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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

#651

Post by tptacek »

sporkxrocket wrote: post #648
tptacek wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's equally true in Israel, where Hezbollah fired tens of thousands of rockets indiscriminately, killing, among other things, a Druze children's soccer team in the Golan Heights. You can read this on Amnesty (no friend of Israel's) if you want. Again: it's hard to understand where you could getting this notion that Hezbollah attacks are highly targeted from. That is anything but their operational signature.

I posted plenty of videos in my other reply to you of Hezbollah attacks on Israel. They’re very clearly targeted.

They fire guided munitions at Israeli troop positions. They fire unguided rockets and mortar shells into Israeli towns. A video of a targeted Hezbollah strike doesn't illustrate anything at all; everybody points the gun when it's useful to do so, it's what you do when you don't have a combatant target that tells the actual tale.

I can't say enough how odd it is to bring this kind of take into a discussion about Hezbollah. Note that I'm not making the case that Israel is fastidious about avoiding civilian casualties; that would be an unproductive argument to attempt on this thread. You have found one of the few arguments that are even less productive.

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/lebanon-hezbollahs...

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#652

Post by dlubarov »

array_key_first wrote: post #574
dlubarov wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Targeting Hezbollah operatives is certainly targeting, yes. The fact that there was still some nonzero harm to civilians, despite the targeting, does not refute that. Targeting doesn't imply zero collateral damage, which is an impossible standard.

The collateral damage was obvious and predictable. If you know about the potential collateral damage and do it anyway, then it's not targeted, even if you say it's targeted. For example: say I want to kill someone. I know they live in NYC. So I target them by dropping a nuke on NYC. Is this a targeted attack? Obviously not. But I said it was targeted! Doesn't work that way. If you want to target people, you try your…

If I dive bomb an enemy position, knowing that it's dark and windy and I might end up hitting something else, that's still a targeted operation. Same deal with the pager operation.

> So I target them by dropping a nuke on NYC.

You would have plainly violated the principle of proportionality, which is about the relative weight of military advantage vs civilian harm. The pager operation on the other hand created a massive military advantage, with less civilian harm than what's possible with conventional warfare.

> planting bombs in mundane places and setting them off in public

You would have a stronger point if the conflict looked more like Ukraine, where enemies are mostly sitting in trenches wearing uniforms. Hezbollah operates very differently, storing and firing weapons from mundane civilian places. There's no real way to fight Hezbollah without bombs in such places, it's just a question of whether bombs are delivered by artillery, planes or other means.

> this was intentional

I'm not sure what you mean here. I of course agree Israel could have predicted that there would be non-zero harm to civilians. That's true of pretty much any operation though, at least in urban wars.

For comparison, consider Ukraine's massive truck bomb of the Kerch Bridge. Of course they knew there would be collateral damage, and 5 civilians ended up being killed. It was still widely considered legal, considering the major military advantage gained.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#653

Post by sporkxrocket »

tptacek wrote: post #651
sporkxrocket wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posted plenty of videos in my other reply to you of Hezbollah attacks on Israel. They’re very clearly targeted.

They fire guided munitions at Israeli troop positions. They fire unguided rockets and mortar shells into Israeli towns. A video of a targeted Hezbollah strike doesn't illustrate anything at all; everybody points the gun when it's useful to do so, it's what you do when you don't have a combatant target that tells the actual tale. I can't say enough how odd it is to bring this kind of take into a discussion about Hezbo…

Any collateral damage here is orders of magnitude less than what Israel has done. There’s no debating that.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#654

Post by tradertef »

hbogert wrote: post #44
tradertef wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's okay to dislike both parties

This is exactly one group wants to do. Be vocal, throw out many lies.. and people will start thinking both sides are (very) bad and there is no reason for them to be involved. This thinking allows Israel to commit genocide, extend its borders, bomb journalist, cut aid, arrest..

