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It is targeted, by definition. Every pager was owned by a Hezbollah member or was about to be. Same with the walkies. That there was collateral damage is unfor

by borski 2y ago

It is targeted, by definition. Every pager was owned by a Hezbollah member or was about to be. Same with the walkies. That there was collateral damage is unfortunate, but Israel was definitely not indiscriminately targeting civilians, which is what would make it terrorism. This was a surgical strike that happened to have some unfortunate collateral damage. Well within the accepted rules of war.

ivan_gammel 2y ago
It was not unfortunate collateral damage in the sense of unknown unknown. Civilian casualties must have been anticipated and nothing has been done to prevent them. It is not „accepted“ rules of war, but normalized disregard of human life.
- borski 2y ago
  Once again: watch any of the videos. The vast majority of them involve anyone standing around the operative walking away just fine. This was a targeted attack. Some civilians got hurt, but the intent was not to harm them, and that is the point.
  - ivan_gammel 2y ago
    > Once again: watch any of the videos What makes you think that I did not watch them? And why do you think a few videos circulating online are representative of a few thousands explosions? > Some civilians got hurt, but the intent was not to harm them What makes „some“ any different than a hundred or a million? How can you be certain of the intent if civilian casualties were/should have been anticipated?
    - borski 2y ago
      Didn’t mean to imply you hadn’t watched them at all; was simply trying to use them as evidence. > What makes „some“ any different than a hundred or a million? How can you be certain of the intent if civilian casualties were/should have been anticipated? The point I’m trying to make is that there was a very small amount of explosive in each device. They could have added more material had they wanted to do more damage. There were many ways to make this far more damaging, and they could simply have shot rockets or bombs from the air. This was a targeted attack, focused on the specific users of these devices, who are Hezbollah militants. Bystanders were not intended to be harmed, which makes this, by definition, a discriminate and surgical attack on Hezbollah militants. I’m not really sure what about that isn’t clear.
      - ivan_gammel 2y ago
        [flagged]
        borski 2y ago
        1. Those pagers were purchased by Hezbollah, for Hezbollah. They were distributed by Hezbollah, to Hezbollah. I have extremely little doubt that Israel had intel telling them this, and that these weren’t used by hospitals by doctors and nurses. 2. Of course you can’t guarantee this, but the expectation is that operatives have these devices on them, as it is how they communicate with the rest of Hezbollah. That is a reasonable assumption in the fog of war. 3. Of course you can’t guarantee that. You minimize casualties by making the impact smaller but still meaningful; by using less explosive, but still enough to accomplish the goal. There are no guarantees in war. Ops fail sometimes. You try to predict collateral damage, which Israel clearly did, by targeting specific devices used by and distributed by Hezbollah, and by using a relatively small amount of explosive. Both of those things indicate that care was put into minimizing collateral damage. Even if they minimized the amount of explosive to avoid detection, that still accomplished the secondary effect of minimizing damage. This was as successful a military op as it gets.
        ivan_gammel 2y ago
        > 1. Those pagers were purchased by Hezbollah, for Hezbollah. They were distributed by Hezbollah, to Hezbollah. I have extremely little doubt that Israel had intel telling them this, and that these weren’t used by hospitals by doctors and nurses. Do you have any hard evidence of that? It is absolutely plausible scenario that Hezbollah distributed some of the devices to non-members as part of civil defense plan. In case of the war they may want to have a reliable and authoritative communication channel to civilians. > Of course you can’t guarantee this, but the expectation is that operatives have these devices on them, as it is how they communicate with the rest of Hezbollah. That is a reasonable assumption in the fog of war. No, it is not reasonable assumption, on the contrary, and we have seen that. It does look like most of the victims weren’t on duty, so it is reasonable to assume that they won‘t be carrying the device all the time. > 3. Of course you can’t guarantee that. You minimize casualties by making the impact smaller but still meaningful; by using less explosive, but still enough to accomplish the goal. Minimize != avoid. They knew that the explosion may harm the wrong person, because they did not take the measures to prevent that (chosen method made it impossible). This is indiscriminate attack by definition.
  - anigbrowl 2y ago
    While it seems few bystanders suffered physical injuries, it's naive imho to think that this won't cause enormously elevated fear among the population at large. 'Koolaid' is still synonymous with mass cult poisoning in the US even though that incident happened ~50 years ago in a different country. Everyone in Lebanon is having nightmares about random electronic devices turning out to be bombs, even though they know that's logically not the case. Just like people in New York feel differently about seeing airliners than they did before 9-11.
    - borski 2y ago
      Sure, that's true. They would have much worse trauma if these were air-dropped bomb or rocket. As strikes go, this was very surgical; but you're right, war is awful. You'll never hear me say war is good. It's awful.

