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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

#721

Post by orbital-decay »

numpad0 wrote: post #486
stetrain wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The definition of terrorism is controversial and political, so there isn't a hard answer. But I think a general distinction is the targeting of combatants vs civilians. There is a difference between infiltrating military or para-military organizations or operations and intentionally targeting mass casualties of civilians for attention.

The entire US is going to freak out if a platoon of KGB soldiers flew into US and killed hundreds of bad guys. How objectively bad the "victims" might have been isn't going to matter. You can't just walk across a recognized international border and do the "right" thing without a consent, regardless of how right or wrong it had been. That's an act of war, technically.

>You can't just walk across a recognized international border and do the "right" thing without a consent, regardless of how right or wrong it had been. That's an act of war, technically.

You might want to read up on the killing of bin Laden, Entebbe raid, and many other similar operations.

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

#722

Post by sam_goody »

kbos87 wrote: post #382

[flagged]

Hezbollah Has launched thousands of missiles into civilian populations and has already caused the desertion of over 25% of the livable sections of the country. Lately, their weapons are getting better at avoiding the "Iron Dome"; just last week a missile hit an apartment building. A massive bombing plot was foiled this week. They have been getting more and more aggressive.

I would think that moves like these, primarily affect fighters, destroy the comms structure which is used to wage war (Hezbollah have their own communications system in addition to Lebanon's), and damage the "Hezbollah Elite" image which causes them to be such a power.

Would bombing Lebanon be a better than what they have done? I think much worse on all counts.

I am genuinely curious when I see blanket criticism. How would you respond if you were in Israel's shoes?

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

#723

Post by edanm »

anigbrowl wrote: post #629
edanm wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reports say that these devices were specifically part of shipments that went specifically to Hezbollah. Which makes sense - I don't think the US Army is using the same walkies that a random hospital in the US uses, for example.

It's far too early for anyone to know that with certainty. And (for what feels like the nth time), Hezbollah is not just a bunch of guys with weapons, it's the civil administration in large parts of the country. Also if the situation were reversed and Hezbollah carried out an attack like this on the IDF, I really doubt the Israelis would just suck it up and say 'oh well occupational hazard of military life, guess we'…

> It's far too early for anyone to know that with certainty. And (for what feels like the nth time), Hezbollah is not just a bunch of guys with weapons, it's the civil administration in large parts of the country.

Sure. Could be those pagers also went to civil Hezbollah administrators. It doesn't seem likely to me, given what we've seen so far. E.g. it's been two days, surely we'd have heard of the many innocent civilians with pagers blowing up; I've heard that, but only as speculation, with no concrete evidence that's happened, except for a few tragic cases of innocent bystanders getting hurt.

Also, it's fairly likely that beepers for the military wing of Hezbollah are kept separate from civilian Hezbollah administrators.

Of course, I come at this from a more trusting-of-Israel place than others. But we don't have to jump to conclusions - we can just wait a few more days as more details emerge.

> Also if the situation were reversed and Hezbollah carried out an attack like this on the IDF, I really doubt the Israelis would just suck it up and say 'oh well occupational hazard of military life, guess we'll retaliate somehow.'

I mean, what would Israelis do instead of retaliating? You're talking as if Hezbollah isn't constantly trying attempting to inflict damage on Israel. Hezbollah declared war on Israel, and has been firing rockets at Israel for the last almost year, causing several deaths, massive property and environmental damage, and the internal displacement of almost 100k Israelis.

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

#724

Post by anigbrowl »

ineedasername wrote: post #455
ivan_gammel wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t look very surgical to me given the civilian casualties and general disregard of what can happen to innocent people. If anything this looks more like a state-sponsored terrorist attack than covert ops with collateral damage.

Actual combat and conventional attacks on a guerilla force embedded in an urban civilian population is far more catastrophic and less surgical than the risk of being inside the ~0.5m lethal radius of these pagers. It's a horrific attack with awful innocent deaths at the same time that any conventional attack that achieved the same impact on Hezbollah would have been even worse for those around them.

I'm not so sure. It certainly shook Hezbollah and no doubt some of the dead or seriously injured held sufficiently important jobs within the organization to cause problems.

