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The intended targets of the exploding papers weren't civilians. Very few actual civilians ended up hurt by the detonations, much fewer than attacks by conventio

by bunji 10mo ago

The 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 ago
People 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?
  - shykes 10mo ago
    I vouched for your post because your question is legitimate and asked in an appropriate manner; there is no good reason to flag it. The answer to your question is yes: the "4,000 civilians wounded" figure is attributed to Mustafa Bairam, a high-ranking Hezbollah member. I have not seem any corroborating sources. As far as I can tell every mention of that number, including Wikipedia, traces back to him. Obviously this is a highly biased source that should not be trusted blindly.
- dralley 10mo ago
  "The reports" are that 12 were killed total, not that 12 civilians were killed. Only 2 of the killed were civilians as far as I can tell. Several of those who people on Twitter tried to claim were civilians, including a doctor, were admitted by Hezbollah to be Hezbollah members and given Hezbollah funerals. I've never heard of "42 targets", and given 12 people died total, obviously 42 targets were not killed. You should provide some sourcing for your numbers.
  - ada1981 10mo ago
    Incorrect. The reports are 42 total killed, 12 civilians including 2 children. "Operation Grim Beeper" (seriously) on Wikipedia cites these numbers from Lebanese government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device...
    - dralley 10mo ago
      Fair enough, 12 total only includes the original pager attack, not the subsequent radio one. However, you seem to have made the same mistake. 42 people were killed total, but that does not mean that there were 42 targets. In any case, if Hezbollah themselves admit that 1500 of their fighters were injured by the attack (according to your own source), it seems extremely dishonest to claim that all 4000 were civilians or that there were only 42 targets.
      - ada1981 10mo ago
        I didn't say 42 targets. Per the report: 42 dead, 12 of which were civilians. It follows that 30 were considered Hezbollah.
        ada1981 10mo ago
        The report is 4,000 civilians injured (which means they just didn't die -- people lost fingers, limbs, eyes, etc.) Presumably if you have thousands of Hezbola people walking around within their homes, businesses, hopistals, shops, etc. it makes sense you'd have many civilian injuries when these went off. There wasn't a geo fence around them and if someone was in an NICU or preschool the explosions were indiscriminate. So while there was some element of precision in placement of who had these pagers, there was zero awareness (by design) to where they actually were when they all exploded.
- ada1981 10mo ago
  For the IDF, a 28.6% civilian death rate is actually quite good. Their own classified data reveals an 83% civilian casualty rate in Gaza—nearly three times worse. The Lebanon pager attack: 12 civilians (including 2 children) killed out of 42 total deaths (28.6% civilian casualty rate). Gaza genocide: Leaked IDF intelligence documents show 8,900 militants killed out of 53,000 total deaths as of May 2025 (83% civilian casualty rate).
  - breppp 10mo ago
    According to Hezbollah sources 1500 of their terrorists were taken out of commission due to this attack. Making the death ratio 42/1500 or 3% while if only taking the civilian ratio that's even lower. Even the 12 civilian count is probably higher than reality because it is doubtful that 12 civilians had access to a military clandestine communication device https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hezbollahs-tunnels-flexible-command-weather-israels-deadly-blows-2024-09-25/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hezbollahs-tunnels... Regarding the leaked IDF document this was leaked to a minor blog yet cannot be seen anywhere. But let's entertain it as real, these are 8000 named Hamas terrorists known for certain by one intelligence unit in the IDF to be dead. This only means the minimum amount of Hamas terrorists, this doesn't take into account the other armed groups in Gaza that had a prewar strength of 10,000s of terrorists or the Hamas members who are only known by uncertain intelligence to have been killed. Taking that number and reducing it from the Hamas published death count (an organization that kidnapped babies for political goals, but is incapable of lying, and was caught faking death counts before) to get the civilian death count is very unscientific to be extremely mild
    - ignoramous 10mo ago
      [flagged]
    - guelo 10mo ago
      [flagged]
      - breppp 10mo ago
- fabian2k 10mo ago
  The numbers you state are from the Lebanese government and Hizbollah. So I don't think we can assume they are accurate. I don't have any better numbers, though. You specific argument though misuses even those numbers. 42 is the number of people actually killed. I couldn't figure out how many were targeted (how many pagers did explode), but I'd assume the number could be much higher than the number of deaths. Without that number we cannot determine how well targeted this was. I also don't think it is plausible that for every target you injure 100 bystanders. So I would assume the number of targets was at least an order of magnitude higher. There's also another number from Hizbollah, that 1500 of their people were injured. But no idea it those would be included in the 4000 wounded number.
