At least 20 more people were killed and 450 injured in Lebanon on Wednesday after a series of new explosions of wireless devices rocked the South, the Bekaa and the southern suburbs of Beirut, according to the Ministry of Health and the Lebanese Red Cross.
We’ve seen targeted attacks before in Lebanon, and they can hit an individual target with a drone without any interference. A targeted attack kills and harms its target, and only it’s target. No one else.
The stuff is blowing up inside stores and buildings around innocent people. How is that targeted? Israel doesn’t give 2 shits about innocent people being injured and possibly killed.
How is this not super targeted? Hitting 3000 terrorists and and only a handful of civilians as collateral is exceptionally good. For you it’s probably bad anytime Israel kills one of their enemies.
You know Israel can find a peaceful solution if it only permits the establishment of an independent state of Palestine. But instead they prefer to continue their warmongering politics.
The unsaid implication of your loaded question is that the absence of a Palestinian state is “the fault of the Palestinians”. The further implication is that “Israel has no partner for peace” even now. Basically, the implication being we need to keep doing whatever the Israeli right wants in perpetuity.
If by some miracle you’re not just parroting right wing pro-Israeli talking points, please elaborate what the hell you mean with your question instead.
Traditionally, a targeted attack minimizes collateral damage to almost zero. Do you have stats on who was killed/injured? I do know 2 children were killed. I’m sure they were hard-core Hezbollah.
Doing this kind of attack indicates Israel didn’t care AT ALL who they took out. Ah, much like their reactions in Gaza.
3000 pagers exploded. All had small amounts of explosive like 20 g. You can watch videos of them exploding in traffic, supermarkets, etc. people next to them remain unharmed. So you have 3000 explosions all over the place including crowded areas. Two dead children is a quota of 1500:1. That is exceptionally good.
I mean, yeah. The tragic answer is that civilian casualties are inevitable in war, unfortunately.
According to a UN meeting from 2022, 90% of war casualties globally are civilians. That’s not to say that’s an acceptable ratio, in fact it’s horrifying, but it does show that a ratio of “a handful” to “a bunch” is quite a lot better than the average.
Israel has been massing forces on the Lebanon border and saying they will invade for months now. At what point is the Lebanese government allowed to defend itself?
Explicitly combatants… and anyone who happens to be in their vicinity when the bomb goes off.
“Extremely” targeted you say? So when they were detonated, the people doing the detonating had visual confirmation of the targets not being in close proximity to civilians?
The bombs are small. People in the vicinity are not harmed. You can see videos of them exploding in supermarkets and on streets. The only one injured is the owner of the pager.
Customary international humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby traps – objects that civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use – precisely to avoid putting civilians at grave risk and produce the devastating scenes that continue to unfold across Lebanon today. The use of an explosive device whose exact location could not be reliably known would be unlawfully indiscriminate, using a means of attack that could not be directed at a specific military target and as a result would strike military targets and civilians without distinction. Human Rights Watch
From what I can tell online its militant wing predates the political wing. Just adding that in because I thought it might be the other way around based on your comment
It is classified as a terrorist organisation by the majority of the international community. By legal definition, all Hezbollah members are terrorists regardless of what they do in the organisation, in the same way that all SS members are war criminals even if they were an office janitor or something, which makes them legitimate targets in a broader way than ordinary combatants who are bound and covered by the laws of war.
I don’t know if you grew up during the color coded terror threat level days, but after updating everyone on the days terrorism threat color, the nightly news anchors would share how many terrorists were killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Even as a kid, I thought to myself, “how is everyone killed by coalition forces a terrorist?”
Or, “why are car bombs that kill coalition forces in theatre, called terror attacks?”
News flash, governments and media label all sorts of organizations and actions terrorism, 90% of it is propaganda, or bullshit.
Otherwise, I guess that would mean Ukrainian forces fighting Russians are also terrorists, which is how the Russian government and media refers to them.
in the same way that all SS members are war criminals
That’s absolutely not how the nazis’ war crimes were handled post-war.
Only those with a direct active role and sufficient knowledge were charged in the post-war trials.
90+% of the SS members just went right back into their pre-war jobs.
(At least in the western part, the Soviets were much more…thorough in their de-nazification.)
Also, a janitor in a civilian building will never be an active combatant by any stretch of international law, no matter which organisation they belong to.
In law, every SS member, without exception, was axiomatically classified as a war criminal, with membership being sufficient evidence in itself. Of course, the western allies were not above looking the other way if it potentially meant the difference between victory and defeat in the Cold War, but this was an informal policy imposed from high up.