On the other hand you now have a few thousand people who suffered unpleasant but not debilitating injuries who are now sadder, wiser, and very very pissed off. My impression is that many of those attacked could have been middle managers or mid-ranking officers. They're now veterans of a traumatizing national event, which will probably increase Hezbollah's standing among the general populace.

(The notion of Hezbollah as a mob of ak-47 wielding foot soldiers is a stereotype from movies and TV that seems to have taken root among many HN readers.)

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

#725

Post by ngcazz »

bushbaba wrote: post #103
fwip wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, I wonder if Israel isn't intentionally trying to provoke more 9/11 moments. If they lose the direct support of the US or the tolerance of the wider international community, they can't fulfill their goals.

Or the flip side. Hamas promised to continue slaughtering Israeli Arabs, Jews, and Christians until they are all dead. Hezbollah has launched rockets into northern Israel for a year…with 100k+ Israelis forced to relocate south. What exactly other option does Israel had. Peace talks didn’t go anywhere for last few decades

Even if Hamas hadn't eliminated the anti-semitic language from their charter in 2007, that argument would require one to accept that preventatively mass murdering whole families and generations of children is a moral means of dealing with a political opponent.

Options? Israel (the people anyway) has always had the option of finally dropping the ethno-nationalism and apartheid of their foundational principles, and accepting that the Palestinians have a way more material right to Palestinian territory than an American or a European who Israel brought over on a birthright trip.

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

#726

Post by xtracto »

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.

I find it very difficult and out of place to discuss these kind of matters in HN. particularly because it is a very US centric forum, the user base share a lot of preconceptions and ideals that come from the education their society gave them.

It's expected, it's OK, but it just prevents discussion of certain topics.

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

#727

Post by anigbrowl »

borski wrote: post #480
ivan_gammel wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was not unfortunate collateral damage in the sense of unknown unknown. Civilian casualties must have been anticipated and nothing has been done to prevent them. It is not „accepted“ rules of war, but normalized disregard of human life.

Once again: watch any of the videos. The vast majority of them involve anyone standing around the operative walking away just fine. This was a targeted attack. Some civilians got hurt, but the intent was not to harm them, and that is the point.

While it seems few bystanders suffered physical injuries, it's naive imho to think that this won't cause enormously elevated fear among the population at large. 'Koolaid' is still synonymous with mass cult poisoning in the US even though that incident happened ~50 years ago in a different country. Everyone in Lebanon is having nightmares about random electronic devices turning out to be bombs, even though they know that's logically not the case. Just like people in New York feel differently about seeing airliners than they did before 9-11.

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

#728

Post by jrflowers »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #661
abalone wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the LA Times these devices are “not usually used by fighters, but by ambulance and civil defense crews and administrators affiliated with Hezbollah. The devices are unrestricted and can be sold to anyone, and as such are used by other organizations in areas of poor signal.” [1] There is no question if an enemy set off hundreds of bombs in American ambulances we would recognize it as a mass terrorist atta…

I agree that if it is confirmed that these are primarily used by civilian ambulance crews, that would make a big difference. Of course, this isn't what the LA Times actually reported, but I'm not sure what "civil defense crews and administrators affiliated with Hezbollah" actually means on the ground.

> Of course, this isn't what the LA Times actually reported

This is a good point. The LA Times does not report incidents involving ambulances other than in the first half of the sentence that you quoted:

>They are not usually used by fighters, but by ambulance and civil defense crews and administrators affiliated with Hezbollah.

And the report of a video of an ambulance exploding

> Video from a funeral ceremony in the country’s south depicted an explosion inside an ambulance, leading bystanders to run away in panic.

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

#729

Post by wordofx »

wordofx wrote: post #593
snypher wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My conscience was pricked when they killed probably 40,000 people in Palestine, so this extra 3,000 casualties is just more deaths from a terrorist state.

[flagged]

[flagged]

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

#730

Post by aaron695 »

Arch485 wrote: post #192

I'm genuinely curious: how is this not considered terrorism on Israel's part? (or is it considered terrorism?) From a tactical standpoint, this is very similar, and the only big difference I see is that this is technologically more advanced/more complex than just planting a bomb or something. If it's not terrorism, what is the differentiating factor(s)? *side note: I'm quite sure other western countries have used tac…

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