A day after Blinken called the pagers a dangerous escalation, Israel was like, “just wait bro, I’ve got even more terrorism to do!”
So far, 12 people have been confirmed killed by the pager explosions. 2 of them were children. So in their “highly targeted attack”, Israel still managed a ridiculous 1-to-5, child-to-adult kill ratio. Most moral army!/s
That is a silly take if I’ve ever seen one. How more targeted can you get than to make pagers that are exclusively used by a terrorist organization explode with such little force that even bystanders who are one meter away are unharmed, that even fruit at a vegetable stand right next to the targeted terrorist remains unspoiled? This is the very opposite of terrorism, literally the most precise strike on a terrorist organization or military as a whole in history, infinitely superior to a land invasion or air strikes. In the real world, it doesn’t get any more perfect than this. It would be preposterous for a strike on thousands of targets to result in zero collateral damage, but I would bet good money that once (or if) the actual numbers ever come out, it’ll be the most favorable combatant to civilian casualty rate for an operation of this size in recorded history.
How naive does one have to be to trust official accounts on the number and age of the victims from a failed state that is effectively under full control of a terrorist organization? I can assure you that the estimated five grams of explosive have resulted in far more terrorist deaths than just 10, even during just the first strike - but Hezbollah won’t be willing to admit as much and instead present, through their intermediaries in the Lebanese government, a convenient fake figure and two maybe real, maybe invented civilian casualties that you’ll happily regurgitate just as much as you happily regurgitate figures from the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza.
I get the feeling that what many of Israel’s critics are asking of the country is to just roll over and die, that no matter to how absolutely extreme lengths they go to minimize civilian casualties compared to literally everyone else on this planet, it’s all categorically wrong, because those dastardly Jews had the audacity to not present their other cheek, even as hundreds of thousands of them had to flee their bombs due to near constant Hezbollah bombardments of civilian areas in the North of Israel. Were you even aware of this? Do you really think that this situation could go on indefinitely?
just roll over and die
I like how in your world the only options are “detonate thousand of bombs remotely without seeing what is near them”, or “roll over and die”. Incredible false dichotomy to cape for terrorism.
That’s not what I said. Israel has to fight back and since they are small, much smaller than their enemies, they need to be smart about it. This is an example of that, not only ingenious in concept and execution, but also significantly more humane than any alternative. Again, an attack this targeted against military or terrorist personnel is the very opposite of terrorism.
If you think you can negotiate anything even remotely resembling peace with an organization that has vowed to not just eradicate Israel, but every Jew in the world, then you’re hopelessly misguided.
If you think you can negotiate anything even remotely resembling peace with an organization that has vowed to not just eradicate Israel, but every Jew in the world, then you’re hopelessly misguided.
You can’t use the boogeyman of genocide to justify war crimes.
Netanyahu saying “it’s us or them” is the exact same rhetoric as Hezbollah, but I don’t hear you arguing it’s fine for the “them” in that statement to do war crimes in response. I wonder why the double-standard?
I think you should look into what Hezbollah actually says instead of naively (or deliberately) creating a false equivalency. Here’s what they teach schoolchildren:
I’ve never said Hezbollah is good. I know they teach their children to hate Jews. I just also know what is taught in Israel.
Using a beepr doesn’t make you a terrorist. Sig int is faulty and should never be used for targeting.
This batch of pagers was exclusively ordered and used by Hezbollah after their leader demanded they stop using Smartphones for security reasons. This isn’t is sigint, it was a supply-chain attack. It wasn’t random pagers that exploded, but only those that were distributed by the terrorist org to its officers.
Booby traps are a war crime, because they do not discriminate between civilians and combatants, even if you place them in a location that is only likely to be accessed by combatants. And public markets and banks and homes aren’t that.
A booby trap is defined by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the body charged with oversight and implementation of the Geneva Conventions and related treaties on the law of armed conflict, as a “harmless portable object” – but redesigned to contain explosive material. They are a prohibited means of warfare and are equally prohibited by law enforcement authorities.
Who held the pagers at the time they blew up? I used to love to play with my dad’s pager as a kid.
Targeting using an electronic device is sigint. These people have families, and the Israeli terrorists murdered children with this attack. Did you read the article?
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A war crime is a war crime. An act of terrorism is intentional. Using SigInt to target is, by definition, going to lead to war crimes.
This was a terrorist act that was used to murder children, and must be condemned with sanctions.
This is why targeting shouldn’t be done by SigInt, directed by AI or otherwise.
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But their boots are vegan!
Its weird that this article says some groups are “backed by Iran” but it doesn’t say that these Israeli war crimes are “backed by the US”
Because Reuters usually doesn’t publish misleading opinion pieces.
Locking this post down because comments have gotten heated
