Walkie-Talkies, Solar Energy Systems Explode Across Lebanon in Second Wave After Pager Attack (axios.com) 419
An anonymous reader shares a report: Israel blew up thousands of two-way personal radios used by Hezbollah members in Lebanon in a second wave of an intelligence operation that started on Tuesday with the explosions of pager devices, two sources with knowledge of the operation told Axios. The second wave of clandestine attacks is another serious security breach in Hezbollah's ranks and increases the pressure on the militant Lebanese group.
Lebanon's official news agency reported that at least three people were killed and dozens wounded in the explosions across the country. The walkie-talkies were booby-trapped in advance by Israeli intelligence services and then delivered to Hezbollah as part of the militia's emergency communications system, which was supposed to be used during a war with Israel, the sources said. Associated Press reports: Lebanon's official news agency reports that solar energy systems exploded in homes in several areas of Beirut and in southern Lebanon, wounding at least one girl.
Lebanon's official news agency reported that at least three people were killed and dozens wounded in the explosions across the country. The walkie-talkies were booby-trapped in advance by Israeli intelligence services and then delivered to Hezbollah as part of the militia's emergency communications system, which was supposed to be used during a war with Israel, the sources said. Associated Press reports: Lebanon's official news agency reports that solar energy systems exploded in homes in several areas of Beirut and in southern Lebanon, wounding at least one girl.
Another reminder (Score:5, Insightful)
of the shame I feel being a member of the human species.
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I have managed to disassociate. But yes, as groups, humans are utter crap.
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Can't we carve out the Middle East and have Musk move it to Mars ... or Pluto? (And take Musk with you.)
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At least you can take pride that you're not a member of any other species. They're all much nastier than us, even if not as competent at killing.
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... humans are better than this disgusting bullshit.
Ah - a student of history I see!
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"Alternate history", that is. The "history" you "study" when you do not want to see reality.
Re:Another reminder (Score:4, Insightful)
why? these people are clearly not human. humans are better than this disgusting bullshit.
See, it's the "these fellow human beings aren't actually human beings" self-delusion that's really at the heart of this - and most other - conflicts.
If you'd start to realize that those "others" REALLY ARE HUMAN BEINGS, just like yourself, with all the same needs and wants and fears, then perhaps we could actually get somewhere.
Otherwise, why even bother? Nukes from orbit - problem solved for everyone.
Ya (human) dumbshit.
Re:Another reminder (Score:4, Insightful)
And why would that be antisemitism? Are you endorsing the murder of children?
Gives new meaning to bombed back to the stone age (Score:2)
So What Blows Up Next? (Score:2)
Door bells?
Motorcycles?
Penguins on top of TV sets?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Door bells?
Motorcycles?
Penguins on top of TV sets?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Given that it was pagers, then walkie talkies, I’m guessing telegraphs are next.
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Put the fax machine in the dumpster now.
I’m afraid the fax doesn’t care about your feelings.
Hire Better Technicians (Score:2)
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My guess is they ones that exploded were only delivered a few days ago and that there probably was some help from the people shipping them. And no quality assurance on the target side. Hence a one-time thing.
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Explosive molded to look like black plastic?
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The interest part (Score:3)
The interesting part here is that Party of Allah has failed to pull its existing communications equipment for checks in the wake of first attack. That signals extreme failure of either top command being able to draw conclusions from the first attack, or low level commanders being unable to execute command to do so, or both.
It's starting to seem that either the preceding pager attack critically damaged the command structure of Party of Allah, or alternatively it got complacent in the wake of bombarding North Israel for so long without sizeable counter attacks coming at them.
Re:The interest part (Score:4, Interesting)
The interesting part here is that Party of Allah has failed to pull its existing communications equipment for checks in the wake of first attack. That signals extreme failure of either top command being able to draw conclusions from the first attack, or low level commanders being unable to execute command to do so, or both.