- worldsavior 10mo ago
  > in order to kill 42 targets. This is not correct. Each one that had this pager was connected to Hezbollah, i.e. a soldier of Hezbollah. This attack was meant to "disable" a very big portion of Hezbollah, which it did (4000 of them). This is one of the most sophisticated attacks to avoid civilian casualty.
  - j_maffe 10mo ago
    > This is one of the most sophisticated attacks to avoid civilian casualty. 127 civilians Lebanese civilians killed since the ceasefire by the party you claim is avoiding civilian casualties, btw. very careful bunch
- sixstringninja 10mo ago
  source?
sp4cec0wb0y 10mo ago
You're telling me that the 2,800 injured were mostly Hezbollah operatives? Was this sourced and verified anywhere? What is the rate of combatant to non-combatant casualties is this instance compared to "conventional weapons"?
- kyboren 10mo ago
  These pagers weren't purchased in stores by civilians. You see, Hezbollah had a problem: Their phone network was totally compromised. Israel was using operatives' phones as tracking beacons. So Hezbollah purchased a few thousand pagers through specialty channels (which we now know had been compromised by Israel) to distribute to their commanders. They believed this would improve their security, because unlike the two-way radios in cell phones, pagers use a one-way broadcast radio, and there is no need to know or report the pager radio's location. Given this context: A limited number of specialty electronics, acquired and distributed by Hezbollah as a means of military command and control, and subsequent to this operation Hezbollah's C2 was demonstrably neutered--you believe that the majority of injuries were innocent civilians? Basic logic indicates that the vast majority of those killed and injured were, in fact, nodes in Hezbollah's command and control structure.
- ada1981 10mo ago
  The IDF is only able to kill 17 people they classify as "Hamas" for every 100 people they kill in Gaza (per their own internal reports). They have a self assessed 83% civilian kill rate.
  - rat87 10mo ago
    Most sides in most wars aren't expected to classify every person they killed. Identifying certain people as Hamas(and they could be wrong about some of them) doesn't mean that every single other person is not a member of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or other millitant
  - breppp 10mo ago
    [flagged]
orwin 10mo ago
The issue is using civil infrastructure as weapon, that could arguably be an act of terror. As pagers are rarely used in non-criminal settings, i guess this is somewhat okay in my opinion, but the callousness and overall reactions (proudness, smugness) of israelis and most of the west on this near-terror attack is in my opinion another proof of a lack of empathy that is starting to be pervasive in our societies. I know people talk about the "entitlement epidemic", but entitlement is just another name from narcissism, in essence a lack of empathy. Which seems to be more and more socially acceptable and even rewarded (with internet points mostly), like your comment show (i'm not jumping on you, you are tamer than many, so i think it's a better exemple for my point than more violent ones). And since that's the example we show our kids today, i'm now officially more worried about our society ability to handle social media than climate change.
- rat87 10mo ago
  Pagers are used by more then just criminals(see doctors) and targeting random criminals as opposed to millitants wouldn't be justifiable. But these particular pager that were wired up were specifically intended only for Hezbollah internal use and were sold to Hezbollah by Israel through a third party front.
zeofig 10mo ago
Yes, since conveniently the attacker also gets to define who is a civilian.
- baskin31 10mo ago
  When one quotes Health Ministry for numbers of casualties and deaths, that is relying on HAMAS for information. To knowingly use sources that have demonstratbly be shown to be false, inaccurate, or misleading makes one also unreliable.
  - zeofig 10mo ago
    HAMAS? We're talking about an attack in Lebanon my friend, not Palestine.
viccis 10mo ago
Did it only focus on Hezbollah military officials? Hezbollah is a political party. This is like package bombing US congressmen, Presidential cabinet members, etc. Which would be considered a terrorist attack obviously (and was when Israel sent our politicians, including our President, mailbombs shortly after WW2)
- baskin31 10mo ago
  Does a political party shoot missiles over international borders and stockpile arms?
- tptacek 10mo ago
  It's technically and sort of a political party. It's also an occupying military force in Lebanon; it is foremost an instrument of the IRGC. It's useful to understand that Hezbollah is Shia-supremacist organization, and Shia muslims constitute a minority of the Lebanese population.
  - viccis 10mo ago
    That doesn't really distinguish it from Israel's government. s/Lebanon/Palestine/g, s/IRGC/USA/g, and s/Shia/Jewish/g
    - tptacek 10mo ago
      I don't agree, but we don't have to agree on this point to recognize the illegitimacy and coerciveness of Hezbollah and the IRGC. Even factoring Israel's most recent strikes in, the largest military losses Hezbollah has incurred in the last 10 years weren't with Israel, but rather in Syria, on behalf of the Assad regime, a client of the IRGC's, where Hezbollah (and the Lebanese security forces Hezbollah dragooned into the conflict) gleefully targeted civilian populations.

