Comment by runarberg

The assumption here—at least from my part—is that this pager attack was an illegitimate state sponsored terrorist attack and deserves to be condemned as such. That statements such as “war is brutal” does not apply here as even war has rules for conduct, and even in wars the innocent deserve to be protected from harm. And war does not excuse terrorist acts.

In most wars, war crimes are committed. When war crimes are committed they need to be condemned, and prosecuted, not excused and repeated.

> Why are senior administrators at hospitals and media workers carrying military command and control equipment?

These are pagers, and cheap once at that, I don’t know if you have ever been a part of any activist organization, but it is pretty standard to assume you are a target of state level intelligence, and that state actors (most likely the police) is spying on you. Any activist would know to try to protect them selves and their organization by minimizing opportunities of breaches. This extends to lower level participants, who are unlikely to actually confront the police or cause any civil disruptions, but participate in other ways.

I assume Hezbollah would take similar measure. That higher level members at non-military institutions still see the need to protect them selves—and their organization—from infiltration. At the very least, it is criminally negligent of Israel to assume that they don’t, and still detonate when there is some probability the innocent will be harmed.