It's starting to seem that either the preceding pager attack critically damaged the command structure of Party of Allah, or alternatively it got complacent in the wake of bombarding North Israel for so long without sizeable counter attacks coming at them.
Really? Even the US forces with all their resources could not check their entire communications equipment inventory for booby traps in 24 hours. Furthermore, Hezbollah haven't even dented their rocket inventory yet with what they have launched into Israel so far. Their ongoing 'bombardment' is a tiny preview of their most thoroughly obsolete unguided rockets, not the ones upgraded with Iranian GNSS and INS guidance kits. What's far more interesting in all of this is that the Israelis have given terrorists everywhere an excellent idea for how to terrorise entire nation states or even continents for weeks or months on end. Buy any variety of products people carry with them from mobile phones, to toys, handbags and such, install a small amount of explosives with a timer and re-introduce the stuff into the supply chain. If the timers are set to run long enough, entire container loads of these product-bombs could be literally everywhere by the time they start to go off and the bomb builders would be long gone.
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You don't need to check it immediately. You need to abandon it in a storage somewhere until you can, because you know it's compromised. Most militaries should be capable of something this rudimentary.
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If inkjet printers go tomorrow- a lot of folks may just assume it's another stupid printer trick.
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Good point, the story is unfolding and there has been no time to collect, much less collate data on it.
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Being a religious fanatic does not make one have a lower IQ. Reminder that religious impulse is a biologically hard coded feature of homo sapiens, not a bug. We all have it.
And I'm not seeing any reasons to see this as "obviously will never happen again" either, because controlling against such attacks requires functional hierarchical leadership system within the organization to enable changes to happen throughout itself. Which appears to be heavily damaged at this point.
Notably we have observed this sort o
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Nope. Not me.
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Being a religious fanatic does not make one have a lower IQ.
Actually, it does, via a connection to increased conservativism. Scientifically proven. Sorry, you lose.
Oh, and a high IQ does not come with a good general reasoning ability. You also have to be willing to use that IQ generally. Religious people are not so inclined and religious fanatics find it even harder to do.
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This is anglosupremacism in action. You project a very specific culture (United States large metropolitan areas) globally. While in reality that culture covers only a tiny percentage of humanity.
In most societies, religious education is a marker of intellect, because it is religion that seeks to address the reality beyond necessity. And those that focus on necessity tend to be those that reason at immediate level and have less need for applied complex abstract thinking that is human intellect.
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You just demonstrated my point.
At this point, Israel (Score:2)
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I'm sure this will lead to a peaceful outcome and put a damper on the fighting.
/s
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This state of human affairs is called “war” except nowadays everybody calls the other side “terrorist” or some nonsense like that.
Hamas and Hezbollah are both at war with Israel. All sides are pulling
Re: At this point, Israel (Score:2)
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They probably had the walkie-talkies in place for some time and figured they would now lose them anyways,
There are no good guys here (Score:3)
There are no good guys or heroes in this fight. This is the rare case of both sides being equally shitty with no end in sight. Jesus himself could show up tomorrow and they'd crucify him a second time for being too liberal. Mohammed wouldn't exactly improve things either.
You want to talk about deficits and spending? Stop giving billions to Israel. We've already funded them to the tune of $158 billion since 1948. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
Re:There are no good guys here (Score:4, Insightful)
There are no good guys or heroes in this fight.
That's the conclusion I personally came to months ago.
To my mind, the only 'innocents' there are in any of this are the civilian non-combatants on all sides who have no overt animosity towards anyone else -- and those are the ones that seem to be paying the ultimate price in all this.
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Israel is rich enough to fund their private war on their own dime.
Audit your hardware now (Score:2)
I guess Mossad's message is "if you didn't bother to audit all your hardware yesterday evening, perhaps you'll do it this evening. No? Well then let's see what explodes tomorrow."
All this petard-hoisting... (Score:2)
Okay, riddle me this... (Score:2)
Oddly enough, when Hezbollah or Hamas attacks, many are silent, but when Israel does, woe betide the Jews!
