagers were specifically distributed to Hezbollah operatives, not civilians. It targeted, by definition, the owners of those pagers, supporting the military objective. (c) It was limited, by definition. This contained tiny amount of explosives, focused very much on targeting the owner of the device, not “civilians or civilian objects with…

An explosive going off in a grocery store while people shop is "limited, by definition"?

Yes? Watch the videos, people 3 feet away were completely unharmed.

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

#655
post #5

If i understood correctly they were rigged with explosive. There is no way that a regular battery would explode like this right ?

Yes. There's sourcing for the first attack that Israel implanted daughterboards of some sort with small (30g?) amounts of explosive. The battery may have been involved with the triggering, but it wasn't a battery explosion.

[flagged]

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

#656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 in…

Unfortunately, there have been eight attempts to give the Palestinians their own state and its been rejected every time. Can we have a source for that claim? I do not know how you would arrive at the number eight and how any offer would qualify as giving the Palestinians all they asked for. The Oslo process was probably the best shot but did not even come close to resolving the conflict. A lot of the contentious issu…

Sorry, my bad. Its actually 5, not 8.

https://lawandsocietymagazine.com/how-palestine-rejected-off...

1st Rejection - The suggested split was heavily in favor of the Arabs. The British offered them 80% of the disputed territory, the Jews the remaining 20%. Yet, despite the tiny size of their proposed state, the Jews voted to accept this offer. But the Arabs rejected it and resumed their violent rebellion.

2nd Rejection - Ten years later, in 1947, the British asked the United Nations to find a new solution to the continuing tensions. Like the Peal Commission, the UN decided that the best way to resolve the conflict was to divide the land. In November 1947, the UN voted to create two states. Again, the Jews accepted the offer and again, the Arabs rejected it. Only this time, they did so by launching an all-out war. Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria joined the conflict. But they failed. Israel won the war and got on with the business of building a new nation. Most of the land set aside by the UN for an Arab state, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, became occupied territory. Occupied not by Israel, but by Jordan.

3rd Rejection - 20 years later, in 1967, the Arabs led this time by Egypt and joined by Syria and Jordan, once again sought to destroy the Jewish state. The 1967 conflict, known as the Six-Day War, ended in a stunning victory for Israel. Jerusalem and the West Bank, as well as the area known as the Gaza Strip, fell into Israel’s hands. The government split over what to do with this new territory. Half wanted to return the West Bank to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt in exchange for peace. The other half wanted to give it to the region’s Arabs, who had begun referring to themselves as the Palestinians, in the hope that they would ultimately build their own state there. Neither initiative got very far. A few months later, the Arab League met in Sudan and issued its infamous three-NOs, no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel. Again, a two-state solution was dismissed by the Arabs.

4th Rejection - In 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak met at Camp David, with Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Nasser Arafat, to conclude a new two-state plan. Barak offered Arafat a Palestinian state in all of Gaza, and 94% of the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital. But the Palestinian leader rejected the offer. In the words of U.S. President Bill Clinton, “Arafat was here 14 days and said no to everything.” Instead, the Palestinians launched a bloody wave of suicide bombings that killed over 1,000 Israelis and maimed thousands more, on buses, in wedding halls, and in pizza parlors.

5th Rejection - In 2008, Israel tried yet again. Prime Minister Ehud Omar went even further than Ehud Barak had, expanding the peace offer to include additional land to sweeten the deal. Like his predecessor, the new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, turned the deal down.

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

#657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if somebody turned the phones of all members of X army (say IDF) into bombs, and exploded them at mass when a lot of them would be off duty with their families, would that be ok? This is what happened here.

> So if somebody turned the phones of all members of X army (say IDF) into bombs, and exploded them at mass when a lot of them would be off duty with their families, would that be ok? Yes. Because it would be an attack targeting active military personnel during a time of war, even if they happen to be around non-combatants at the time.

That doesn't seem correct. Israel's enemies are not justified for attacking Israel even if the majority of their "citizens" are military reservists during wartime. If we want to play the non-combatant tally game, then a strike on Israel becomes deeply justified as an attack on an entrenched dual-purpose position.

...but that's ridiculous, and we should apply the same standards of morality to our enemy even when they refuse to cooperate. Lebanon is not and cannot be treated as a zone including nothing but combatants, and neither can Israel. By crossing the line of terrorism (make no mistake: they were aware of the threat to civilians), Israel is further damaging international support and again blurring the lines between the IDF and their enemies. The UN just convened to tell Israel to renounce their occupied territories in the next year - the days of "lawn-mowing" civilian infrastructure without criticism have passed.

If we keep seeing the Dahiya doctrine and Hannibal directive proliferate, there will be no way for a morally defensible US administration to support IDF operations.

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

#658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why is terrorism most aligned with Islam? isn't it possible to frame any/every religion as "most likely to commit acts of terrorism" based on subjective interpretations of their tenets?

Only in recent times, with IS and similar organizations in the middle east. If you look at different historic periods you'd consider the Christians to be violent terrorists, even invading countries and starting lots of wars.

then we agree. personally i find the kind of terrorism associated with Christian Nationalism to pose more of an existential threat since i'm in the US and am exposed to a lot of it. despite that, i don't conflate christianity with terrorism.

the person i responded to thinks that Islam has a causal relationship with terrorism - what about the ideology leads you to believe that, besides the fact that the media you consume reports on it more often?

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

#659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try taking the matter into their own hands by bringing the illegal west bank settlers to trial. Tried that yet?

Hezbollah launched a war against Israel 12 months ago. Why is it suddenly an issue for you when they get hit back? Is it only a problem when Israel fights back? Stop launching rockets at Israel, comply with UN Resolution 1701, and the conflict is over. Why are you overcomplicating this?

It's rude to completely ignore the very reasonable argument someone brought up. The illegality of the West Bank settlements is not a new issue and long predates the latest round of military conflict.

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

#660
post #543
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.

And I guess like in Gaza, civilians are de facto complicit. Plus they are Arabs and not Jewish so can we really apply human rights to them? Are they even actually humans? I guess it’s not genocide when it’s done to animals. /s
Post reply on HN