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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

#761

Post by tptacek »

newspaper1 wrote: post #759
tptacek wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The military dynamics of the Israel and Hezbollah conflict are an indictment of Israeli's Gaza campaign. When Israel is clear-eyed, strategic, and effective at confronting a serious military adversary, it looks like the Hezbollah conflict: ultra-targeted rapidly disabling strikes. That Israel instead systematically leveled an entire civilian metropolitan area to combat Hamas makes the the claims about the Hezbollah s…

Israel has killed at least 83 people since the ceasefire agreement in Lebanon. They are terrorists. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/28/how-many-people-has...

I'm not interested in litigating this claim because it has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. If it helps, you can be as angry at Israel as you'd like without getting much flak from me (I'm angry too), just as long as we don't get to the "enemy-of-my-enemy" stuff that legitimizes Hezbollah.

I don't think "terrorist" is a useful label for either side. It wasn't "terrorism" when Hezbollah besieged Madaya; they did that as a military force.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#762

Post by newspaper1 »

tptacek wrote: post #761
newspaper1 wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel has killed at least 83 people since the ceasefire agreement in Lebanon. They are terrorists. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/28/how-many-people-has...

I'm not interested in litigating this claim because it has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. If it helps, you can be as angry at Israel as you'd like without getting much flak from me (I'm angry too), just as long as we don't get to the "enemy-of-my-enemy" stuff that legitimizes Hezbollah. I don't think "terrorist" is a useful label for either side. It wasn't "terrorism" when Hezbollah besieged Madaya; they…

As a US citizen I have absolutely no problem with Hezbollah. Why would I? They're no threat to me and indeed, are fighting people who are a threat to me.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#763

Post by kyboren »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #740
FridayoLeary wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you prefer? Israeli tanks blowing their way through families and bombing beirut to rubble to get at the Hezbolla terrorists? War was inevitable, the amazing actions of the mossad mitigated hundreds if not thousands of civilian casualties. What is your complaint, that they booby trapped the communications devices used exclusively by Hezbolla and not, i don't know, their kalashnikovs? Don't hide behind techn…

Probably most of the people who have done terrorism or war crimes would also claim they didn't have any alternatives. It's not my role to find alternatives to terrorism or war crimes, I am just a person on the internet pointing out that terrorism or war crimes have been done.

You have that luxury. Israel doesn't.

With civilians under constant rocket and ATGM fire (actual, real war crimes BTW), under threat of Oct 7th-style infiltration and invasion, with tens of thousands of civilians displaced and numerous civilian casualties, Hezbollah had forced this war upon Israel. And they forced it on Oct 8th, in coordination with the IRGC and Iran's "Ring of Fire" proxies.

Israel had a legitimate right to self defense and any country in Israel's position would be obligated to defend their citizens from such aggression. And any objective observer would admit that Hezbollah's actions went beyond mere casus belli to just simply open war--including constant actual war crimes--against Israel.

So Israel had not just a right to wage war against Hezbollah, but a duty. The next question is: How best to prosecute the war?

The traditional prosecution of this war would have resulted in tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties. These exquisitely targeted small (3g of PETN) explosions short-circuited that war and undoubtedly saved thousands of innocent lives.

Far from terrorism or war crimes, these attacks indirectly saved many innocent lives, spared hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Lebanese infrastructure, were highly targeted at combatants, and even direct civilian casualties were minimal.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#764

Post by bigyabai »

tptacek wrote: post #753
bigyabai wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I apologized for correcting a comment from someone who I believe isn't in a place to discuss the issue, and who would predictably contest the claim --- since we'd already had the same disagreement elsewhere, bringing it up again, however valid my concern was, was bad for the thread. The apology was in no way whatsoever a reflection of my beliefs about what actually happened. "Goybucks" is absolutely not OK here.

[flagged]

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#765

Post by tptacek »

bigyabai wrote: post #764
tptacek wrote: post #753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I apologized for correcting a comment from someone who I believe isn't in a place to discuss the issue, and who would predictably contest the claim --- since we'd already had the same disagreement elsewhere, bringing it up again, however valid my concern was, was bad for the thread. The apology was in no way whatsoever a reflection of my beliefs about what actually happened. "Goybucks" is absolutely not OK here.

[flagged]

I think the ship has sailed on you putting things politely in this thread.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#767

Post by dang »

sporkxrocket wrote: post #739
dang wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also have been breaking the site guidelines badly by perpetuating this flamewar and by using HN primarily for political battle. That's not ok, and if you keep doing it we will have to ban your account. HN's rules don't change based on how right you are or feel you are, or how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules…

I’m simply responding to people who are attacking my posts though.

We need you (i.e. everyone) to follow the rules regardless of how others are behaving.

It always feels like the other person started it and did worse (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), so you (i.e. all of us) can't rely on that as a basis for responding. It leads to a downward spiral, and eventually scorched earth.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#768

Post by coldtea »

tptacek wrote: post #690
sporkxrocket wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This doesn't even make sense. Suppose Israel does lie constantly. What does that have to do with whether Hezbollah does?

Parent meant this as a statement of fact (stating it's x that lies, and implying it's not y, or that x lies more than y). As such (true or not) it makes perfect sense, and requires only a very intuitive and casual understanding to get it.

Your comment reads as if it was some failed attempt at some kind of axiomatic construction (x lies _therefore_ y doesn't).

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#769

Post by coldtea »

tptacek wrote: post #647
sporkxrocket wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re talking about Israel, not Syria.

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.

>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.

An innocent kid was killed in this conflict? Thank God the other side didn't do that 20,000x more - then it would have been a real tragedy!

Especially if unlike some indiscriminate firing of crude rockets, they did it purposefully, with state of the art arms and monitoring systems.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#770

Post by tptacek »

coldtea wrote: post #769
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.

> 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. An innocent kid was killed in this conflict? Thank God the other side didn't do that 20,000x more - then it would have been a real tragedy! Especially if unlike some indiscriminate firing of crude rockets, they did it purposefully, with s…

I have no idea what you're trying to say here. I think you're trying to weigh Israel's actions against those of Hezbollah's? You're not going to get anywhere, rhetorically, with me doing that, because I'm no supporter of Israel's.
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