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This seems like it would have the potential for a lot of collateral damage due to the possibility that modified pagers might enter general distribution. That is
by harimau777 2y ago
This seems like it would have the potential for a lot of collateral damage due to the possibility that modified pagers might enter general distribution. That is to say, how do they insure that a given shipment of pagers are only going to Hezbollah as opposed to some of them going to people like aid workers?
- 93po 2y ago[flagged]
- brookst 2y agoEveryone cares about collateral damage. The thorny part is how much to care... what is the calculus for how much is acceptable? Israel, rightly or wrongly, seems to be comfortable with around a 100:1 ratio.
- tptacek 2y agoIf that were the case, Israel wouldn't be intricately planting bombs in Hezbollah pagers.
- Vicinity9635 2y ago[dead]
- the_cat_kittles 2y ago[flagged]
- elliekelly 2y agoThe pagers do give Israel a certain veneer of plausible deniability that they wouldn’t otherwise have if they had used more traditional bombing methods.
- tptacek 2y agoLiterally everybody in the entire world believes Israel is responsible for this. An Mk-82 bomb dropped from a bomber would have more deniability. This was a joke about Israel's tactical signature back when James Mickens included it in a Usenix Security throwaway paragraph back in 2014. There is absolutely no deniability here, unless someone very powerful is deliberately trying to frame Israel (which is not what is happening).
- elktown 2y agoGaza seems like a pretty effin strong data point to consider here?
- tptacek 2y agoNot really? Part of what happened with Gaza and Hamas was that Netanyahu (and governments before his) spent a decade taking Hezbollah more seriously than Hamas (for good reason!). They are geared up for a precise and carefully-executed conflict with Hezbollah in ways they were not with Hamas. At the same time: 100% reasonable to look at today and say "if you can pull off an attack like this, why the fuck are you still leveling apartment buildings in Gaza, after having permanently crippled Hamas months ago". Like, there's a moral dimension to this! But I don't think that dimension is "feel real bad for Hassan Nasrallah". Play stupid games, &c &c.
- 13415 2y agoGaza has fairly low civilian:combatant death ratios, lower than in most comparable urban wars. It's not hard to calculate them, the information is partly public (published by Hamas and IDF). However, many people chose to believe whatever they want to believe instead of going for the facts, I've seen some people come up with numbers ad hoc that are ten times than what Hamas reports, or they claim IDF has basically not killed any Hamas combatants at all.
- tptacek 2y agoThis might be true but would be an easier argument to make persuasively if Israel had backed off after it more or less roflstomped the Al Qassam order of battle and virtually the entire Hamas command staff.
- 13415 2y agoTo clarify, I'm not trying to make any persuasive arguments about this. This is based on my own calculations, and there is generally not enough publicly available information to come to a fully informed verdict. For example, if you take all figures by Hamas, including some of the low number of deaths of their own fighters they reported, the ratio climbs up to 4:1 or more. I doubt anyone can say with certainty what the right figures are (well, perhaps some can provide good estimates, but not publicly). I'd be interested in knowing how the IDF mandate to destroy Hamas is defined concretely in terms of KIA of enemy combatants but perhaps that hasn't even been decided yet.
- irundebian 2y agoI don't see any contradication here.
- 93po 2y agobombs that injured thousands of innocent bystanders, including women and children
- tptacek 2y agoWho uses pagers? Aid workers carry phones. The pagers are deliberate opsec move for Hezbollah.
- no_exit 2y ago[flagged]
- yoavm 2y ago[flagged]
- delecti 2y agoActions speak much louder than words here. If it quacks like a duck, it's probably not an accident that aid workers following all the proper procedures to make sure they don't get blown up, do get blown up.
