It's surprising that Mossad arranged a massive destruction of communication technology without it being the precursor to a major military operation. Very curious why they chose this moment to execute an operation they clearly had ready to go for months.
Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
871–880 of 1001 posts
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#872Israel's Mossad spy agency planted a small amount (3 gm) of explosives inside 5,000 pagers made by Gold Apollo (a Taiwanese company). "The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code." 3,000 of the pagers exploded when a coded message was sent to them. Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuang said the pagers used in the explosion were made by a company in Europe that had t…
You know, as this is a tech forum, I'll reply via a tech business, re: branding angle. Yes Gold Apollo, they were yours. That's because you licensed your name, and your name is your business. (EG your mark(name) of trade) I've seen this in everything from hotels to frying pans. License that name! We made 1% more this quarter. Yeehaw! Holiday in has corporate owned hotels, franchised hotels, and of course licensed hot…
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Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#873Honestly just slept on the thing and the story seems even more surreal to me now. How come they needed to replace their pagers AT ONCE recently? Has there been some great breakthrough in pager technology? I have a 5 year old phone and no desire to replace it for at least a couple years more. How come everyone had the EXACT same model? Even if the Israelis didn't compromise it, even the most incompetent intelligence a…
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Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#874If it was not a terrorist attack and a war crime but a targeted operation against the militants, why wouldn't Israel claim responsibility for the successful operation?
Israel has had a “no comment” policy for many years. Why? I can think of a few reasons. One is that some operations, if acknowledged by Israel, would trigger a proportionate response by the target, but if not acknowledged would allow the target to save face by downplaying what happened, if neither side actually wants war.
That probably doesn’t apply to this case, but has occurred in the past. And no-comment policies are more effective when applied unconditionally.
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#875Honestly just slept on the thing and the story seems even more surreal to me now. How come they needed to replace their pagers AT ONCE recently? Has there been some great breakthrough in pager technology? I have a 5 year old phone and no desire to replace it for at least a couple years more. How come everyone had the EXACT same model? Even if the Israelis didn't compromise it, even the most incompetent intelligence a…
> How come they needed to replace their pagers AT ONCE recently? Hezbollah recently switched to using only pagers for communication, because they were worried about Israel hacking their phones. It's likely they all bought pagers at the same time because of that, because I doubt any of them would have owned pagers already
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Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#876Israel's Mossad spy agency planted a small amount (3 gm) of explosives inside 5,000 pagers made by Gold Apollo (a Taiwanese company). "The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code." 3,000 of the pagers exploded when a coded message was sent to them. Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuang said the pagers used in the explosion were made by a company in Europe that had t…
Gold Apollo claims the devices were assembled in Hungary by a company named BAC.
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#877If it was not a terrorist attack and a war crime but a targeted operation against the militants, why wouldn't Israel claim responsibility for the successful operation?
What incentive would they have for doing so?
countries i think don't comit acts of war randomly without annoucement or claim. This in itself would be borderline criminal, though i'm not sure if it's an actual thing noted in the geneva conventions. Those do state that any act of war should give an opportunity for retaliation. So in essence this is just as criminal as bombing people using armed drones, because these fighters did not have any opportunity to strike back.
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#878Israel's Mossad spy agency planted a small amount (3 gm) of explosives inside 5,000 pagers made by Gold Apollo (a Taiwanese company). "The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code." 3,000 of the pagers exploded when a coded message was sent to them. Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuang said the pagers used in the explosion were made by a company in Europe that had t…
> planted a small amount (3 gm)
The abbreviation for gram is simply "g". I was a bit confused but at least the link cleared things up.
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#879I'm a long way from Lebanon, but carry two pagers for Emergency Services (one per service). One used to be an Apollo Gold but now it isn't. From what I've read these were modified pagers, but I still rang one manager for reassurance. We need a strong statement for all the emergency responders and medical staff that still use these things that it's not going to happen to you.
Israel drone struck Jose Andres' food truck program this year. Between these acts of war between stupid, angry countries, there needs to be not just guarantees for aid workers, but broad international condemnation of tactics that violate the Geneva Convention and related principles. And those principles are long overdue for high-tech drone strikes, robotics and electronics warfare.
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Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#880From a legal perspective, are there any regulations on these kinds of attacks? Meaning, are they allowed? Are they considered a war crime or maybe this is still a gray area?
If the pagers had been equipped with lasers that caused blindness, there is a Geneva Convention protocol going back to 1995[0].
I would like to think that the spirit behind that protocol is that the intent to cause permanent blindness in your opponent should be considered a crime. And not that it's not a crime so long as you don't use a laser to do it.
So you can put me in the camp of "this should be considered a war crime", even if it's not in any books yet.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Certain_Conventi...