Yes, I am not a fan of how Israel treats their Muslim popula
How to Win Friends and Influence People (Score:5, Insightful)
The Israeli government definitely read that book cover to cover. They are doing a fine job implenting their skills.
It's an impressive feat of espionage and infiltration, but how does it benefit Israel? They killed 35,000 palestinian civilians, and now there's a generation of Palestinians who will "never forget." They've now injured thousands of Lebanese, and that generate will also "never forget." Israel has made more enemies, it hasn't made itself safer.
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They were attacked, they counter-attacked. It's not like they were blowing up people in the period prior to the most recent events.
Not hitting back just means the people who are hitting you maintain full capability to continue hitting you.
I find this to be rather chilling (Score:3)
I seriously have ethical and even moral problems with this. It amounts to an indiscriminate attack because the effects aren't limited to just the 'targets', there is collateral damage from the detonations. Really, this is something I'd associate with a terrorist attack as opposed to 'official military action'.
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As opposd to the Israeli air force firing rockets and bombs into designated safe zones, UN aid areas, and housing "Oh, they were all Hamas anyway"?
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Just look at the numbers. Look at how many Israelis have died to those rockets, as well as every other "terrorist" action against Israel ... and then look at how many Palestinians have died from Israeli hands.
Re:We're used to dups... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:We're used to dups... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously. At least for an attack on this scale its one of the most targeted use of violence imaginable. This was a supply chain attack specifically targeting Hezbollah, its not like they did this to stuff destine for retail sale. These are small explosives designed to kill/injure the user.
I don't know what if anything they could do more precisely target legitimate combatants. Its a lot more targeted than truck bomb taking out a block in Tel Aviv.
The world needs to seriously stop apologizing for Islamists and engaging in whataboutism to defend it. It is a religion of war and violence. Every western nation needs to get sensible and full on bar Muslim migrants.
Re: We're used to dups... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Baby steps. (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you were caught in a mass shooting in a theater, people around you dying, and someone killed the shooter, it is reasonable to be joyful that the shooter was killed, without reservation or lugubrious equivocation.
Enemy combatants dedicated to trying to kill you, but getting killed first, would also elicit that response in most people.
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That's a story about pagers exploding. The summary as well as TFA here make it clear they are talking about exploding walkie-talkies.
Makes me wonder how common baby monitors might be in that part of the world...
Rare Type of Dupe (Score:3)
Re: Next thing ... (Score:3)
I read that as "exploding Koreans" for a split second and was "what??!".
BREAKER.....BREAKER... (Score:2)
Re: We're used to dups... (Score:3)
There's no possible way you can even know that at this point. The level of stupidity you're demonstrating here is well past the point of being believable. Either one of two things is going on:
1) You're manufacturing disinformation
2) You're spreading Hezbollah propaganda
Given you're already known for the former, I think that's the most likely.
Re: We're used to dups... (Score:5, Informative)
Why don't you try reading them?
Due to security concerns, we were not allowed to talk to the patients or their families, as they're mainly members of Hezbollah.
Not only do your links NOT support your narrative, they even offer evidence that, indeed, the right targets were hit.
Re: We're used to dups... (Score:3)
Let's repeat your claim:
Most of the victims were innocent Lebanese
How did you conclude that "most" of them were innocent? Most meaning, at least more than half. Nothing you provided supports this idea. In other words, you (or somebody feeding this to you) just made it up. To what end, I don't know, but there you have it.
We've been told by the media that over 5,000 pagers were distributed. If it were more than 10,000 casualties you*could* have a point, but even then there's nothing certain about such an estimate without knowing more about who was hi
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Next up:
Exploding car keys
Exploding fobs
Exploding routers
Exploding laptops
Exploding USB cables
Exploding Sim cards
Israel really did a number on these folks here. Regardless of the politics involved or what side you are on, you have to admit this is some pretty impressive fuckery.