- yoavm 2y ago[flagged]
- s1artibartfast 2y ago[flagged]
- no_exit 2y agoI'll consider that a possibility when it comes from an independent party detailing exactly which processes failed, why, and what remediation is being done beyond sacrificial dismissals. The particular WCK strike you're referring to wasn't even the first one killing WCK workers, just the most high-profile among many others. [1] > Yeah, it's really important to situate that attack on the World Central Kitchen in the context of these many other attacks that have occurred since October in Gaza. We've documented incidents of attacks on guest houses, on convoys of aid organizations, including Doctors Without Borders, MSF, the UN institution there UNRWA, the International Rescue Committee, and Medical Aid for Palestinians and another American aid group. And in every single one of these instances, these groups notified the authorities, the Israeli authorities multiple times about the GPS coordinate of the guest house, of the convoy that was moving. When it was convoys, they were taking agreed-upon routes that the Israelis had told them to take. And in every instance, these attacks occurred with zero prior warning to the aid organizations, and we're talking about, you know, 15 aid workers having been killed in these attacks and another including two children, family members, and another 16 injured. [1] https://www.npr.org/2024/05/14/1251200131/israeli-strikes-on-aid-convoys-are-not-unusual-human-rights-watch-says https://www.npr.org/2024/05/14/1251200131/israeli-strikes-on...
- minkles 2y agoI suspect that is an intentional side effect against the whole pager network. It is now totally compromised which means they can no longer use passive channels as a communication medium. This effectively shut down their comms structure. As for aid workers, they mostly use whatever low ball android phones they can get their hands on I know someone who volunteered out there and everyone uses them and Telegram). I don't think that will impact them at all.
- isoprophlex 2y agoWell, now that everyone knows it's feasible to hide a small bomb inside a pager, what's to stop people from checking their pagers for tiny explosives before using them?
- jjk166 2y agoCan the average person tell the difference between a pager battery and a bomb professionally made to look like a pager battery?
- isoprophlex 2y agoYou only need to vet what the inside of a pager should look like once, and spread the knowledge around... using them will become more of a hassle, but not entirely impossible.
- willvarfar 2y agopresumably the only difference between an explosive-laden battery and a normal battery is it's capacity. All else will appear identical. And tearing down the battery to inspect it destroys the battery.
- sealeck 2y agoWell usually what you do here is start randomly sampling.
- flyinglizard 2y agoThese are pagers connected to Hizbollah's internal communication network. Why would they be used by the general population?
- harimau777 2y agoAs I understand it, people are saying that the most likely way that this was carried out was that a shipment of pagers where intercepted and modified. My concern is that part or all of the shipment might not go to Hezbollah. Perhaps the shipment gets rerouted to somewhere else due to supply chain issues. Perhaps only half of the shipment was intended for Hezbollah. Perhaps a postal worker steals a few and sells them on the black market. Perhaps Hezbollah decides they have more than they needs and does something with the rest. Perhaps part or all of the shipment gets delayed and is sitting in a post office when it goes off. Basically: warfare via mail bomb seems like it might be irresponsible.
- jazzyjackson 2y ago[flagged]
- alistairSH 2y agoThese aren't normal retail pagers, like the world uses (or used to use) for pager-duty? And Hezbollah maintains its own network infrastructure?
- tptacek 2y agoYes. Hezbollah is essentially the armed forces of Lebanon (there is an official Lebanese army, but it is smaller than Hezbollah).
- BurningFrog 2y agoYou can also think of them as an Iranian army occupying southern Lebanon.
- 2y ago
- VerminOctopus1 2y ago[flagged]
- mola 2y ago[flagged]
- hiddencost 2y agoPer The Lancet, if you account for excess deaths due to things like willfully imposed mass starvation, denial of medical services due to the destruction of hospitals, and living in tents without cooling due to the destruction of housing, 100,000 people have been killed as a consequence of the IDFs actions. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
- mola 2y ago[flagged]
- bamboozled 2y ago[flagged]
- luckylion 2y agoKilling everyone in Gaza would have certainly killed many of their targets. You claim they don't care about collateral damage. So, why haven't they? Wow there's a lot of anti-semitism on HN lately, absolutely vile.