by borski 2y ago

ivan_gammel 2y ago

It was not unfortunate collateral damage in the sense of unknown unknown. Civilian casualties must have been anticipated and nothing has been done to prevent them. It is not „accepted“ rules of war, but normalized disregard of human life.

borski 2y ago
Once again: watch any of the videos. The vast majority of them involve anyone standing around the operative walking away just fine. This was a targeted attack. Some civilians got hurt, but the intent was not to harm them, and that is the point.
- ivan_gammel 2y ago
  > Once again: watch any of the videos What makes you think that I did not watch them? And why do you think a few videos circulating online are representative of a few thousands explosions? > Some civilians got hurt, but the intent was not to harm them What makes „some“ any different than a hundred or a million? How can you be certain of the intent if civilian casualties were/should have been anticipated?
  - borski 2y ago
    Didn’t mean to imply you hadn’t watched them at all; was simply trying to use them as evidence. > What makes „some“ any different than a hundred or a million? How can you be certain of the intent if civilian casualties were/should have been anticipated? The point I’m trying to make is that there was a very small amount of explosive in each device. They could have added more material had they wanted to do more damage. There were many ways to make this far more damaging, and they could simply have shot rockets or bombs from the air. This was a targeted attack, focused on the specific users of these devices, who are Hezbollah militants. Bystanders were not intended to be harmed, which makes this, by definition, a discriminate and surgical attack on Hezbollah militants. I’m not really sure what about that isn’t clear.
    - ivan_gammel 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - borski 2y ago
        1. Those pagers were purchased by Hezbollah, for Hezbollah. They were distributed by Hezbollah, to Hezbollah. I have extremely little doubt that Israel had intel telling them this, and that these weren’t used by hospitals by doctors and nurses. 2. Of course you can’t guarantee this, but the expectation is that operatives have these devices on them, as it is how they communicate with the rest of Hezbollah. That is a reasonable assumption in the fog of war. 3. Of course you can’t guarantee that. You minimize casualties by making the impact smaller but still meaningful; by using less explosive, but still enough to accomplish the goal. There are no guarantees in war. Ops fail sometimes. You try to predict collateral damage, which Israel clearly did, by targeting specific devices used by and distributed by Hezbollah, and by using a relatively small amount of explosive. Both of those things indicate that care was put into minimizing collateral damage. Even if they minimized the amount of explosive to avoid detection, that still accomplished the secondary effect of minimizing damage. This was as successful a military op as it gets.
        ivan_gammel 2y ago
        > 1. Those pagers were purchased by Hezbollah, for Hezbollah. They were distributed by Hezbollah, to Hezbollah. I have extremely little doubt that Israel had intel telling them this, and that these weren’t used by hospitals by doctors and nurses. Do you have any hard evidence of that? It is absolutely plausible scenario that Hezbollah distributed some of the devices to non-members as part of civil defense plan. In case of the war they may want to have a reliable and authoritative communication channel to civilians. > Of course you can’t guarantee this, but the expectation is that operatives have these devices on them, as it is how they communicate with the rest of Hezbollah. That is a reasonable assumption in the fog of war. No, it is not reasonable assumption, on the contrary, and we have seen that. It does look like most of the victims weren’t on duty, so it is reasonable to assume that they won‘t be carrying the device all the time. > 3. Of course you can’t guarantee that. You minimize casualties by making the impact smaller but still meaningful; by using less explosive, but still enough to accomplish the goal. Minimize != avoid. They knew that the explosion may harm the wrong person, because they did not take the measures to prevent that (chosen method made it impossible). This is indiscriminate attack by definition.
- anigbrowl 2y ago
  While it seems few bystanders suffered physical injuries, it's naive imho to think that this won't cause enormously elevated fear among the population at large. 'Koolaid' is still synonymous with mass cult poisoning in the US even though that incident happened ~50 years ago in a different country. Everyone in Lebanon is having nightmares about random electronic devices turning out to be bombs, even though they know that's logically not the case. Just like people in New York feel differently about seeing airliners than they did before 9-11.
  - borski 2y ago
    Sure, that's true. They would have much worse trauma if these were air-dropped bomb or rocket. As strikes go, this was very surgical; but you're right, war is awful. You'll never hear me say war is good. It's awful.