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I actually consider the pager attack to be legal. There's obviously criticism of it, but I'm fairly sure you're allowed to do this kind of thing by laws of war.
by impossiblefork 10mo ago
I actually consider the pager attack to be legal. There's obviously criticism of it, but I'm fairly sure you're allowed to do this kind of thing by laws of war.
Obviously this creates a huge problem for pretty much everyone though, since we can imagine that our ordinary consumer products from all sorts countries could similarly explode if we ended up at war with the manufacturers.
- cramsession 10mo agoAttacking a civilian population is a war crime.
- impossiblefork 10mo ago* * *
- cramsession 10mo ago“Expected” is not enough. These bombs didn’t go off in active war zone. They went off in public in Lebanon, and maimed and killed civilians.
- impossiblefork 10mo agoI found this thesis from some guy doing a master in international operation law at the Swedish defence college, https://fhs.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1974147/FULLTEXT01.pdf https://fhs.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1974147/FULLTEXT... and I interpret his analysis as that it was targeted enough to be legal.
- dlubarov 10mo agoThe principle of proportionality is explicitly about expectations, i.e. expected military advantage vs expected collateral damage. You seem to be holding Israel to an impossible standard of guaranteeing zero collateral damage, which IHL does not require because no military is capable of that.
- UltraSane 10mo agoHezbollah was actively launching thousands of missiles at Israel when these pagers blew up. They stopped launching missiles at Israel en masse soon after these pagers blew up. What a odd coincidence.
- kamikazeturtles 10mo agoMany of the people who had the pagers were doctors, lawyers, bureaucrats... Maybe I'm wrong, but, I think Hezb0-lla-h is pretty much the "government", especially in southern Lebanon
- oldandboring 10mo ago[flagged]
- cmavvv 10mo agoThat's like planting a bomb in front of a military camp. You might have a target, but in the end you just kill whoever was nearby at that time. In the case of the pager attack, that includes children aged 11 and 12, as well as a nurse. That's much closer to a terrorist attack than to legal warfare.
- impossiblefork 10mo agoYes, but planting a bomb in front of a military camp is absolutely legal.
- simonsarris 10mo ago"planting a bomb in front of a military camp" is like the textbook goal for bomb-planting devices (airplanes, artillery, MRLs), its one of the most normal scenarios out of all of normal war scenarios. Planting a bomb on each soldier would be even better.
- nicce 10mo agoYou cannot quarantee who is holding the pager at the moment of explosion.
- UltraSane 10mo agoYou can have a reasonable expectation secure military pagers are only going to be used by soldiers. Given how few collateral deaths there were this was a reasonable assumption.
- lucideer 10mo agoThere might be some potential legal defense in terms of proportionality of collateral damage but it's so thin here as to be absurd. Regardless, given the number of war crimes this army has been found guilty of, this is somewhat moot. What's another war crime in the grand scheme of things.
- tguvot 10mo agothere is 0 war crimes that IDF has been found guilty of by any legal authority.
- lucideer 10mo agoThere's no central enforcement of international war crime law, so this thread on legal technicalities isn't particularly relevant in real terms, but there is at least an arrest warrant out for the (former) Minister for Defence & Prime Minister in 124 countries, so there's not a lot of room for ambiguity here.
- tguvot 10mo agoso you agree that nobody in IDF was found guilty of war crimes ? been accused it's not same as been found guilty. at least last time I checked.
- oldandboring 10mo ago[flagged]
- dilawar 10mo agomight is right. /s
- bilekas 10mo ago"It's not a war crime the first time!" Anyway sadly even if they did start attacking civilians, say Palestinian civilians as a random example, who is going to enforce the penalty for war crimes. These days its seems they're more of a suggestion than a rule of engaging in war.
- sekh60 10mo agoWar crime laws only apply to poorer nations sadly
- spwa4 10mo agoHuh? Lebanon is not being held to war crime laws, and is the poorer nation. They bombed Northern Israel for over 2 years, including a soccer field full of children that weren't their targets but are very much dead. If anything, it's the opposite.
