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.
I dunno man. I just feel like if you’re at the point where you can clandestinely intercept huge amounts of your enemy’s personal communication devices, ‘turn them into bombs’ feels like a bit of a low-yield outcome.
They thought the pagers were secure communication devices. Now they know they are not. Hezbollah was maybe planning to escalate its attacks on Israel, without good, secure communications, they probably can’t. On the flip side, if Israel decides to invade Southern Lebanon to escalate things with Hezbollah, Hezbollah is going to have a much tougher time coordinating its defense since its supposed ‘secure’ communication system has just been blown up, the previous system (cell phones) what already suspected of being compromised, and now today, walkie-talkies used by the senior Hezbollah leadership have also exploded.
This is not normal for cyber ops. The only thing really that makes sense is if they needed to buy time so set off the pagers. Otherwise they just set their compromised communications devices on fire and told them they did it.
I meant it more like, why blow up the pagers you spent all this effort to compromise. I would have thought that having access to those devices would be worth more covertly.
I suppose its possible the only thing they could manage to sneak into the devices was explosives though, since you have to take the board apart to find it. Its likely it looked like a board component too.
These were one-way pagers that, given the scale, were probably used to disperse global messages to footsoldiers or the level right above. Like: “come if for a briefing to the usual spot”. That’s information that Israel can already intercept
Since they compromised the supply chain to plant explosives, they could have also put other tracking equipment in. Its possible though that it would be too hard to conceal an outgoing signal from testing.
We probably will never know the exact details, but it just seems like a lack of creativity to me. Seems more like a military attack than a cyber ops style thing.
I guess I should have qualified that to exclude individual assassinations, otherwise you’d have to include snipers and whatever. I almost don’t believe that “knife missile” is real (quotation marks because the only real knife missiles are Culture technology).
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.
The advantage is huge. 1000s of militants are now seriously injured and are no longer battle ready. Many will never be again. Massive success for Israel, and one of the most precision strikes ever used. Now there will be fear from any communication devise exploding, there will be 1000s of man hours wasted taking other stuff apart to check it, and morale will be down as well.
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.
Close - you’re looking at letter, not action and intentions.
Booby traps are banned for use in ways that are likely to be used by civilians and remove protections on the civilian population. Things like placing explosives on public transport, the side of the road, in marketplaces or protected places. Targeted strikes, like on a piece of civilian equipment that is likely to only be used by the target (cellphone, personal vehicle, laptop) are permitted as they are unlikely to be set off by a random civilian.
What is a question, however, is if the targets were actually combatants.
It’s literally a war crime to attack people who are not actively participating in combat. That includes people who are members of your enemy’s military.
That includes people who are members of your enemy’s military.
No, members of an enemy’s military are combatants regardless of whether they’re holding a gun or in a firefight at the time. The only exception is personnel such as chaplains and medics.
Hmmm I guess with Israel having a conscript army then rocket barrages aren’t acts of terrorism. If a large portion of the country is considered “combatants” then any non-coms can be written off as “acceptable collateral damage”.
Not unless you’re making a meaningful attempt to target combatants. “All civilians are combatants” is the kind of Nazi shite that Israel indulges in, so I’d thank you to not peddle such grotesque views.
Would you like to more precisely outline the hypocrisy that is comparable in this case - between the targeting of combatants that results in collateral damage, and the assertion that attacking civilians with rocket barrages is valid because Israel has a ‘conscript army’, implicitly asserting that all Israeli civilians are legitimate targets?
It’s important to note that this is the consensus of much of the international community and the US (and I presume its surrogate Israel) have not signed on to the above provision despite speaking to support it. The weasely approach we (the US) have taken to these standards really demonstrates how hollow our sentiments are when we feign moral authority in international affairs.
Would you like to explain how setting up bombs within the personal devices of enemy combatants is striking civilians or civilian objects without distinction? Or do you think all collateral damage is a war crime?
Like, fuck’s sake, not every dogshit act by a criminal state like Israel is a war crime. Jesus H. Christ.
It’s important to note that this is the consensus of much of the international community and the US (and I presume its surrogate Israel) have not signed on to the above provision despite speaking to support it. The weasely approach we (the US) have taken to these standards really demonstrates how hollow our sentiments are when we feign moral authority in international affairs.
