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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

#911
post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These were devices purchased by Hezbollah for their internal communications. There are cell phones in Lebanon and they are cheap, people use these devices to avoid Israeli tracking. Otherwise you would use a cell phone. Explosions were very localized so in terms of civilian casualties this was probably very low.

That's true but doesn't really respond there are three levels to consider regarding this and whether Israel truly did minimize civilian casualties. 1. Were the pagers/radios distributed to only Hezbollah members or was Hezbollah the main purchaser of the lots? Plenty of professions (doctors) still use pagers. 2. Did Hezbollah distribute these only to militants or did members of its civil service receive these as well…

Hezbollah is constantly firing missiles into northern Israel. Accounting for causalities is a luxury in war and Hezbollah is a militia that forces Israel into war.

It was an effective war strategy and I doubt you can name weapons of war that are more targeted. So I don't see how your criticism can hold up even if the questions were answered.

I would not want to answer them, because I believe you would not accept any answer anyway.

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

#912
Let’s put the question other way around If Hezbollah had chance to make similar trigers in Israeli reservists soldiers, and launched same exploding attacks on reservists israeli soldiers while not in homes and not engaged, knowingly all israely reservists are linked to IDF apps for in case call of duty

Should a triger to explode 50000 mobile devices in these hands considered terrorism? In time of engaged war from israeli side!!

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

#913
post #47

These sorts of attacks are going to hurt a lot of innocent people. How do they control the munitions and ensure they limit civilian casualties? (I suspect they do not.) It also seems to be lionized in the media as something "impressive" and not "contemptible". I'm not saying it cannot be both! It could be contemptible and impressive, but the media seems comfortable just being impressed. If North Korea or Iran or Russ…

The explosives were in devices whose only functionality and purpose is communication between terrorists and their leadership. With No civilian functionality. With tiny amount of explosives.

> The explosives were in devices whose only functionality and purpose is communication between terrorists and their leadership. With No civilian functionality

Those devices are used still extensively by Hospitals, ambulances and first aid teams. The red cross use walkies. The firefighters and police also. They pose several advantages over the phone net, specially when managing sensible information from victims private life that you still have to custody and protect from internet. Nobody wants to talk on whasap about "somebody is being raped somewhere and we are on route to help, tell the other units that join us there".

They still work after earthquakes or on wildfires, and common people use it extensively on places without phone coverage like mountainous areas or fisheries. None of those people are terrorists.

But this does not matter, because the brands will stop making and selling this products to everybody. The risk as a company to became collateral damage in this new operations is too high.

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

#914

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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LGBTQ+ and even women's rights are a recent phenomenon in the west, and still unfolding (and could revert). If you want the less enlightened society to embrace these rights, how do you propose to do it? Take their land? Killing their kids? Open air prison? I don't think these strategies are going to do it..

Unless Patrick Stewart is involved I’m straighter than a laser beam.

I’m talking about apostasy and being outspoken on civil rights.

But good point about how they drag homosexuals from behind scooters until they are dead.

As far as fixing them? I really don’t give a shit. They are as fixable as the North Korean ruling elite.

Anyone who thinks they can be smiled and hugged into the modern age is a fool.

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

#915
post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not too familiar with the story but the lead sentence is “On October 12, 2000, two suicide pilots of a small bomb-laden boat pulled alongside of the USS Cole at midship, offered friendly gestures to several crew members, and detonated their explosives.”. Could this possibly fall under Article 37 c of the Geneva convention (“The feigning of civilian, non-combatant status”)? In that case, calling it terrorism would…

But that would mean any attacks made by or involving spies are terrorism.

Yes, that would generally be defined as state-sponsored terrorism.

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

#916
post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Tell that to the seriously injured practicioners, children and civilians.

What military action do you propose that has zero chance of collateral damage whatsoever?

This is vastly better than the alternative of dropping even relatively small (250lb) bombs. This is vastly better than pretty much every alternative.

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

#917
post #854

War and terrorism aside, for the rest of us, in practical terms, Israel can now never be trusted commercially for its software or hardware. Not only are they backdoored and exploited, but they also blow up and kill the user.

Do you think Israel is just randomly planting bombs in everything it makes? This was clearly a targeted op aimed at Hezbollah.

Yes, I actually do think that Israel is installing backdoors and explosives in 10x more things than they have activated in their current war against Lebanon.

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

#918

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But by definition the founders of the USA were terrorists. And they knew it too, viz. Benjamin Franklin's famous line 'Gentlemen, we must all hang together or we shall most assuredly hang separately.' Preemptively invalidating all non-state actors is just a way for people with power to avoid challenges to it. Every single oppressive regime describes rebels as terrorists and employs circular arguments to assert its ow…

What Franklin said was true though. If the US revolutionaries had failed, they would have been rightfully hung for treason by the British. If you're some private actor attacking military targets in some country, you'd be a terrorist. I'm no fan of Iran for example but if somebody was caught launching rockets at an IRGC base the Iranian government could legitimately treat them as terrorists/traitors no problem.

Eh - that depends on how you do it, right?

If everyone in your ‘private actor’ group wears uniforms, acts in the open (ie marches in formation, operates tanks instead of setting boobie traps, etc), and then attacks military operations directly it’s going to require an extreme amount of squinting to call that group terrorists.

Whoever is running it would probably get a pretty fair title of warlord. But they’re different.

At the same time, it a gov’t organization runs around bombing civilian targets in a campaign to scare everyone in their opponents country out of their mind, pretty hard to not call them terrorists.

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

#919

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Notably, special forces are almost universally exempt from ‘fair’ POW treatment, and treated similarly to spies. Aka often shot on sight, can be tortured, etc.

It’s part of the deal when you’re a high speed, low drag type. Be good, or get dead.

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

#920

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…

I think it should not be considered terrorism to the extent that the attack targeted legitimate military targets during a time of war — broadly speaking, combatants and other parts of the organization that affect its ability to wage war. Terrorism, at least least in my view, is an attack that either intentionally targets civilians or is truly indiscriminate, and is aimed at producing political cha age by causing fear…

I don't see how anyone can claim that the remote detonation of explosive devices hidden inside everyday devices can be called an operation against 'legitimate military targets'.

There's no way to know that 4000 devices are going to only harm their 'owner'.

Call it whatever you want, but these attacks are not responsible nor 'in the right'. This sort of tactic is reckless and evil.

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