Re: We're used to dups... (Score:3)
Next, there'll be exploding cars and exploding people. (Ref: Monty Phyton's "How not to be seen").
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Not to mention penguins on top of the television.
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Oh yeah. This whole story is playing out like a good cyberpunk novel. I hadn't been keeping up, so only just yesterday did I read Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's advice about phones from a few months ago, and it's awesome:
He was totally right. Some people might have thought he was parano
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We should build a wall ... around the Middle East. And just close it up for a few generations and let things cool off. There's nothing the West ought to do there at this point. Everyone there seems crazy to me.
Israel would love that. As soon as the wall was up they'd just slaughter everyone who isn't an Israeli and then unleash their hordes of settlers into the demolished territories.
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Oh? And where do you see that? Or maybe you do not know the difference between a "pager" and a "walkie-talkie"?
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Oh? And where do you see that? Or maybe you do not know the difference between a "pager" and a "walkie-talkie"?
I should hope they would. Based upon OP's UID, they might even be old enough to have had a pager on the regular.
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In Israel, almost every person is required to have military service. Therefore, nearly every person is a military target in Israel.
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It's amazing the way you see how deep propaganda has penetrated here. Look at completely normal commentators calling an attack on members of a military organization which is involved in an actual war,
Not sure what you're referring to. The discussion here is about Israeli (presumably) attacks targeted to people in Lebanon. Israel is not involved in an "actual war" against Lebanon.
(not yet, anyway).
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Part of why this whole regional conflict is very hard to compare against previous wars.
Is Israel at war with Lebanon the nation state? I don't think so but are they are war with Hezbollah the organization who is a de facto governing body in that region of Lebanon? Probably and both sides are in agreement about that as rockets have been lfying around that region for like 20 years. Can't box this conflict cleanly into anything, it's very historically unique.
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Israel is not involved in an "actual war" against Lebanon.
(not yet, anyway).
I think it's worth separating Lebanon and Hezbollah here. Lebanon as a state is a bit of a mess and is not really capable of dealing with either other side. Israel definitely is in a missile war with Hezbollah. Enough missiles have been fired by Hezbollah that hundreds of thousands of civilians have been evacuated from the north of Israel.On the other hand, Israel regularly bombards Hezbollah missile sites and attacks Hezbollah members throughout Southern Lebanon. Tens of Israeli civilians have been killed
Re:I'm sure this terrorist attack will calm things (Score:5, Interesting)
There will always be the line between the intentional targeting of civilians, and then when civilians die in an attack that targets terrorists. There is a big difference between what is happening in Lebanon and Gaza. Gaza is a complete mess, and no one sane and familiar with what is going in in Israel can deny that Netanyahu needs to be removed from power. On the other hand, Hezbollah really is a terrorist organization, and if they are the target of an attack, then yea, it is sad when the innocent are hurt, but being near a terrorist should always be seen as dangerous.
Again, for the peanut gallery that doesn't understand, terrorism is when civilians are targeted. Then you have, "an act of terror", which is actually different, and applies to things like bombs that will target a military or government official with the intent to scare the enemy, and yes, civilians may be harmed here as well, but because those civilians were not the target, it isn't quite the same as terrorism.
Those who work with an enemy then, they may technically be civilians, but because they are working for that enemy, they would be considered a fair target if you are trying to weaken an enemy.
Making it clear that your side does not want to harm civilians, and getting the word out to stay away from military/government/organization people would be the idea of a fair warning, but in the Middle East, we are beyond there being "warnings". All of these terrorist organizations, people know who the members are, and avoiding them should be seen as a way to avoid getting hurt or killed.
Re:I'm sure this terrorist attack will calm things (Score:5, Insightful)
Gaza is a mess because Hamas chose to make it. The people their chose Hamas even if it was 20 years ago.
The fact is their strategy has been to use civilians as pawns for the last 40 years and those civilians voted for more of it when they were last given the option. If the violence is ever to stop Israel has to break their will to fight once and for all. That probably destroying them as any kind of coheasive group.