Was this really all just to say “US BAD” and “US PUPPET ISRAEL”? Holy shit.
First of all, there was no way for Israel to know whether the people they claim to be targeting were combatants when the attack occurred since Israel had no information about the status of these bombs when they chose to detonate them.
Secondly, placing a bomb in a common device that you have every reason to believe will spend much of its time in the proximity of civilians, in homes, markets and other public spaces, and choosing to detonate it without knowledge of the location of the bomb, or it’s proximity to your supposed target, is actively avoiding distinguishing between ‘combatants’ and civilians. I can’t believe that western brain rot requires this to be spelled out for it.
Israel learned that Hezbollah was ordering new pagers to be given to members of Hezbollah and no one else. Every member of Hezbollah is a sworn enemy of Israel. These pagers were to be used for secure communications between members of Hezbollah. It was highly likely that nearly every one of these pagers would be carried by members of Hezbollah at the time they went off (IIRC 3pm local time).
First of all, there was no way for Israel to know whether the people they claim to be targeting were combatants when the attack occurred since Israel had no information about the status of these bombs when they chose to detonate them.
So it’s your view that any explosive that isn’t tracked at all times with 100% accuracy is a war crime.
Uh. ‘Interesting’.
Secondly, placing a bomb in a common device that you have every reason to believe will spend much of its time in the proximity of civilians, in homes, markets and other public spaces, and choosing to detonate it without knowledge of the location of the bomb, or it’s proximity to your supposed target, is actively avoiding distinguishing between ‘combatants’ and civilians. I can’t believe that western brain rot requires this to be spelled out for it.
‘Western brain rot’, apparently, is when someone else disproves your utterly and blatantly incorrect claim about the definition of a war crime and then you flail around desperately seeking another justification for your claim once disproven. Okay.
This is terrorism and a violation of International humanitarian law. It’s not a war crime because Lebanon and Israel are not formally at war; yet Israel just attacked civilians in public, including health workers, and even officials in Parliament.
As an attack on Hezbollah militant fighters, sure, fair game. But this didn’t just attack them.
Photographs and videos filmed by victims and witnesses to the incident and reviewed by Human Rights Watch showed pagers exploding in various locales, such as grocery stores. Other videos that appear to be linked to the incident show adults and children in emergency rooms with severe penetrating traumatic injuries to their heads, torsos. and limbs, and other injuries consistent with the detonation of high explosives.
Hezbollah, in a statement, said that the pagers belonged “to employees of various Hezbollah units and institutions” and blamed the Israeli government. US and former Israeli officials speaking to the media said that Israel was responsible for the attack. The Israeli military has not commented.
“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. A prompt and impartial investigation into the attacks should be urgently conducted.”
Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa Director at Human Rights Watch
This is terrorism and a violation of International humanitarian law. It’s not a war crime because Lebanon and Israel are not formally at war
War crimes are not restricted to polities formally at war.
As an attack on Hezbollah militant fighters, sure, fair game. But this didn’t just attack them.
Photographs and videos filmed by victims and witnesses to the incident and reviewed by Human Rights Watch showed pagers exploding in various locales, such as grocery stores. Other videos that appear to be linked to the incident show adults and children in emergency rooms with severe penetrating traumatic injuries to their heads, torsos. and limbs, and other injuries consistent with the detonation of high explosives.
Unless there’s some proof that Israel targeted civilians or was exceptionally lax in targeting combatants, this has no relevance as to whether what they did was a war crime.
Hezbollah, in a statement, said that the pagers belonged “to employees of various Hezbollah units and institutions” and blamed the Israeli government. US and former Israeli officials speaking to the media said that Israel was responsible for the attack. The Israeli military has not commented.
Hezbollah is a paramilitary group. It’s going to be a hard sell to any lawyer or judge that targeting their members is targeting noncombatants.
“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."