- scosman 2y agoThey killed an 8 year old girl with this attack. I'm sure there was already a huge amount of collateral damage from 2000+ eyes-off-taret explosions.
- jajko 2y ago[flagged]
- isoprophlex 2y ago[flagged]
- trallnag 2y agoYou don't even know the collateral damage at this point. So how can you make a judgment call?
- bbreier 2y agoThe same way anyone could make a judgment call before the attack was carried out? We are capable of abstract reasoning about the consequences of our actions.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago[flagged]
- elorant 2y agoPagers could have certain security options that would interest only a military organization. We don't know at which stage these were intercepted. They could just as easily be targeted to Hezbollah from the beginning of the sale. Advertise something that could be catered to them and once they take the bait go ahead and booby trap them all
- mathandstuff 2y agoThey didn't. Al Jazeera's headline was updated to read "Lebanon’s health minister says 8 killed, 2,750 wounded by exploding pagers."
- jazzyjackson 2y ago[flagged]
- jjk166 2y agoIt would be easy to include a little microcontroller that can check what frequency the pager is set to. This allows you to target specific pager networks (government, military) while leaving pagers that are unlikely to be in use by targets intact for follow-up attacks.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago[flagged]
- talldayo 2y agoIf you aren't targeting occupied residences with the JDAM (like Israel does through the Where's Daddy? program) then feasibly you could end up with less civilian attrition using the JDAMs. Distributed fragmentation explosives with no fire control system are arguably more dangerous than a direct-attack munition targeting a military installation.
- moduspol 2y agoI'm not sure why it's being assumed that they detonated all of the pagers. They presumably have unique device IDs / phone numbers that can be tied to individual people. For all we know, they may have just detonated the ones known to be in use by Hezbollah operatives.
- yonisto 2y ago[flagged]
- limit499karma 2y agoYou can't insure it. It is actual terrorism, pure and simple. "American University of Beirut withdrew the pagers from the medical staff this morning under the pretext of updating the system".
- aksss 2y agoYou can insure anything.
- welcome_dragon 2y agoBut can you ensure it?
- knallfrosch 2y agoFirst: Innocent people can use their phones just fine and have their comms intercepted by the IDF. Only Hezbollah wanted an alternative to hackable phones. Second: If you distribute to Hezbollah and detonate already months later, it's unlikely many unaffiliated people already have Hezbollah pagers. The hit rate indicates the targeting was right.
- hanshenning 2y agoThese pagers were used by Hizbullah because, unlike mobile phones, they cannot be tracked. The people who had them were certainly not random aid workers, but people in the Hizbullah chain of command. This is also indicated by the statements of Hizbullah itself (which are themself to be questioned and not taken at face value), according to which so far one non-combatant was reported killed and no other non-combatant were reported injured out of a total of 4,000 exploded explosive devices. The CCTV footage also shows that even in a crowded supermarket, no one was injured apart from the Hizbullah member with the pager.
- HL33tibCe7 2y agoSince when has Israel cared about civilians or aid workers
- alex1138 2y agoSince the IDF has been shown to be intentionally cautious in their persecution of this war
- altacc 2y agoCan you confirm that this is sarcasm? If not then it is an incredibly inaccurate statement.
- alex1138 2y agoNo. See, eg, https://assets.ctfassets.net/qnesrjodfi80/3Eo3mGQdYAYwu22W2wEQus/37d06bde6b68f0d90457cddd35eb90b1/kemp-israel_the_worlds_most_moral_army-transcript.pdf https://assets.ctfassets.net/qnesrjodfi80/3Eo3mGQdYAYwu22W2w...
- altacc 2y agoI've seen this before. Your proof is a single person's opinion. Note that it is an opinion, with no evidence or data to back it up. It contains numerous tropes of IDF apologists and is written by a person who has a long history of opposing any investigations into the actions of the military and having generally right wing, militant, pro-European and anti-Muslim views. the letter appeals only to those who want to believe it.