Egypt and their allies need to give the diaspora a place to go if they want to save lives. They don't want that though they'd rather create a situation where Israel is more or less left with no option other than do this all again in another 15 years when a new generation of fighters is old enough to start attacking them or genocide. The Islamic powers hope the choice is genocide too because that will isolate Israel (at least they hope) and give them the chance to pick them off. They are happy to allow palestinians to be cannon fodder if it gives them that possibility.
That is Iran/Egypt, and Islam for you.
Re:I'm sure this terrorist attack will calm things (Score:5, Informative)
Pagers in that part of the world are still common and not all of the exploding pagers ended up in Hesbollah members hands exclusively.
These were special pagers, believed to include special cryptographic functions, bought specifically for Hezbollah. No evidence so far that they were distributed beyond Hezbollah and doing so would be a huge breach of security for them.
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Soldiers bombarding enemy civilians, who's express openly that the reason for this bombardment is being of wrong protected characteristics under UN Convention of Human Rights nonstop for decades: not valid targets for highly targeted countermeasures, such countermeasures against them are in fact terrorist attacks.
The mind of an anti-Semite is a dogmatic one. The only check it performs is "how do I blame the Jews or their nation for this negative event".
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Terrorism of this kind is team-work with the "victim". They need each other. And hence when on one side they have political trouble, they rile up the other side to help with that.
Re:I'm sure this terrorist attack will calm things (Score:5, Insightful)
Hezbollah has prided itself on it's secure communications network; they use pagers and 2-way radios to avoid having cell phones hacked. If these pagers they acquired and distributed to their members were tampered with, and the rumors coming out now that they were purchased by Hezbollah from a Taiwanese company and had been intercepted and had explosives installed at Israel's direction if not directly, then it means not only has Hezbollah lost it's most secure method to communicate, it will make any new recruits question whether Hezbollah can even protect them or compromise them. Given that they have also lost political clout recently in Lebanon, and barely responded to an assassination of their top military commander, they are being seen more and more as incompetent. That could limit their ability to recruit.
Groups like theirs are an idea; they can absorb casualties all day long as long as they can appear to be carrying on the great struggle, and they'll keep recruiting people. Right now Hezbollah looks pretty impotent and easily compromised; if recruits stop signing up to join Hezbollah then you can imagine how the group's future could be in real jeopardy.
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It was not terrorism. The attacks were targeted against members of Hezbollah, not the general public.
Re:I'm sure this terrorist attack will calm things (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm sure this terrorist attack will calm things (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not the same thing at all. A bus is grossly disproportionate and the effects cannot reasonably be contained to the person you claimed to be targeting.
Which of the pagers or walkie-talkies were not in the possession of Hezbollah when they exploded? Be specific. You claimed some were held by third parties; back that up.
Re:I'm sure this terrorist attack will calm things (Score:5, Interesting)
A piece of gear known to be used and in possession by "military" personnel is NOT the same as a bus adjacent to said personnel. This is a legit strike as were the pagers.
We can presume with near certainty that they weren't walking into some local retailer and buying them off the shelf. Some position (think supply Sargent/quartermaster corp) within the organization was buying them in bulk for distribution within the organization.
That made it easy to make this a VERY surgical strike that speaks of long term and exquisite planning.
Yes, there were bystanders and a few units may have found their way into innocent hands.
As other have mentioned, this was done in a far more considered manner than the rockets hammas and hezbola have been habitually lobbing into Israeli cities.
For the record, I'm no fan of Israeli right wingers who steal land in Gaza. This has fueled this and driven the people of Gaza to equally despicable measures.
I am a fan of very good engineering. This was good engineering. So was the stunt of using power para gliders. Brilliant technically. Humanly despicable.
There is a LOT of humanly despicable things in the world.
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I'm relatively sure setting off several thousand small explosive devices in indiscriminate surroundings is terrorism. Streets, homes, markets, etc etc.