by bunji 10mo ago

LarsDu88 10mo ago

People 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?
- shykes 10mo ago
  I vouched for your post because your question is legitimate and asked in an appropriate manner; there is no good reason to flag it. The answer to your question is yes: the "4,000 civilians wounded" figure is attributed to Mustafa Bairam, a high-ranking Hezbollah member. I have not seem any corroborating sources. As far as I can tell every mention of that number, including Wikipedia, traces back to him. Obviously this is a highly biased source that should not be trusted blindly.
dralley 10mo ago
"The reports" are that 12 were killed total, not that 12 civilians were killed. Only 2 of the killed were civilians as far as I can tell. Several of those who people on Twitter tried to claim were civilians, including a doctor, were admitted by Hezbollah to be Hezbollah members and given Hezbollah funerals. I've never heard of "42 targets", and given 12 people died total, obviously 42 targets were not killed. You should provide some sourcing for your numbers.
- ada1981 10mo ago
  Incorrect. The reports are 42 total killed, 12 civilians including 2 children. "Operation Grim Beeper" (seriously) on Wikipedia cites these numbers from Lebanese government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device...
  - dralley 10mo ago
    Fair enough, 12 total only includes the original pager attack, not the subsequent radio one. However, you seem to have made the same mistake. 42 people were killed total, but that does not mean that there were 42 targets. In any case, if Hezbollah themselves admit that 1500 of their fighters were injured by the attack (according to your own source), it seems extremely dishonest to claim that all 4000 were civilians or that there were only 42 targets.
    - ada1981 10mo ago
      I didn't say 42 targets. Per the report: 42 dead, 12 of which were civilians. It follows that 30 were considered Hezbollah.
      - ada1981 10mo ago
        The report is 4,000 civilians injured (which means they just didn't die -- people lost fingers, limbs, eyes, etc.) Presumably if you have thousands of Hezbola people walking around within their homes, businesses, hopistals, shops, etc. it makes sense you'd have many civilian injuries when these went off. There wasn't a geo fence around them and if someone was in an NICU or preschool the explosions were indiscriminate. So while there was some element of precision in placement of who had these pagers, there was zero awareness (by design) to where they actually were when they all exploded.
ada1981 10mo ago
For the IDF, a 28.6% civilian death rate is actually quite good. Their own classified data reveals an 83% civilian casualty rate in Gaza—nearly three times worse. The Lebanon pager attack: 12 civilians (including 2 children) killed out of 42 total deaths (28.6% civilian casualty rate). Gaza genocide: Leaked IDF intelligence documents show 8,900 militants killed out of 53,000 total deaths as of May 2025 (83% civilian casualty rate).
- breppp 10mo ago
  According to Hezbollah sources 1500 of their terrorists were taken out of commission due to this attack. Making the death ratio 42/1500 or 3% while if only taking the civilian ratio that's even lower. Even the 12 civilian count is probably higher than reality because it is doubtful that 12 civilians had access to a military clandestine communication device https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hezbollahs-tunnels-flexible-command-weather-israels-deadly-blows-2024-09-25/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hezbollahs-tunnels... Regarding the leaked IDF document this was leaked to a minor blog yet cannot be seen anywhere. But let's entertain it as real, these are 8000 named Hamas terrorists known for certain by one intelligence unit in the IDF to be dead. This only means the minimum amount of Hamas terrorists, this doesn't take into account the other armed groups in Gaza that had a prewar strength of 10,000s of terrorists or the Hamas members who are only known by uncertain intelligence to have been killed. Taking that number and reducing it from the Hamas published death count (an organization that kidnapped babies for political goals, but is incapable of lying, and was caught faking death counts before) to get the civilian death count is very unscientific to be extremely mild
  - ignoramous 10mo ago
    [flagged]
  - guelo 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    - breppp 10mo ago
fabian2k 10mo ago
The numbers you state are from the Lebanese government and Hizbollah. So I don't think we can assume they are accurate. I don't have any better numbers, though. You specific argument though misuses even those numbers. 42 is the number of people actually killed. I couldn't figure out how many were targeted (how many pagers did explode), but I'd assume the number could be much higher than the number of deaths. Without that number we cannot determine how well targeted this was. I also don't think it is plausible that for every target you injure 100 bystanders. So I would assume the number of targets was at least an order of magnitude higher. There's also another number from Hizbollah, that 1500 of their people were injured. But no idea it those would be included in the 4000 wounded number.
worldsavior 10mo ago
> in order to kill 42 targets. This is not correct. Each one that had this pager was connected to Hezbollah, i.e. a soldier of Hezbollah. This attack was meant to "disable" a very big portion of Hezbollah, which it did (4000 of them). This is one of the most sophisticated attacks to avoid civilian casualty.
- j_maffe 10mo ago
  > This is one of the most sophisticated attacks to avoid civilian casualty. 127 civilians Lebanese civilians killed since the ceasefire by the party you claim is avoiding civilian casualties, btw. very careful bunch
sixstringninja 10mo ago
source?