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#655

Post by Cyph0n »

palmotea wrote: post #494
Cyph0n wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: timing - They were triggered to explode en masse, which implies that there was zero consideration to minimizing civilian harm. Re: location - They exploded everywhere you can think of, while these targets were doing civilian activities near other civilians, and not in a combat setting. Re: possession - Given the above, and Israel’s horrendous kill ratio, there was definitely no consideration for possession of the…

> Re: timing - They were triggered to explode en masse, which implies that there was zero consideration to minimizing civilian harm. Zero? The whole nature of the attack shows consideration towards "minimizing civilian harm." Tricking an enemy agent into carrying a small explosive device on his person, then detonating it, will have far less civilian harm than the standard procedure of dropping a bomb on whatever buil…

So it’s either drop a bomb on them or mass detonate explosive devices? Love it.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#656

Post by Cyph0n »

richardfeynman wrote: post #485
Cyph0n wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: timing - They were triggered to explode en masse, which implies that there was zero consideration to minimizing civilian harm. Re: location - They exploded everywhere you can think of, while these targets were doing civilian activities near other civilians, and not in a combat setting. Re: possession - Given the above, and Israel’s horrendous kill ratio, there was definitely no consideration for possession of the…

timing - The fact that they were triggered to explode en masse does not imply there was zero consideration to minimizing civilian harm. However, the fact that only Hezbollah leaders had these pagers, and the fact that the explosives were small, does imply there was deep consideration to minimizing civilian harm. location - they all exploded on the person of hezbolllah leaders or in their possession in a belligerent c…

> Israel has a laudable and low civilian: militant kill ratio, possibly the best in the history of modern combat.

Right, that’s my cue to stop engaging :)

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#657

Post by sporkxrocket »

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #641

It was one of the greatest acts of deception in history. Absolute genius. Even at our peak we never did anything comparable. It’s like blowing up every single member of the gestapo simultaneously. The resistance could only have dreamed of such a mission.

The perception gap between Zionists and everyone else around this is astonishing. Zionists are gleeful and the rest of us are horrified and disgusted. I don’t see how we don’t eventually end in an armed conflict as this difference seems unreconcilable.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#658

Post by Cyph0n »

tptacek wrote: post #468
rat87 wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

That's not the argument. Presumably a broad cross-section of Lebanese people have pagers. But only Hezbollah combatants had these pagers, which were specifically procured by Hezbollah through an idiosyncratic suppler, linked to Hezbollah's own military encrypted network, and triggered by a pager message encrypted to that network.

> linked to Hezbollah's own military encrypted network, and triggered by a pager message encrypted to that network.

I am not sure where you’re getting this information from. For instance, you seem confident that this network used exclusively by the armed wing.

Regardless, absolutely none of this negates the fact that this was an indiscriminate terrorist attack.

If the sides were reversed, or if virtually any other state executed this kind of attack, it would be rightfully condemned. But Israel, as always, gets a pass. And it was indeed a brilliant plan, but only in how comically evil it was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device...

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#659

Post by bjourne »

dlubarov wrote: post #642
bjourne wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could ask ChatGPT and get a perfectly cromulent answer on what these have to do with what I cited. The key theme is indiscriminate weapons used for indiscriminate attacks. Alas, you can lead a horse to water...

Tiny explosives are certainly not the sort of inherently indiscriminate weapons ICRC refers to. You might want to read the article you linked to, which uses nuclear weapons as the main example. The difference in energy released by Israel's beeper vs a modern nuclear payload is at least 10 orders of magnitude.

Scroll down to examples, read it, and then click Next until you get to Rule 80.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#660

Post by tptacek »

Cyph0n wrote: post #658
tptacek wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the argument. Presumably a broad cross-section of Lebanese people have pagers. But only Hezbollah combatants had these pagers, which were specifically procured by Hezbollah through an idiosyncratic suppler, linked to Hezbollah's own military encrypted network, and triggered by a pager message encrypted to that network.

> linked to Hezbollah's own military encrypted network, and triggered by a pager message encrypted to that network. I am not sure where you’re getting this information from. For instance, you seem confident that this network used exclusively by the armed wing. Regardless, absolutely none of this negates the fact that this was an indiscriminate terrorist attack. If the sides were reversed, or if virtually any other st…

The most obvious citation is Reuters, which did a whole article on this, including the specific circumstances in which the pagers exchanged hands. And, whatever the rest of the moral circumstances of the strike may have been, the fact of the devices being combatant communication equipment does mean that it was neither indiscriminate (it was in fact very discriminate) nor terroristic (it had combatant targets, not civilians).

The attacks can still be immoral for a host of other reasons. Pearl Harbor was deeply immoral. It was also not an indiscriminate terrorist attack. Words mean things.

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