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Nothing "indiscriminate" here at all...
These are targeted at the tools in the hands of Hezbollah, the terrorist organization, that they have on them to use to communicate with each other.
Quite clever I think....much more targeted than large "dumb" bombs.
Re:When you decide to be a dumbfuck terrorist outf (Score:4, Insightful)
A pager on someone's belt exploding in public is certainly indiscriminate.
Re:When you decide to be a dumbfuck terrorist outf (Score:5, Informative)
The videos I've seen, show it hitting only the terrorist, even with other folks close by, like that one at the grocery store...the BOOM didn't even affect the produce on the table he was standing by, nor the gentlemen standing right next to him.
It scared the hell outta the other guy, but didn't harm him at all.
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A pager on someone's belt exploding in public is certainly indiscriminate.
The video I saw of one pager explosion made it look pretty precisely calibrated. The guy with the pager on his belt went down, people standing right next to him appeared to receive minor injuries at most.
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It's about as targeted as one can get, short of implanted cortex bombs or snipers.
Even the Flying Ginsu used to kill Suleimani may have had a collateral - I don't remember the story exactly.
But this is hardly firebombing cities.
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A pager on someone's belt exploding in public is certainly indiscriminate.
Not if pagers are largely used only by your specific target group, which they were, and if the supply chain attack targeted directly the supply line of your target group, which it was. The fact that there were civilian casualties is more a reflection on the fact that a few other people got hold of these devices incidentally. It doesn't make the action indiscriminate.
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That, or a war-crime. This is covered neither by the rules of warfare nor by any civilian laws. Oh, and look, there is a 9 years old and an 11 years old child among the victims. Such a noble attack!
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Re: When you decide to be a dumbfuck terrorist out (Score:5, Informative)
I'm relatively sure setting off several thousand small explosive devices in indiscriminate surroundings is terrorism. Streets, homes, markets, etc etc.
The explosions are so small that in most incidents the carriers of the device survived.
No one is setting off random communications. They are specifically those procured and distributed by Hezbollah to their own members.
Unlike Hamas, Hezbollah reports when their member are killed. None of the first ten casualties reported were immediately confirmed as Hezbollah operatives. When has any military response been that targeted? According to the Center for Civilians in Conflict in general warfare the typical civilian casualty rate is 1:1. In urban warfare it is 9 civilians to 1 combatant.
SOP for a country like the US is to send a missile [defense.gov]. Is that what you wish had been done here instead? Or you prefer a ground invasion?
Hezbollah has fired over eight thousand of missiles at Israel starting immediately after the massacre of Israel civilians on Oct 7th, 2023. They have displaced 70k civilians and killed 43, including recently 12 Druze children playing on a soccer field. There is exactly zero effort to make sure this hit military targets.
But I am sure we can dig up the post where you have expressed your outrage about that.
And the one where you have come up with a far superior, far more targeted response to stop Hezbollah from sending their barrage of bombs to civilian areas.
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Ryan Murphy right? He's usually pretty good but I think he might be off base on this one, nothing in those videos looks like a lithium fire, too reactive and also even overheating a battery is just too unpredictable, no way to guaranatee they would all pop with that type of energy. I think its incontrovertible that this was a supply chain intercept (my theory is this was one of oppurtunity, that the Israelis happened to intercept a shipment of pagers and took advantage of it after figuring out their destin
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Yes, that aspect puzzles me. Where these shipped by sea or was there collusion by some airline?
I agree on the war crime (or alternatively on terrorism). Stuff like that is not acceptable.
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ABC news site had a picture of a car with what looked like shrapnel through the windshield.
Can't really see how such a pattern would result from litium battery fire..
Still, this is likely a 1 shot tactic as every gov/group/gang will be looking closely at their gear.
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As for it being batteries: No. The pager model they had used AAA according to the spec sheet (I don't have it in front of me but google news search for gold pager and you will find it
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Instructions unclear. Penis severed by exploding tin can.
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