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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

#971

Post by HDThoreaun »

pvaldes wrote: post #913
TiredOfLife wrote: post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 privat…

If you are using a radio given to you by Hezbollah it is fair to say you are working with them, that's it imo. Even if you arent currently you likely will in the future, which is why they gave you the device.

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

#972

Post by loeg »

newspaper1 wrote: post #474
afavour wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terrorism targets civilian populations. This operation, as described, targets Hezbollah militants. That feels like an oversimplification to me. Some of those devices have surely injured civilians. I think the question is how many. Broadly it's the same question that's plagued Israel's actions since last October: there will always be civilian casualties as a result of military action, but how many is too many?

If a bomb blew up next to me in a grocery store, even if I wasn't injured, I'd consider myself "targeted" and that the people who exploded it were my enemy. Imagine that actually happening while you were at Safeway.

You'd be mistaken. If you shoot an arrow at a bulls-eye and miss, it doesn't change that the bulls-eye was the target.

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

#973

Post by ok_dad »

anigbrowl wrote: post #672
longbrass wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the IDF were to detonate the rockets Hezbollah uses to explode before launch would this be different? What about gps devices or range finders? Without a doubt it’s asymmetrical… and the common binary is military/terror but I fear this is a distinction left to the last century. The loss of children is always unacceptable, but Hezbollah has a history of courting child soldiers… so skepticism is not unwarranted. http…

Mmmm... Hizbollah Hizbollah was the largest armed political group in the country with a base mainly in Shia areas. It said that it supported the country's ratification of the Optional Protocol in meetings with government officials.29 The group denied any use of children in the ongoing conflict with Israel, including the war of 2006.30 In 2007 there were reports that its military wing was recruiting boys aged 16-19. […

I never thought hard about the last part of your comment here, but it really seems strange that it's been normalized to train high-schoolers in the USA to do military drills and such. There's not a lot of weapons training, I don't think, but I'm starting to realize at middle-age that things I've been told as I grew up (even in adulthood) are straight out lies or at least propaganda. I am too trusting.

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

#974

Post by dlubarov »

yellowapple wrote: post #969
dlubarov wrote: post #958

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you consider it worse than conventional alternatives, such as artillery strikes, even if the latter is likely to result in a worse civilian casualty ratio?

Also, if booby traps aren't considered a legitimate tactic in a military conflict, why does noone complain when, say, Ukraine mines a field?

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

#975

Post by aziaziazi »

PepperdineG wrote: post #650
rtsil wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about that. When Al Quaeda attacked the USS Cole, a purely military vessel without a single civilian casualty, the US administration and the entire US military called it an act of terrorrism.

Al Qaeda isn't a nation-state so by definition it falls into terrorism. It's like if Greenpeace sunk a military vessel because the sonar was killing sea life that would be terrorism. It would have some serious side effects if it was OK for private non-governmental actors being able to target militaries and be seen as legitimate in their actions.

> Greenpeace sunk a military vessel

Funny exemple knowing France sunk a Greenpeace vessel. That act has been called "state terrorism".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warri...

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

#976

Post by gryzzly »

danbruc wrote: post #963
gryzzly wrote: post #896

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s the choice of target, rather than the weapon that makes me look down on them. Aiming to blow up bystanders is disgusting, not sure how you made this be about "choice of weapon".

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

#977

Post by nobodyandproud »

edanm wrote: post #949
nobodyandproud wrote: post #945

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but these are more akin to bombings and not surgical strikes. We’ll know more in the coming days on the impact, but I too feel uncomfortable even as someone who’s mostly supportive of Israel.

> Yes, but these are more akin to bombings and not surgical strikes. Not sure why you think that? If reports are true, these were relatively small bombings that only impacted people carrying a pager that was specifically handed out to Hezbollah members, and presumably only military members. There was collateral damage, but far less than there would be by even the most surgical of surgical strikes (which usually refer…

Because on the face of things, the Lebanese buyers were assumed to be Hezbollah. They sold pagers and handhelds without bombs, but when sold to Lebanese?

We don’t know at this time what percentage of these pagers were sold to and in possession of civilians.

So unlike a single phone, it certainly seems more indiscriminate.

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

#978

Post by edanm »

nobodyandproud wrote: post #977
edanm wrote: post #949

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, but these are more akin to bombings and not surgical strikes. Not sure why you think that? If reports are true, these were relatively small bombings that only impacted people carrying a pager that was specifically handed out to Hezbollah members, and presumably only military members. There was collateral damage, but far less than there would be by even the most surgical of surgical strikes (which usually refer…

Because on the face of things, the Lebanese buyers were assumed to be Hezbollah. They sold pagers and handhelds without bombs, but when sold to Lebanese? We don’t know at this time what percentage of these pagers were sold to and in possession of civilians. So unlike a single phone, it certainly seems more indiscriminate.

Again, according to reporting, these bombs were placed specifically in pagers that were were for Hezbollah member's use. The reporting suggest that it was a shipment of pagers for Hezbollah members.

Again, if we want to wait a bit more and see more reporting, then update, I'm all for it. But it's been a few days, and Hezbollah has already claimed that most of the people killed by pagers were their members, iirc. We also all know of the horrible and tragic death of one 9-year-old girl.

I haven't seen any reporting suggesting that there were many civilians harmed. I've certainly heard many people claiming that civilians could've been harmed, but I'd think that if there were many civilian victims, in this day and age of social media and instant communication, we'd have heard about them. I at least haven't.

Again, totally willing to change my mind. But my prior is to trust Israel to not do some kind of indiscriminate attack. Add to this reporting saying that this was targeted, add to this that several days later there aren't stories of massive civilian casualties - for now, I think it was a targeted attack.

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

#979

Post by danbruc »

gryzzly wrote: post #976
danbruc wrote: post #963

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s the choice of target, rather than the weapon that makes me look down on them. Aiming to blow up bystanders is disgusting, not sure how you made this be about "choice of weapon".

Because you were only talking about martyrdom and suicide bombing which is a choice of weapon, there is not a single word relating to choice of target in your comment. One could maybe see some implicit hint at the choice of target as suicide bombings are most effective and mostly used for a specific kind of targets and they are often pretty indiscriminate attacks. But as you can target more or less the same targets with non-suicide bombings as with suicide bombings and you were specifically talking about suicide bombings and not bombings in general, this is not something that you should expect people to take away from your comment.

By the way, I am not sure you understood necessity in the way I wanted it understood. I wanted to say what if they target civilians because they do not have the means to effectively target the military, i.e. if it is necessary to target civilians in order to have any impact at all. And you can target civilians in various ways, so martyrdom and suicide bombings are not necessary. It is, I would assume, however true that martyrdom and certain religious views about an afterlife make suicide bombings a much more viable weapon than otherwise.

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

#980

Post by bbqfog »

yellowapple wrote: post #970
bbqfog wrote: post #925

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 actu…

Circulating thousands of bombs disguised as innocuous consumer devices into the public is targeting civilians. I'll add that Israel's terrorist act goes beyond those who were hit with explosions. We're all more at risk. It's a crime against humanity and the world is less safe, we all have to look at our devices differently. I will not forget that Israel did this.
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