Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

741–750 of 1001 posts

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

#741

Post by borski »

anigbrowl wrote: post #727
borski wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Sure, that's true. They would have much worse trauma if these were air-dropped bomb or rocket. As strikes go, this was very surgical; but you're right, war is awful.

You'll never hear me say war is good. It's awful.

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

#742

Post by anigbrowl »

Eliezer wrote: post #314
newspaper1 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Massive, massive L for Israel. No one in their right mind is going to use Israeli tech or products going forward. They just devastated their own economy.

These weren't Israeli products. If I were Mossad, I'd compromise anything except an Israeli or Jewish-owned product.

That's beside the point, though. Imagine you are in some non-aligned/involved country with no real stake in MENA politics, idk Thailand or Peru. Corporate/national security is your job. Absent some specific need that can't be supplied by anyone else, would you want to do business with them?

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

#743

Post by golergka »

datameta wrote: post #55
golergka wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine this was Hezbollah detonating hundreds or thousands of devices in Israel? If these were devices used predominantly by IDF, I wouldn't consider it an act of terror either. However, Hezbolla prefers to indiscriminately target civilians. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/druze-shock-war-be...

Since we're bringing other conflicts into this... How come Ukraine is able to put in every effort to avoid civilian death when their opponent deliberately uses cruise and ballistic missiles on residential areas?

Because Ukraine was fighting on it's own territory, not the territory of the enemy. Just today, Ukrainians have blown up the Russian arms silo the size of a small town, and I don't doubt that a lot of Russian civilians have died. There's also been a lot of casualties around Kursk. There's been a lot of civilian casualties in different attacks on Crimea too. Quite a few people died when Ukrainians attacked the Crimea bridge.

And, of course, Ukranians are within their rights and do not break any laws of war. Just as Israelis.

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

#744

Post by LincolnedList »

numpad0 wrote: post #588
lukan wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are aware that Hezbollah routinely fires missiles into Israel (and Israel fires Artillery and drop bombs)? How would you call that? There is already a war, so far it just has been avoided to become an all out war.

[flagged]

This is a little ridiculous. Lets say all the Lebanese "grow up" and say they had it enough with these black ops by their enemies. And so each able man takes a gun in hand and goes to war against Israel. And lets say they lose the war badly. What now?

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

#745

Post by tptacek »

anigbrowl wrote: post #702
tptacek wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what that is supposed to mean. There are norms of warfare and these attacks fall within them.

They may do so, but you know perfectly well what the reaction would be if this happened to people in the US pursuant to an ongoing conflict.

I do. We'd go completely apeshit. People would lie about their age to join up, like after Pearl Harbor. So? That's war. War is very bad.

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

#746

Post by dsauerbrun »

goldcd wrote: post #547
moffkalast wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tomorrow: "Hezbollah laptops explode across Lebanon, sources say"

That's got to be a reason why the attacks are staggered. Separating them definitely increased the chances that somebody would check their radios - but taking out the pagers drove people to the radios. Now taking out the radios is making people worry what else might be compromised. Your enemy refusing to use their communication equipment is a definite win. The pagers and radios were supposedly due to the worry that th…

the only safe option anymore is the cup and string

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

#747

Post by golergka »

scottiebarnes wrote: post #50
golergka wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how ultra targeted, small explosive charges quack terrorism? I have been reading comments like this yesterday, and I'm completely bewildered as to how any sane person could come to this conclusion. Did you consider the US operation to take down Bin Laden an act of terrorism too?

To be ultra targeted you actually have to know where your target is when your bomb goes off. When you detonate thousands at once, you're simply accepting the civilian casualty risk.

This risk is so low it is ultra targeted. Once again, the usual ratio of civilian casualties to combatant casualties in a modern war, per UN, is 9:1. In Gaza war, this ratio is 1-2:1, so even there, Israel is already producing 5-10 times less civilian casualties.

In this case, it's thousands of enemy combatants and (at the most, according to journalists in Lebanon and therefore under Hezbolla power) a couple of dozens of civilians. Can you calculate the ratio here? Where else have you seen a military operation of this scope and with this kind of civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio?

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

#748

Post by hilux »

kstenerud wrote: post #205
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…

It's not terrorism when you're on the winning side. That's how it's always been.

That's literally true, and I don't mean that in a snarky way. Everyone who ever had a history class should know this.

I'm disappointed that this thread has devolved into an angry and pointless political debate, when it could instead have been a cool technical exploration of how Mossad pulled it off. Come on, Hacker News!

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

#749

Post by TiredOfLife »

ordinaryradical wrote: post #563

There’s a “live by the sword, die by the sword” reaction that I have to this. I think we expect better of democracies, which is why these kinds of attacks shock us. But it is interesting that we are unsurprised when Lebanon/Hezbollah uses terror tactics but it quickly becomes a news event when Israel responds in kind. Ironic because drone bombings like we did in Afghanistan would probably have a much more terrible co…

>I think we expect better of democracies, which is why these kinds of attacks shock us

Israel conducts probably the most precise military action in the history of warfare and people still demand more.

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

#750

Post by negativeonehalf »

'U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. called for a "full accounting" of the attacks to Congress to determine "whether any US assistance went into the development or deployment of this technology."'

Are there any public records indicating the CIA is capable of pulling off something like this?

I wish the US had been involved, but I seriously doubt it, if only because the opsec requirements are so high. If anyone in Hezbollah had even a whiff of concern that this could happen, the whole operation would have been a bust.

Post reply on HN