- kyboren 10mo ago[flagged]
- KptMarchewa 10mo agoTargeting here goes beyond reasonable expectation from a military at war. Compare that to the russian terror of lobbing 500kg bombs at random housing blocks.
- moi2388 10mo agoDoes it? Do you have any data on how many of these devices ended up in civilian hands? Afaik they intercepted a shipment for Hamas members only. Do you have more information? How many civilians there even use these pagers instead of mobile phones? Are there any?
- cramsession 10mo agoHamas is in Gaza, this attack was against Hezbollah and civilians in Lebanon.
- cjbenedikt 10mo agoA year on, some Lebanese bystanders hurt in Israel’s pager attack still recovering... Over 3,400 were wounded when devices belonging to Hezbollah members exploded https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-year-on-some-lebanese-bystanders-hurt-in-israels-pager-attack-still-recovering/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-year-on-some-lebanese-bystan...
- AnimalMuppet 10mo ago3,400 bystanders? Or 3,400 mostly-Hezbollah but some bystanders?
- cjbenedikt 10mo ago[flagged]
- AnimalMuppet 10mo ago[flagged]
- UltraSane 10mo agoThe people those pagers were given to were NOT civilians. They were active members of Hezbollah.
- bunji 10mo agoThe intended targets of the exploding papers weren't civilians. Very few actual civilians ended up hurt by the detonations, much fewer than attacks by conventional weapons. It's about as targeted an attack as one can achieve from a distance. As an act of warfare, Israel did a splendid job on this. Thoroughly impressive work.
- LarsDu88 10mo agoPeople tend to easily forget that the civilian casualty ratio for conventional warfare is around 50% These attacks killed and maimed children, but firing JDAMs kills and maims even more children. Not excusing the Israeli military here... they definitely dropped a lot of JDAMs, unguided artillery, and indiscriminate autocannon munitions on Gaza. But the specific point on the pager attacks being against civilians is not a great argument. Another thing I will note is that a lot of Palestinian groups also use similar reasoning towards targeting the Israeli population on the basis of the fact there is mass conscription in place.
- tw04 10mo ago> People tend to easily forget that the civilian casualty ratio for conventional warfare is around 50% Causality in war includes people that were only injured. This was far, far more than a 50% casualty rate. More like a 9552% casualty rate.
- tw04 10mo ago> Very few actual civilians ended up hurt by the detonations, much fewer than attacks by conventional weapons. The reports are 4,000 wounded and 12 killed unintended targets in order to kill 42 targets. On what planet is that “very few actual civilians”? I think you knew full well before posting that’s a ridiculous claim which is why you did it anonymously.
- kyboren 10mo ago> The reports are 4,000 wounded and 12 killed unintended targets Which reports? According to whom? Hezbollah?
- iso1631 10mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wech_Baghtu_wedding_party_airstrike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wech_Baghtu_wedding_party_airs...
- SoftTalker 10mo agoThat's a relatively new concept, certainly not true historically.
- da-x 10mo agoNo war in history has completely avoided any civilian casualties or attacks on civilian populations, as even limited conflicts often involve indirect harm (e.g., from stray fire, blockades, or displacement), and larger wars almost inevitably affect non-combatants. Curious how the concept of the 'war crime' is weaponized by the pacifist and largely ignored by the non-pacifist that knows how proper deescalation can take place.
- giraffe_lady 10mo agoAll of the arguments I've seen supporting this attack focus on the idea that it's fine to kill and maim civilians including children as long as you will probably get some combatants. It's a little bit open to interpretation, I guess, and I'm not a legal expert so fine, ok. But booby trapping mundane daily objects accessible to non-combatants is a clear violation of international law. No real room for leeway or interpretation on that one either.
- apical_dendrite 10mo agoIt's not really a "mundane daily object" though. It's a communications device that's issued to people on the Hezbollah private communications network. It's only accessible to non-combatants if they are (1) in the Hezbollah hierarchy in a non-combatant role, or (2) the person with the pager was exercising poor operational security and letting someone else handle their pager.