Prohibited conduct:
“(D) Murder.—
The act of a person who intentionally kills, or conspires or attempts to kill, or kills whether intentionally or unintentionally in the course of committing any other offense under this subsection, one or more persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including those placed out of combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause”
-According to Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, combatants are:
the armed forces of a party to a conflict, and also
groups and units that are under a command responsible to that party for the conduct of its subordinates, even if that party is answerable to a government or an authority not recognized by an adverse party. Such armed forces shall be subject to an internal disciplinary system, which, inter alia, shall enforce compliance with the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict
According to this rule, when military medical and religious personnel are members of the armed forces, they are nevertheless considered non-combatants. According to the First Geneva Convention, temporary medical personnel have to be respected and protected as non-combatants only as long as the medical assignment lasts (see commentary to Rule 25).[14] As is the case for civilians (see Rule 6), respect for non-combatants is contingent on their abstaining from taking a direct part in hostilities.
The military manuals of Germany and the United States point out that there can be other non-combatant members of the armed forces besides medical and religious personnel. Germany’s Military Manual explains that “combatants are persons who may take a direct part in hostilities, i.e., participate in the use of a weapon or a weapon-system in an indispensable function”, and specifies, therefore, that “persons who are members of the armed forces but do not have any combat mission, such as judges, government officials and blue-collar workers, are non-combatants”.[15] The US Naval Handbook states that “civil defense personnel and members of the armed forces who have acquired civil defense status” are non-combatants, in addition to medical and religious personnel.[16]
Non-combatant members of the armed forces are not to be confused, however, with civilians accompanying armed forces who are not members of the armed forces by definition.[17]
That is absolutely not true. An easy example to disprove your argument would be the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. The American Navy was caught completely by surprise. At the end of the war, there were some Japanese tried for war crimes, but not for the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.
I’m willing to argue that the unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor was replete with war crimes by modern standards. I’ve cited some documentation above. Since doing that I’ve learned that there are also specific prohibitions against booby-trapping: https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/ccw-amended-protocol-ii-1996/article-7 Turns out that Israel has violated many international standards for war crimes and terrorism. It’s simple mystifying to me that any of this is controversial.
I’ll quibble with you on ‘booby trap’. Booby traps are like what Russian is doing in Ukraine when they retreat: putting primed grenades next to doors that will be opened when Ukrainian troops come through. Or maybe later if the Ukrainian troops don’t find the booby traps: civilians who come back to the ‘cleared’ areas. This is why booby trapping is prohibited. The enemy might miss it and later on a civilian might come across it.
The Israelis modified devices meant for military purposes by a para-military organization. These pagers weren’t being sold in local markets to anyone who would buy them.
That means the term “war crimes” is meaningless because it would just mean war. The point of specifying some actions as war crimes is to denote things that even in war you shouldn’t do not just say that all wars are crimes
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.
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 really don’t get it. Other than the “WAOW” factor, this certainly can’t have been a good use of resources for Israel.
They already believed their communications were being intercepted so switched to another method.
That method then literally blew up in their pockets.
The amount of fear and distrust of the supply chain can’t be overstated.
I dunno man. I just feel like if you’re at the point where you can clandestinely intercept huge amounts of your enemy’s personal communication devices, ‘turn them into bombs’ feels like a bit of a low-yield outcome.
Consider it backwards: Israel sees this attack happening so valuable, that they were willing to forego using the pagers for spying.
Considering Israel’s history, I don’t know how much agreement there would be between my estimation of military value and the current administration’s.
Alternately this proves that they still are intercepting their communication AND can intervene in their supply chain.
I assure you that basically every nation state in FVEY (and then Israel by proxy) has the ability to intercept your communication.
This is something that ought to be considered as a basic entry level accepted threat.
NOW they know they have to worry about shit blowing up randomly, brand new stuff.
They thought the pagers were secure communication devices. Now they know they are not. Hezbollah was maybe planning to escalate its attacks on Israel, without good, secure communications, they probably can’t. On the flip side, if Israel decides to invade Southern Lebanon to escalate things with Hezbollah, Hezbollah is going to have a much tougher time coordinating its defense since its supposed ‘secure’ communication system has just been blown up, the previous system (cell phones) what already suspected of being compromised, and now today, walkie-talkies used by the senior Hezbollah leadership have also exploded.
This is not normal for cyber ops. The only thing really that makes sense is if they needed to buy time so set off the pagers. Otherwise they just set their compromised communications devices on fire and told them they did it.
In which world getting thousands of Hezbolla operatives unwittingly keeping a bomb in their pocket would not be a good use of resources for Israel?
