Comment by BjoernKW

> Conducting a military operation that has a fully predictable rate of civilian casualties is morally equivalent to targeting those civilians.

By that logic only the absolute number of (expected) civilian deaths matters... which can't be right.

If it were true, then exploding a city bus (1 soldier, 10 civilians) would be more moral than striking a military base (1,000 soldiers, 11 civilians.)

It would also suggest a kind of blame-shifting if one side decides to install their missile launchers in the playgrounds of elementary schools or whatever.

> you are fully aware will result in significant collateral damage.

and the terrorists deliberately place themselves in a position where attacks on them results in massive collateral - aka, they want a human shield.

For these people, there will never be an attack good enough, targeted enough, or proper enough

It's because they're not motivated by fairness but a pre existing idea of who is good or bad

> no bystanders hurt

This is incorrect. There are reports of maimed civilians and a murdered child.

There is no comprehensive information yet on the ratio of civilians to militants maimed by this attack, and any claims otherwise are propaganda.

A 9 year old child was killed, proving this attack wasn't as targeted as you think. However Israel is happy to accept any amount of collateral damage as long as it doesn't happen to them.

Whatever words you're reading when you look at mine might be incredible, what I wrote is almost 3000 wounded in the crossfire, including children.

You're ignoring that and pretending they're accused of something else. Why?

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Found it: multiple reports say 5,000 pagers

It was in public, and there are videos of the public explosions. There are videos of hospitals with many doctors laying around bloodied.

Poking holes in the fuselage of a jetliner isn't going to take down a plane. Consider the cases of a turbine fan blade taking out a window, the case where the MAX door panel blew off, the cases where the cargo door came off, and the 737 "convertible" case. You'd have to take out a large part of the structure to bring it down.

Take a look at all the photos of B-17s taking severe combat damage yet returning home. Jetliners are a lot more redundant today than the B-17s were.

However, if the hole took out the flight controls, or set a fire, then the airplane has a big problem.

What about the person sitting next to the target?

> I’m not even sure that explosion would take out a plane

I take it you would have no problem being on a plane with one (or even multiple) of these pagers going off then? What kind of argument is this?

Hamas terrorists boarding commercial airplanes? With their secret pagers on them?

Somehow I don't think so.

My understanding is that pagers are typically radio Rx-only, and that it is not possible to track their location like a cellular device -- which is likely why Hezbollah chose to use them.

Though it would be possible to add this ability when the hardware was intercepted, a transmitting device is also easy to detect.

From what I can find, the targeted pager-model can receive UHF messages in the 450~470MHz range. That could reach passenger jet cruise altitudes if the transmitter is strong enough.

I think it's safest to assume Hezbollah are using strong transmitters, because they'll want to be able to broadcast across rather large areas and in a way that resists potential jamming.

On the flip side, I'm having a hard time imagining these as threats to an entire airplane, given the tight constraints on how much explosive power can be secretly snuck into a functioning pager.

Pagers don’t “connect” to networks.

They may have discriminated carefully on which devices were modified, but any care or intelligence ends there.

When they triggered the bombs, they can’t have known who or what was in the blast radius. Video shows one going off in a produce market. The fact that those variables are uncontrolled make it indiscriminate, by definition.

>After all, people usually don't hand their phones to random strangers or leave them lying around - and those pagers aren't even mere personal devices used for private purposes

And even compared to a phone, the limited functionality of a pager means the owner isn't going to hand it to a friend to show them a funny video or sports highlight, or to a kid to let them play games on it.

> You absolutely can. It's highly likely to be in the targeted person's pocket.

This seems intentionally avoiding the point. Duh, it's a pager. The real question is can the person donating the explosive tell if the pocket is completely isolated from innocents or if it's standing in a crowded line sitting very near to a childs head.

I do believe that Israel _tried_ to discriminate but its an explosive, you can only aim those to a point. Israel wasn't deliberately trying to kill children/harm innocents, Isreal did knowingly engage in a set of actions where it was possible outcome.

I want to be clear i am not trying to choose a side. These are actions of war in the 21st century.

> After all, people usually don't hand their phones to random strangers or leave them lying around - and those pagers aren't even mere personal devices used for private purposes. Why would any of those devices end up anywhere else but the pocket of the person using it?

I leave my phone all the time, my kids are actually playing games on it. Also, I can be on public transportation, I can be driving, near a flammable object, or boarding a plane. As demonstrated an 8-year-old girl died, it's enough proof that an innocent died.