- giraffe_lady 10mo ago[flagged]
- apical_dendrite 10mo agoThe laws of war don't expect a military to attack a target only if there was no risk to civilians. That would be so unrealistic that nobody would even attempt to follow the laws of war. There has to be some consideration of relative risk and proportionality. Where you draw the line is complicated. If you look at what the allies did in WWII for instance, there are some decisions that are highly problematic (firebombing wooden Japanese cities or the RAF deliberately bombing German civilian populations) but there are also some decisions that I think were reasonable even with a very high civilian death toll (e.g. the US Eight Air Force conducting bombing raids on German industry with limited precision, leading to high civilian casualties). I think this specific incident was lawful. Hezbollah was the aggressor here, and it spent the war launching attacks that were far less justifiable than this one (much more limited targeting). I think this was a reasonable act of self-defense. That doesn't mean that I think that everything Israel did in the war was lawful.
- lo_zamoyski 10mo ago> "laws of war" What you want to appeal to are just war principles.
- zug_zug 10mo agoI don't know if it's "legal" or not and by who's laws, but it certainly seems like terrorism to me (i.e. intentionally creating a state of terror). I think if Lebanon found a clever way to assassinate the top 45 military commanders in Israel the same people who are defending this wouldn't be calling it a "Legal act of war".
- kyboren 10mo agoI think this was a brilliant operation and perfectly lawful. I also think that if Lebanon (not Hezbollah) were in a state of war with Israel, yes, that would (depending on proportionality and target discrimination) be perfectly legal, too.
- Zetaphor 10mo ago[flagged]
- kyboren 10mo agoThe most brilliant part about the civilian casualties from this operation is how many fewer of them there were than there would have been with any alternative means available to Israel.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- ignoramous 10mo ago> perfectly lawful Are you a lawyer / expert in conflicts? If not, curious how you arrived at this conclusion.
- kyboren 10mo agoNo, I am not a lawyer. Does that preclude my having an opinion on the value and legality of a military strike? Anyway it seems to me that it was: - highly discriminatory - only Hezbollah commanders received these devices - it's an essential piece of military C2 gear so you'd expect they would keep possession of them at all times - the explosive was small enough to mitigate any risk to bystanders - targeted at combatants - likely to achieve (and in fact did achieve) military effects at least proportional to any collateral damage Passes the smell test to me. Would you still have a bone to pick with my credentials if I said that I thought the Dresden firebombings were not brilliant and not perfectly legal? Or the same about US military strikes on suspected drug trafficking vessels?
- hearsathought 10mo ago> I actually consider the pager attack to be legal. If it was done to "israelis", I bet you'd be singing a different tune. Imagine if iran or saudi arabia or anyone else did this to "israelis", some whiny people would be calling it terrorism.
- SauntSolaire 10mo agoIf Hezbollah executed this same attack against the IDF it would also not be terrorism.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- aprentic 10mo agoLegal or not it makes me afraid of Israeli technology. I don't want to be part of their collateral damage.
- ThrowawayTestr 10mo ago[flagged]
- HappyPanacea 10mo ago[flagged]
- TiredOfLife 10mo agoDon't kill their citizens, don't launch rockets at them. Don't socialize with people that do.
- noitpmeder 10mo agoHow about we just stop socializing with Israel and its supporters while we're at it
- doka_smoka 10mo ago[dead]
- aprentic 10mo agoIsraeli technology doesn't know the motivations of the people holding it when they blow up.
- jmyeet 10mo agoIt's quite clearly a war crime. You're putting booby trapped devices into supply chains where civilians will foreseeably get them and be injured or killed by them. This includes medical professionals and their families, who were both victims [1]. It's the equivalent of blowing up a commercial plane or bus because there's a military commander on it. Or, you know, levelling a residential apartment building [2]. If anyone else had done this we'd (correctly) be calling it a terrorist attack. [1]: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/9/17/lebanons-terrible-year-from-exploding-pagers-to-israeli-occupation https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/9/17/lebanons-terrib... [2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/israel-says-it-struck-hezbollahs-headquarters-in-huge-explosion-that-shakes-lebanese-capital https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/israel-says-it-struck-hez...