Because it changes nothing in the long run. So what exactly was so imminent that this had to happen?
Hezbollah has been saying for a while it ‘might’ escalate its actions against Israel. Now… that does not seem as likely.
What was so imminent that Hezbollah had to fire that rocket barrage some days ago?
You don’t seem to understand the nature of this conflict
I meant it more like, why blow up the pagers you spent all this effort to compromise. I would have thought that having access to those devices would be worth more covertly.
I suppose its possible the only thing they could manage to sneak into the devices was explosives though, since you have to take the board apart to find it. Its likely it looked like a board component too.
These were one-way pagers that, given the scale, were probably used to disperse global messages to footsoldiers or the level right above. Like: “come if for a briefing to the usual spot”. That’s information that Israel can already intercept
Since they compromised the supply chain to plant explosives, they could have also put other tracking equipment in. Its possible though that it would be too hard to conceal an outgoing signal from testing.
We probably will never know the exact details, but it just seems like a lack of creativity to me. Seems more like a military attack than a cyber ops style thing.
I guess I should have qualified that to exclude individual assassinations, otherwise you’d have to include snipers and whatever. I almost don’t believe that “knife missile” is real (quotation marks because the only real knife missiles are Culture technology).
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.
The advantage is huge. 1000s of militants are now seriously injured and are no longer battle ready. Many will never be again. Massive success for Israel, and one of the most precision strikes ever used. Now there will be fear from any communication devise exploding, there will be 1000s of man hours wasted taking other stuff apart to check it, and morale will be down as well.
Now westerners will worry when lining up for concerts or flights and the increased security expenditure will impact their economy
I guess you support ISIS terror attacks as a brilliant play too?
How did the compromised pagers not trigger warnings at airport X-rays? I guess lithium batteries and C4 look similar?
They’re about as similar as a nuclear bomb and a portable garbage disposal system
So you’ve seen X-rays of both?
How did something that only killed 10 targets injure thousands, especially when you are considering explosives.
I don’t think I could injure 1000s of civilians with only 10 targets killed with an explosive hidden on their person if I tried.
They injured thousands of their targets, killed a few, and only got very little collateral damage
Nasrallah would shit down his prophet’s throat to get this kind of outcome
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.
Close - you’re looking at letter, not action and intentions.
Booby traps are banned for use in ways that are likely to be used by civilians and remove protections on the civilian population. Things like placing explosives on public transport, the side of the road, in marketplaces or protected places. Targeted strikes, like on a piece of civilian equipment that is likely to only be used by the target (cellphone, personal vehicle, laptop) are permitted as they are unlikely to be set off by a random civilian.
What is a question, however, is if the targets were actually combatants.
There is no chance Mossad wasn’t aware that these pagers were distributed to civilians.
Turns out they weren’t.
It’s literally a war crime to attack people who are not actively participating in combat. That includes people who are members of your enemy’s military.
No, members of an enemy’s military are combatants regardless of whether they’re holding a gun or in a firefight at the time. The only exception is personnel such as chaplains and medics.
How do you have less votes than the wrong person?
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That’s a warcrime
If you commit a war crime. That be a paddlin’.
This attack is a warcrime based on treaties that Israel has itself signed to, and has been recognized as such for decades.
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Hmmm I guess with Israel having a conscript army then rocket barrages aren’t acts of terrorism. If a large portion of the country is considered “combatants” then any non-coms can be written off as “acceptable collateral damage”.
Not unless you’re making a meaningful attempt to target combatants. “All civilians are combatants” is the kind of Nazi shite that Israel indulges in, so I’d thank you to not peddle such grotesque views.
I don’t ascribe to it.
Then repeating things like this
in attempting to equate collateral damage with attacking civilians should probably be avoided.
It’s pointing out the hypocrisy, that is all.
Would you like to more precisely outline the hypocrisy that is comparable in this case - between the targeting of combatants that results in collateral damage, and the assertion that attacking civilians with rocket barrages is valid because Israel has a ‘conscript army’, implicitly asserting that all Israeli civilians are legitimate targets?