Do you think Hezbollah gave her a pager? What was her father’s position within Hezbollah? Maybe he’s the one that fired some rockets that killed someone else’s kids recently
I’ll engage with your shitty whataboutism after you answer which it is: were the bombs “surgical” and killed a 9-year-old girl on purpose, or were they sloppy attacks which caused civilian casualties on accident?
Customary international humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby traps – objects that civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use – precisely to avoid putting civilians at grave risk and produce the devastating scenes that continue to unfold across Lebanon today. The use of an explosive device whose exact location could not be reliably known would be unlawfully indiscriminate, using a means of attack that could not be directed at a specific military target and as a result would strike military targets and civilians without distinction. Human Rights Watch
Although they did kill that girl (and others) on accident, the attack as a whole seems to have been far more surgical that what we usually see in this conflict (and dare I say, certainly more surgical than most attacks from Hezbollah)
The pagers were very questionable. Even assuming ONLY hezbollah had the explosive pagers, they were still detonating in public since the point of a pager is to be able to carry it around.
Walkie talkie wise? I still need to reflexively condemn anything that kills children. But… that actually does seem super targeted and would presumably not be something a terrorist “should” carry around in public during their non-terrorist lives.
These are extremely targeted attacks, not aimed at the wider population. It is meant to more than scare Hezbollah members for sure.
We’ve seen targeted attacks before in Lebanon, and they can hit an individual target with a drone without any interference. A targeted attack kills and harms its target, and only it’s target. No one else.
The stuff is blowing up inside stores and buildings around innocent people. How is that targeted? Israel doesn’t give 2 shits about innocent people being injured and possibly killed.
It’s still a million times better than dropping a thousand pound bomb on a refugee camp to take out 1 hamas guy, and that’s at least commendable.
It’s worse that they’re blowing up people in a country they’re not openly at war with, stirring shit and risking even more retaliation.
How is this not super targeted? Hitting 3000 terrorists and and only a handful of civilians as collateral is exceptionally good. For you it’s probably bad anytime Israel kills one of their enemies.
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule80 you know International laws exist for a reason, and Israel clearly violated many international laws, which by the way were created to prevent such events like WWII.
You know Israel can find a peaceful solution if it only permits the establishment of an independent state of Palestine. But instead they prefer to continue their warmongering politics.
Why was there no independent state of Palestine established in 1949-1967?
You think that’s some kind of gotcha. It isn’t.
Would you care to elaborate?
The unsaid implication of your loaded question is that the absence of a Palestinian state is “the fault of the Palestinians”. The further implication is that “Israel has no partner for peace” even now. Basically, the implication being we need to keep doing whatever the Israeli right wants in perpetuity.
If by some miracle you’re not just parroting right wing pro-Israeli talking points, please elaborate what the hell you mean with your question instead.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba
Nakba was in 1948. 1949-1967 Israel did not occupy the West Bank and Gaza. Why didn’t Palestinians establish a state then and there?
Why Jews didn’t forgive Nazis in 1946?!?
Traditionally, a targeted attack minimizes collateral damage to almost zero. Do you have stats on who was killed/injured? I do know 2 children were killed. I’m sure they were hard-core Hezbollah.
Doing this kind of attack indicates Israel didn’t care AT ALL who they took out. Ah, much like their reactions in Gaza.
3000 pagers exploded. All had small amounts of explosive like 20 g. You can watch videos of them exploding in traffic, supermarkets, etc. people next to them remain unharmed. So you have 3000 explosions all over the place including crowded areas. Two dead children is a quota of 1500:1. That is exceptionally good.
Compare that to the Hezbollah rocket than killed 11 Druze children in Israel.
Wow only 2 dead children. Amazing, let’s celebrate!
Members of Hezbollah endanger their families willingly.
I’m glad we can punish the children of criminals for their parents’ crimes.
Children suffer from all kinds of stupid decisions their parents made.
So like killing a “handful” of Israeli civilians would be “exceptionally good” if the target was a bunch of IDF reservists?
I mean, yeah. The tragic answer is that civilian casualties are inevitable in war, unfortunately.
According to a UN meeting from 2022, 90% of war casualties globally are civilians. That’s not to say that’s an acceptable ratio, in fact it’s horrifying, but it does show that a ratio of “a handful” to “a bunch” is quite a lot better than the average.
https://press.un.org/en/2022/sc14904.doc.htm
It’s never good, but when Hezbollah chose to restart the violence they knew it was never going to be without collateral
Israel has been massing forces on the Lebanon border and saying they will invade for months now. At what point is the Lebanese government allowed to defend itself?
Israel and Hezbollah have always had forces on the border staring at eachother.
