If anyone else did this, it would be universally recognized as a heinous act of state-sponsered terrorism.
Right? Imagine if Iran did this to Israel.
If iPhones had explosives planted in them straight out of the factory and would've went off in New York all at the same time, injuring thousands and endangering people around them, the 24/7 news cycle would've already called for total annihilation and what not.
Oh man, the bill to go to war with China would have been ratified in milliseconds.
I get going after your ‘enemy,’ but this is even worse than firing randomly into a crowd of Palestinians. They pushed a button not knowing who would die. This is low, even for them.
I can’t even think of a devil’s advocate argument for this.
I believe the devil's advocate argument would be that, based on Hezbollah's internal communications, the Mossad intercepted a shipment of pagers which were being purchased to replace their (potentially compromised) mobile phones, knowing that these were - in theory - being distributed exclusively to Hezbollah operatives. That would make it the most precise military strike of all time.
Everyone who launches a rocket is accepting the possibility of "collateral damage", but this is surely the most surgical of surgical strikes in history. And yet, yes, they must have accepted the risk of bystander casualties, which just serves to highlight how awful that logic is. It's definitely not worse than randomly firing into a crowd, though.
That would make it the most precise military strike of all time.
Pretty sure that honor still goes to the R9X Slap Chop. The pager explosions, on the other hand, injured thousands.
Fat electrician had a great video on this.
Soo accurate that if the target is in a car you need to know what seat.
I feel like people are missing one of the more heinous aspects of this, which is that it injured thousands of people and only managed to kill ~10 of their targets. The outcome of this attack is going to be general terror and potentially hundreds of life altering injuries but very little military advantage.
Correct.
Killing civilians isn't a war crime. Deliberately killing civilians, or not taking reasonable steps to minimize civilian casualties is a war crime.
"Small" explosive that is embedded in something passed to and likely worn by the target is unlikely to be a war crime. If they somehow snuck a 1000lb bomb into one it absolutely would be however.
Booby trapping objects associated with daily civilian use is a war crime
These pagers were distributed to doctors and nurses, so I would also argue that they were booby trapping medical supplies, which are protected.
Israel continues doing bad things. Not much of a shock.
Still needs to be called out each time it happens.
Frustrating to do another long-form argument of "actually, when you distribute a bunch of explosives and set them off in crowded areas, you're not fighting terrorism but doing terrorism"
For some reason people struggle to believe flinging hand grenades into a crowd is bad public policy when a US ally does it.
Truly the depravity of Israel knows no limits.
It seems they did learn some stuff from WW2.
I am quite shocked after reading the comments. There are some people who believe Israel are the victims, after all what Israel did this past few months.
I have ~~a~~ some question(s).
Did all pagers in Lebanon just explode or was it only targeted pagers of terrorists that exploded? where they rigged with explosives? how can such a small device in the hands of so few people hurt so many people if they were not rigged with explosives? Was it only terrorist using pagers or is this still a thing i Lebanon?
Allegedly the shipment was intercepted and there was semtex installed
Hezbollah decided to switch to using pagers because you can't track them. Not sure if anyone else (eg. Medical personnel) was also using them.
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