On the prohibition of indiscriminate attacks:
“© those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol; and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.”
https://www.justsecurity.org/81351/the-prohibition-on-indiscriminate-attacks-the-us-position-vs-the-dod-law-of-war-manual/
It’s important to note that this is the consensus of much of the international community and the US (and I presume its surrogate Israel) have not signed on to the above provision despite speaking to support it. The weasely approach we (the US) have taken to these standards really demonstrates how hollow our sentiments are when we feign moral authority in international affairs.
Would you like to explain how setting up bombs within the personal devices of enemy combatants is striking civilians or civilian objects without distinction? Or do you think all collateral damage is a war crime?
Like, fuck’s sake, not every dogshit act by a criminal state like Israel is a war crime. Jesus H. Christ.
Was this really all just to say “US BAD” and “US PUPPET ISRAEL”? Holy shit.
First of all, there was no way for Israel to know whether the people they claim to be targeting were combatants when the attack occurred since Israel had no information about the status of these bombs when they chose to detonate them.
Secondly, placing a bomb in a common device that you have every reason to believe will spend much of its time in the proximity of civilians, in homes, markets and other public spaces, and choosing to detonate it without knowledge of the location of the bomb, or it’s proximity to your supposed target, is actively avoiding distinguishing between ‘combatants’ and civilians. I can’t believe that western brain rot requires this to be spelled out for it.
Israel learned that Hezbollah was ordering new pagers to be given to members of Hezbollah and no one else. Every member of Hezbollah is a sworn enemy of Israel. These pagers were to be used for secure communications between members of Hezbollah. It was highly likely that nearly every one of these pagers would be carried by members of Hezbollah at the time they went off (IIRC 3pm local time).
So it’s your view that any explosive that isn’t tracked at all times with 100% accuracy is a war crime.
Uh. ‘Interesting’.
‘Western brain rot’, apparently, is when someone else disproves your utterly and blatantly incorrect claim about the definition of a war crime and then you flail around desperately seeking another justification for your claim once disproven. Okay.
This is terrorism and a violation of International humanitarian law. It’s not a war crime because Lebanon and Israel are not formally at war; yet Israel just attacked civilians in public, including health workers, and even officials in Parliament.
As an attack on Hezbollah militant fighters, sure, fair game. But this didn’t just attack them.
War crimes are not restricted to polities formally at war.
Unless there’s some proof that Israel targeted civilians or was exceptionally lax in targeting combatants, this has no relevance as to whether what they did was a war crime.
Hezbollah is a paramilitary group. It’s going to be a hard sell to any lawyer or judge that targeting their members is targeting noncombatants.
That’s a very curious claim regarding international law on booby traps.
18 U.S. Code § 2441 - War crimes
Prohibited conduct: “(D) Murder.— The act of a person who intentionally kills, or conspires or attempts to kill, or kills whether intentionally or unintentionally in the course of committing any other offense under this subsection, one or more persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including those placed out of combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause”
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2441
It is a war crime to intentionally attack non-combatants.
Which explains why the IDF has had so many “accidents” recently.
That is absolutely not true. An easy example to disprove your argument would be the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. The American Navy was caught completely by surprise. At the end of the war, there were some Japanese tried for war crimes, but not for the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.
I’m willing to argue that the unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor was replete with war crimes by modern standards. I’ve cited some documentation above. Since doing that I’ve learned that there are also specific prohibitions against booby-trapping: https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/ccw-amended-protocol-ii-1996/article-7 Turns out that Israel has violated many international standards for war crimes and terrorism. It’s simple mystifying to me that any of this is controversial.
I’ll quibble with you on ‘booby trap’. Booby traps are like what Russian is doing in Ukraine when they retreat: putting primed grenades next to doors that will be opened when Ukrainian troops come through. Or maybe later if the Ukrainian troops don’t find the booby traps: civilians who come back to the ‘cleared’ areas. This is why booby trapping is prohibited. The enemy might miss it and later on a civilian might come across it.
The Israelis modified devices meant for military purposes by a para-military organization. These pagers weren’t being sold in local markets to anyone who would buy them.
That would make every crime a war crime going back thousands of years where they would lay siege on villages until the citizens starved
Yes?
That means the term “war crimes” is meaningless because it would just mean war. The point of specifying some actions as war crimes is to denote things that even in war you shouldn’t do not just say that all wars are crimes
Now you are getting it! War is bad!
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