- ThrowawayTestr 10mo agoIt's quite clearly not. Only Hezbollah agents had the pagers.
- rat87 10mo agoThe idea that it's a war crime is ridiculous. They specifically inserted it into the Hezbollah supply chain specifically Hezbollah internal use. They didn't just sell them at Lebanons markets they specifically sold the entire special order to Hezbollah directly. I think if any one other then Israel pulled it off a lot fewer people would be baselessly claiming it was a war crime
- sys32768 10mo agoWould you be here pushing the war crime narrative if Hamas had pulled off this operation on the IDF?
- viccis 10mo agoOf course not. The IDF aren't civilians. Hezbollah officials, unless they are part of its military sub-organization, are civilians. A better comparison would be if Hamas pulled off this operation against the members of the Knesset (or, even more comparable, against a specific party like Likud) while they were at home.
- cess11 10mo ago[flagged]
- hersko 10mo agoDo you know what the word "Indiscriminate" means?
- cess11 10mo agoYeah, that's when you plant a bomb in a device and then make it beep and subsequently explode even though you have no idea whether it's in someone's home and a kid might pick it up to bring to a parent or perhaps in a crowded civilian market where non-combatants might get hurt and so on. If the israelis weren't indiscriminate it would obviously make their actions in this case even worse, i.e. they somehow were looking at those kids being close to the explosives and still initiated the detonation sequence to draw their attention and hurt them. That's the position you'd take if you wanted to smear the israelis.
- SauntSolaire 10mo agoIt wasn't indiscriminate, is the main point. Almost exactly the opposite.
- cess11 10mo agoIf it wasn't indiscriminate, then they intentionally killed and maimed kids. It being indiscriminate would be the lesser evil out of these two options and it is unclear to me why you would prefer this interpretation of the events. My view is based on the technicalities as I found them reported in mass media and directly from individuals in Lebanon at the time, which gave me the impression that the israelis went ahead and detonated the gadgets at the time they did because they suspected that Hezbollah was onto them, and that they had basically no idea where exactly these devices were at the time. To me this explains why they were detonated at the same time and not 'surgically', as state terrorists like to put it. I can sympathise with the impulse to believe that the IDF is almost omniscient and able to organise a simultaneous attack against thousands of people individually, they sure want to promote such an image of themselves and put a lot of effort into doing so. But I don't believe it, in part because they have shown themselves to be quite unprofessional and sloppy, as well as lacking in strategic sophistication. Basically, I don't think they have enough disciplined personnel to pull something like that off, and instead they just broadcast a detonation signal to all the devices based on the suspicion that their operation might be revealed and countered.
- fortran77 10mo ago[flagged]
- amarcheschi 10mo agoMonitoring people for... Supporting opinions that don't agree with you?
- mdni007 10mo agoThere's a specific group of people that have this notion of thinking and I don't even need to explain further because most people will know who I am talking about
- abdelhousni 10mo ago[flagged]
- Qiu_Zhanxuan 10mo agoIt's not legal, the consensus among human rights organizations and UN experts is that it's a violation of international humanitarian law. But I guess the American urge to see middle eastern people suffer is alive and well.
- thrance 10mo agoIf this attack had been carried on US soil it would have been grounds enough to justify another pointless war in the Middle East. But since it was committed by Israel unto a random Arabic country most Americans would fail to place on the map, it's "probably legal". This is obviously terrorism. The methods are the same as terrorists, the intent is the same, the results are the same. 3000 wounded, this is extremely far from the "surgical precision" claimed by the fascist apartheid state of Israel.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- iberator 10mo agoFYI: Hezbollah is a legal political party in Lebanon. Such attacks are nothing but war crimes. Targeting civilians and harming/killing them without trial is illegal NO MATTER OF WHAT. All kinds of retaliation attacks are also illegal if harming civilians etc. This is not my opinion but global consensus for the past 80 years globally