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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

#961

Post by ithkuil »

Terr_ wrote: post #897
lfxyz wrote: post #894

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's reasonable to guess that these devices were made to only explode after a very unique code is is received, and/or only when traffic came over a radio channel known to be used by Hezbollah. Why is this a reasonable thing to guess?

Nobody that goes through all that effort of making secret customized electronics and then sneaking them into usage by your foes wants the plan to be ruined because one went off in an uncontrolled/unexpected way, blatantly alerting all the other targets to toss their pagers into a shallow hole. Even if the engineering makes it's a choice of "all blow up" or "none blow up", they'll also want to have control when that m…

I agree.

I'm often confused about the incoherent picture that paints Israel as having blatant disregard for civilian casualties while at the same time devises complicated and risky strategies to perform targeted strikes.

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

#962

Post by sandwichmonger »

mandmandam wrote: post #900
sandwichmonger wrote: post #875

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that's "fucking scary" - the idea that only Arabs can be Muslim is itself racist, is it not? It is somewhat understandable why some people associate terrorist attacks with Muslims, as unfortunate as that may be . Not that I'm saying that Muslims commit the most terrorist attacks, it just so happens that the most well known ones in the west happen to have been committed by Islamic extremists. E.g, WTC…

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

#963

Post by danbruc »

gryzzly wrote: post #896
danbruc wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But terrorism is always bad. Suppose some country occupies another country and the occupied country has no proper army to fight back, therefore they resort to methods of unconventional warfare to fight back against the occupation. Would some call this terrorism? Would this qualify as terrorism given some proper definition of the term and objective judgment of the situation? Would it be bad? What if they not only targ…

some kind of necessity in this case is the death cult of islamism - it should be clear that glorifying martyrdom and calling a suicide bomber a martyr is that type of necessity

Suicide bombers at least really have skin in the game compared to blowing up people half way around the world by drones at the press of a button. If you want to look down on people, then do it for their reasons to fight or the targets they pick, not for their choice of weapon.

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

#964

Post by Ajedi32 »

jhanschoo wrote: post #941
Ajedi32 wrote: post #931

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the more relevant part in that particular case is "subnational groups". The USS Cole attack was obviously not an act of war by Yemen against the US, so it needed to be investigated as a terrorist attack instead. > The extensive FBI investigation ultimately determined that members of the al Qaeda terrorist network planned and carried out the bombing. [...] > By the end of 2000, Yemeni authorities had arrested…

So from what I gather, we are observing either by accident or design a lack of a properly neutral term to designate non-state actors acting against a state's military. Because there is no shortage of material US support for such actors in recent history (I pointed out in another comment the Kurdish resistance in Syria), yet Anglophone media rarely consider US a state sponsor of terrorists.

Yeah, language can be a bit fuzzy around the edges. But when your objective is to overthrow your own government (or win independence for yourself, like the Kurds are), and you're not intentionally targeting civilians, I'd say that's more "rebels" than "terrorists".

If the USS Cole bombers were rebels trying to gain their independence from Yemen (which I don't think is even their stated objective?) and not terrorists they would have been prioritizing Yemeni military targets, not those of uninvolved foreign nations.

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

#965

Post by TeaBrain »

za3faran wrote: post #814
juancn wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[There are a few]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_designated_terrorist_g... ) Surprisingly there are several Arab countries, including the [Gulf Cooperation Council]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Cooperation_Council ), and the UAE.

Hamas: European Union,[158][200] Argentina,[201][202] Australia,[17] Canada,[8] Israel,[203] Japan,[81][18] New Zealand,[162] Paraguay,[84] United Kingdom,[204] United States,[16] Organization of American States[205] Yep, all western countries/entities, as expected.

You've misread the comments above. The above comments are all referencing Hezbollah, not Hamas.

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

#966

Post by lugu »

elpepo wrote: post #437

Does anyone know, assuming this was a radio-triggered signal to detonate the booby trap, what range the originating signal or radio station could have? I'm curious if this type of remote activation could be achieved with just a single radio tower, or if it would require a network of geographically distributed radio towers to transmit the signal to the affected area. How would isolation conditions, like being inside a…

I would love to know that too. I don't know the frequency the walkie-talkie used: it could anywhere between 136 MHz to 900 MHz. To give you an idea, 135 MHz isn't too far from the FM spectrum. The antenna of your local radio can blast at several miles. If several cities were targeted, then multiple emitting stations were involved.

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

#968

Post by cholantesh »

oldandboring wrote: post #959
aziaziazi wrote: post #881

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> uninvolved civilian medical doctor buying a booby-trapped pager secondhand shouldn't be at significant risk Pretty sure any doctor (or anyone else) owning one of those pager wouldn’t want to keep it, even if configured safely. Would you carry an hand grenade in your backpack all day long, as safe as it it because the pin is still in? > why so many ambulance staff were holding down a second secret job as spies and s…

> Hezbollah is a legal and popular party in Lebanon Hezbollah is an Iran-backed militia whose sole purpose is the destruction of Israel. > and is at war with another country No, they're not. They're a militia. Here is a timeline of major Hezbollah terrorist activities. Left out, of course, is the constant barrage of missiles rained down on northern Israel by Hezbollah. I copy-pasta'd this from another source for conv…

>Hezbollah is an Iran-backed militia whose sole purpose is the destruction of Israel.

This is the official position of Israel, yes, but the international community, including the US acknowledges that they are a political entity as well. You actually don't need to be on side with their positions to accept this fact.

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

#969

Post by yellowapple »

dlubarov wrote: post #958
28304283409234 wrote: post #882

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In contrast, an uninvolved civilian medical doctor buying a booby-trapped pager secondhand shouldn't be at significant risk, The end result is still that innocents are walking around with a bomb planted in their pocket.

Wars often result in innocent farmers having mines in their fields (at least temporarily). How is this worse?

Farmers having to worry about mines in their fields is also something that I would consider to be a bad thing.

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

#970

Post by yellowapple »

bbqfog wrote: post #925
reddozen wrote: post #924

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure you can hold that opinion but Volume II, Chapter 1, Section F of Customary International Humanitarian Law[1] strictly disagrees with you. [1] https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule1

It directly calls out Israel for its attacks against civilians in Lebanon: > "Similarly, the UN Security Council has condemned or called for an end to alleged attacks against civilians in the context of numerous conflicts, both international and non-international, including in Afghanistan, Angola, Azerbaijan, Burundi, Georgia, Lebanon, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Tajikistan, the former Yugoslavia and the…

That sentence doesn't "directly" call out Israel specifically for any attacks against civilians in Lebanon. It just calls out attacks against civilians in Lebanon - which yes, would include attacks by Israel, but would also include attacks by Lebanese militant groups, including Hezbollah (i.e. in the course of the various internal conflicts there).

It would also implicitly apply to attacks wherein civilians were actually the target; expecting military operations to have zero civilian collateral casualties is unrealistic. This exploding pager/radio attack seems to have been targeted at militants specifically, not civilians.

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