After Hezbollah broke that status quo, Israel has been threatening to invade if they didn’t stop.
Can you explain why you’re blaming Israel for responding more than Hesbollah for starting it?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli–Lebanese_conflict this article clearly contradicts your statement. And it doesn’t help that Israel is also illegally occupying part of Lebanon either.
Occupying parts of Lebanon? The Sheba farms are a tiny sliver of land. Syria even has a better claim to it than Lebanon.
Which of my statements is contradicted by this?
Ahistorical
Hezbollah could just chill and not attack Israel and this wouldn’t happen.
So would you say it’s using violence to instill terror and achieve political goals?
Since this targets explicitly combatants, it’s not terrorism.
The attacks are extremely targeted, and thus not random at all. No terrorism.
Explicitly combatants… and anyone who happens to be in their vicinity when the bomb goes off.
“Extremely” targeted you say? So when they were detonated, the people doing the detonating had visual confirmation of the targets not being in close proximity to civilians?
The bombs are small. People in the vicinity are not harmed. You can see videos of them exploding in supermarkets and on streets. The only one injured is the owner of the pager.
Compare to the 11 Druze children in Israel Hezbollah killed recently.
Ah. So this 9-year-old-girl was killed on purpose then, I take it?
Since “People in the vicinity are not harmed” it had to have been targeted. Right? Right??
Killed on accident
So which is it? “People in the vicinity are not harmed” or “whops we killed a kid”?
Can’t fucking be both, can it?
Sure it can. Only people directly in contact with the pager were harmed. If a child holds it, then it is harmed.
The explosion only had a small area of lethal effect is what I’m saying. There are lots of videos of people close by the explosion being unaffected.
Or even had the pager at all instead of leaving it at home where their kids could get hold of it or a fire could be started.
Hezbollah are not civilians, but combatants. So this is legal under international law.
Hezbollah is, also, a political party. It’s military wing was formed to fight the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
From what I can tell online its militant wing predates the political wing. Just adding that in because I thought it might be the other way around based on your comment
It is classified as a terrorist organisation by the majority of the international community. By legal definition, all Hezbollah members are terrorists regardless of what they do in the organisation, in the same way that all SS members are war criminals even if they were an office janitor or something, which makes them legitimate targets in a broader way than ordinary combatants who are bound and covered by the laws of war.
I don’t know if you grew up during the color coded terror threat level days, but after updating everyone on the days terrorism threat color, the nightly news anchors would share how many terrorists were killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Even as a kid, I thought to myself, “how is everyone killed by coalition forces a terrorist?”
Or, “why are car bombs that kill coalition forces in theatre, called terror attacks?”
News flash, governments and media label all sorts of organizations and actions terrorism, 90% of it is propaganda, or bullshit.
Otherwise, I guess that would mean Ukrainian forces fighting Russians are also terrorists, which is how the Russian government and media refers to them.
That’s absolutely not how the nazis’ war crimes were handled post-war.
Only those with a direct active role and sufficient knowledge were charged in the post-war trials.
90+% of the SS members just went right back into their pre-war jobs.
(At least in the western part, the Soviets were much more…thorough in their de-nazification.)
Also, a janitor in a civilian building will never be an active combatant by any stretch of international law, no matter which organisation they belong to.
In law, every SS member, without exception, was axiomatically classified as a war criminal, with membership being sufficient evidence in itself. Of course, the western allies were not above looking the other way if it potentially meant the difference between victory and defeat in the Cold War, but this was an informal policy imposed from high up.
Do the confederates next, they were back in power in 10 years and terrorizing black people with the KKK shortly after.
The people getting these communication devices aren’t exactly the kitchen personnel
True. Who would want a 9-year-old-girl as kitchen personnel?
Do you think Hezbollah gave her a pager? What was her father’s position within Hezbollah? Maybe he’s the one that fired some rockets that killed someone else’s kids recently
I’ll engage with your shitty whataboutism after you answer which it is: were the bombs “surgical” and killed a 9-year-old girl on purpose, or were they sloppy attacks which caused civilian casualties on accident?
Although they did kill that girl (and others) on accident, the attack as a whole seems to have been far more surgical that what we usually see in this conflict (and dare I say, certainly more surgical than most attacks from Hezbollah)
Whoosh
Mission :: Fail
The pagers were very questionable. Even assuming ONLY hezbollah had the explosive pagers, they were still detonating in public since the point of a pager is to be able to carry it around.
Walkie talkie wise? I still need to reflexively condemn anything that kills children. But… that actually does seem super targeted and would presumably not be something a terrorist “should” carry around in public during their non-terrorist lives.
What do think about Hezbollah killing 11 Druze kids?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism