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Twelve civilians killed and 4,000 injured does not indicate a precise attack. There is no credible figure for the number of combatants killed or injured. The T

by jackling 10mo ago

Twelve civilians killed and 4,000 injured does not indicate a precise attack. There is no credible figure for the number of combatants killed or injured. The Times of Israel reported that 1,500 fighters were injured. Taking these two data points together, a majority of those injured were civilians rather than combatants. Where are you getting the claim that this was “probably the most precisely targeted large-scale military strike of the last 100 years”? That is a far-reaching assertion, especially given the lack of sources. You say this is not a value judgment but a descriptive claim, yet the claim does not appear to be backed by facts. (The 4000 figure) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device... (The 1500 figure) https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-year-on-some-lebanese-bystanders-hurt-in-israels-pager-attack-still-recovering/?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-year-on-some-lebanese-bystan... (General HRW source) https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/18/lebanon-exploding-pagers-harmed-hezbollah-civilians?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/18/lebanon-exploding-pagers...

tptacek 10mo ago
Right, if in fact 1500 Hezbollah fighters were injured, any claim that over 1500 noncombatants were injured is suspicious. We have video footage of the explosions (along with a directional sense of the wounded vs. KIA count of the strike). It is not plausible that more noncombatants were injured than combatants, given the pagers were strictly military comms devices.
- jackling 10mo ago
  Both the 1500 and 4000 number were confirmed by Lebanon, and no reputable watch organization has credibly disputed them, you're not citing evidence just conjecture on how you believe everything went down due to a relative small bits of information. > along with a directional sense of the wounded vs. KIA count of the strike I am not sure what this means. To add, you're making it impossible to argue anything against your claim. We're discussing how the pagers hurt civilians and if they were properly targetting combatants. You're saying no matter what, since you know the pager was targetting combatants, the evidence that civilians were hurt must be false. Your logic circular.
  - tptacek 10mo ago
    No, it isn't. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46227021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46227021 (If you want to reply to that argument, can I ask that you do it on that leg of the thread, just to keep the thread simpler? Thanks!)
  - juliusdavies 10mo ago
    Do you want some deeply studied anthropological journal article on “The use of pagers in Lebanese society “? Do you know of any civilians anywhere in the world that currently use pagers? Who had the pagers and why they had the pagers is almost derivable from first principles at this point, never mind the international journalism on the subject.
    - tptacek 10mo ago
      I'm not deriving who had the pagers from first principles. They were military pagers, on a military network that Hezbollah fought an actual civil war to establish and maintain, with subverted devices that Hezbollah itself acquired directly. There's a lot of reporting on this. Israel did not booby trap the whole supply of pagers into Lebanon. The Hezbollah combatants carrying these pagers did not acquire them at a Beirut Cellular Retail Outlet. Another way to say this is that if you have evidence/reporting suggesting that Israel did in fact set explosives in pagers that were broadly available to Lebanese civilians, my argument falls apart. I think Hezbollah is inexcusably evil, far worse than Israel is, but I'm not particularly interested in defending Israeli governance; I have no commitment to the proposition that Israel doesn't commit atrocities (in fact, I think they commit rather many of them). So I'm fine with my argument collapsing; I'm just waiting for evidence to topple it. The trouble the preceding commenter is having with me is that I can't find a story that squares the circle of the numbers they're trying to present.
    - jackling 10mo ago
      It’s almost like explosives… explode, and hit the people and surroundings near them. Shrapnel travels. You’re trying to derive who had the pagers from first principles, yet you don’t seem to understand how a bomb actually works.

tptacek 10mo ago

Right, if in fact 1500 Hezbollah fighters were injured, any claim that over 1500 noncombatants were injured is suspicious. We have video footage of the explosions (along with a directional sense of the wounded vs. KIA count of the strike). It is not plausible that more noncombatants were injured than combatants, given the pagers were strictly military comms devices.

jackling 10mo ago
Both the 1500 and 4000 number were confirmed by Lebanon, and no reputable watch organization has credibly disputed them, you're not citing evidence just conjecture on how you believe everything went down due to a relative small bits of information. > along with a directional sense of the wounded vs. KIA count of the strike I am not sure what this means. To add, you're making it impossible to argue anything against your claim. We're discussing how the pagers hurt civilians and if they were properly targetting combatants. You're saying no matter what, since you know the pager was targetting combatants, the evidence that civilians were hurt must be false. Your logic circular.
- tptacek 10mo ago
  No, it isn't. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46227021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46227021 (If you want to reply to that argument, can I ask that you do it on that leg of the thread, just to keep the thread simpler? Thanks!)
- juliusdavies 10mo ago
  Do you want some deeply studied anthropological journal article on “The use of pagers in Lebanese society “? Do you know of any civilians anywhere in the world that currently use pagers? Who had the pagers and why they had the pagers is almost derivable from first principles at this point, never mind the international journalism on the subject.
  - tptacek 10mo ago
    I'm not deriving who had the pagers from first principles. They were military pagers, on a military network that Hezbollah fought an actual civil war to establish and maintain, with subverted devices that Hezbollah itself acquired directly. There's a lot of reporting on this. Israel did not booby trap the whole supply of pagers into Lebanon. The Hezbollah combatants carrying these pagers did not acquire them at a Beirut Cellular Retail Outlet. Another way to say this is that if you have evidence/reporting suggesting that Israel did in fact set explosives in pagers that were broadly available to Lebanese civilians, my argument falls apart. I think Hezbollah is inexcusably evil, far worse than Israel is, but I'm not particularly interested in defending Israeli governance; I have no commitment to the proposition that Israel doesn't commit atrocities (in fact, I think they commit rather many of them). So I'm fine with my argument collapsing; I'm just waiting for evidence to topple it. The trouble the preceding commenter is having with me is that I can't find a story that squares the circle of the numbers they're trying to present.
  - jackling 10mo ago
    It’s almost like explosives… explode, and hit the people and surroundings near them. Shrapnel travels. You’re trying to derive who had the pagers from first principles, yet you don’t seem to understand how a bomb actually works.