sp4cec0wb0y 10mo ago

You're telling me that the 2,800 injured were mostly Hezbollah operatives? Was this sourced and verified anywhere? What is the rate of combatant to non-combatant casualties is this instance compared to "conventional weapons"?

kyboren 10mo ago
These pagers weren't purchased in stores by civilians. You see, Hezbollah had a problem: Their phone network was totally compromised. Israel was using operatives' phones as tracking beacons. So Hezbollah purchased a few thousand pagers through specialty channels (which we now know had been compromised by Israel) to distribute to their commanders. They believed this would improve their security, because unlike the two-way radios in cell phones, pagers use a one-way broadcast radio, and there is no need to know or report the pager radio's location. Given this context: A limited number of specialty electronics, acquired and distributed by Hezbollah as a means of military command and control, and subsequent to this operation Hezbollah's C2 was demonstrably neutered--you believe that the majority of injuries were innocent civilians? Basic logic indicates that the vast majority of those killed and injured were, in fact, nodes in Hezbollah's command and control structure.
ada1981 10mo ago
The IDF is only able to kill 17 people they classify as "Hamas" for every 100 people they kill in Gaza (per their own internal reports). They have a self assessed 83% civilian kill rate.
- rat87 10mo ago
  Most sides in most wars aren't expected to classify every person they killed. Identifying certain people as Hamas(and they could be wrong about some of them) doesn't mean that every single other person is not a member of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or other millitant
- breppp 10mo ago
  [flagged]

orwin 10mo ago

The issue is using civil infrastructure as weapon, that could arguably be an act of terror. As pagers are rarely used in non-criminal settings, i guess this is somewhat okay in my opinion, but the callousness and overall reactions (proudness, smugness) of israelis and most of the west on this near-terror attack is in my opinion another proof of a lack of empathy that is starting to be pervasive in our societies. I know people talk about the "entitlement epidemic", but entitlement is just another name from narcissism, in essence a lack of empathy. Which seems to be more and more socially acceptable and even rewarded (with internet points mostly), like your comment show (i'm not jumping on you, you are tamer than many, so i think it's a better exemple for my point than more violent ones). And since that's the example we show our kids today, i'm now officially more worried about our society ability to handle social media than climate change.

rat87 10mo ago
Pagers are used by more then just criminals(see doctors) and targeting random criminals as opposed to millitants wouldn't be justifiable. But these particular pager that were wired up were specifically intended only for Hezbollah internal use and were sold to Hezbollah by Israel through a third party front.

zeofig 10mo ago

Yes, since conveniently the attacker also gets to define who is a civilian.

baskin31 10mo ago
When one quotes Health Ministry for numbers of casualties and deaths, that is relying on HAMAS for information. To knowingly use sources that have demonstratbly be shown to be false, inaccurate, or misleading makes one also unreliable.
- zeofig 10mo ago
  HAMAS? We're talking about an attack in Lebanon my friend, not Palestine.

viccis 10mo ago

Did it only focus on Hezbollah military officials? Hezbollah is a political party. This is like package bombing US congressmen, Presidential cabinet members, etc. Which would be considered a terrorist attack obviously (and was when Israel sent our politicians, including our President, mailbombs shortly after WW2)

baskin31 10mo ago
Does a political party shoot missiles over international borders and stockpile arms?
tptacek 10mo ago
It's technically and sort of a political party. It's also an occupying military force in Lebanon; it is foremost an instrument of the IRGC. It's useful to understand that Hezbollah is Shia-supremacist organization, and Shia muslims constitute a minority of the Lebanese population.
- viccis 10mo ago
  That doesn't really distinguish it from Israel's government. s/Lebanon/Palestine/g, s/IRGC/USA/g, and s/Shia/Jewish/g
  - tptacek 10mo ago
    I don't agree, but we don't have to agree on this point to recognize the illegitimacy and coerciveness of Hezbollah and the IRGC. Even factoring Israel's most recent strikes in, the largest military losses Hezbollah has incurred in the last 10 years weren't with Israel, but rather in Syria, on behalf of the Assad regime, a client of the IRGC's, where Hezbollah (and the Lebanese security forces Hezbollah dragooned into the conflict) gleefully targeted civilian populations.