Comment by pvaldes

Comment by pvaldes 2 days ago

21 replies

View on Hacker News

I assume that you, as a company, need a special permit to manufacture lethal weapons or military products on EU. Either you have it, or you don't. And if you don't have and still do it, I understand that you are breaking a dozen of EU laws.

The EU now needs to do something about it, and do it fast. Or to pretend that nothing happened, surrender to Israel, create a dangerous legal precedent "for the cause" and send a clear message that EU manufacture laws are a joke: "All those security filters painfully raised around EU products worth zero and can be easily jumped over". This is a really bad message for all the EU makers.

A franchise of your brand also signed a contract to make your product. I assume that changing the functionality or specifications of your registered product is strictly forbidden in that contract. I bet that this move violated some laws on Taiwan also.

If I was the CEO of Gold Apollo I would be fuming and furious at this moment.

Israel not only pushed them into the middle of a war that is not their war, without their consent or knowledge; also destroyed the brand image and painted a target in the backs of each employee and reseller of Gold Apollo.

At this moment, nothing suggests that the Taiwan based company were part of this. They should apologize, clear things, and detach themselves from this PR mess as soon as possible.

I understand that from the Mossad point of view this can be a big success, but from the point of view of the companies that try to sell their legit products, this is an direct attack.

prepend 2 days ago

> Israel not only pushed them into the middle of a war that is not their war, without their consent or knowledge;

Weren’t they already selling pagers to Hezbollah? It seems like they were already in the war as a supplier of goods to a terrorist organization.

I wonder if this is why Israel made this move because the manufacturer was already breaking international sanction by supplying Hezbollah so they have little recourse.

If I was the CEO of Gold Apollo, I’d be investigating why my franchisee was selling stuff to Hezbollah in the first place.

But it’s beepers and only 5,000. How expensive is this at the end of the day? It’s probably the last time a company lends then brand name for a small amount.

Reply View 15 replies
  • pvaldes 2 days ago

    > Weren’t [Gold Apollo] already selling pagers to Hezbollah?

    Selling pagers to Lebanon citizens is legal if I'm not wrong.

    Not necessarily. At this moment, all suggests that somebody (Ehem, Mossad) was impersonating a reseller of the brand [1]. How do they knew that the buyers were from Hezbollah?. Did the buyers wear a t-shirt?. What if somebody was buying it to resell it later and bank some profit?. This stuff could ended being sold to innocent people, or distributed by all the schools of Lebanon.

    [1] New facts can change this picture and I may be wrong about this.

    > If I was the CEO of Gold Apollo, I’d be investigating why my franchisee was selling stuff to Hezbollah in the first place.

    Agree. Definitely, the maker should make a move about that, just to be sure. And to be very transparent about that investigation.

    Reply View 5 replies
    • prepend 2 days ago

      > Selling pagers to Lebanon citizens is legal if I'm not wrong.

      This is true. But only the thousands of Hezbollah pagers blew up, right? There are a lot of details needed to see if they knowingly supplied Hezbollah or just sold a big batch to a random customer. I assumed, perhaps falsely, that a 5000 pager order for Lebanon is pretty specific and does anyone really use pagers any more? My thinking was that this is a specific tech used by Hezbollah. Although it is a consumer tech, maybe pagers are super popular in Lebanon. But 3000 people were injured so I thought that the vast majority of these pagers were used exclusively by Hezbollah.

      My point is their stuff was already in a war. Israel making them explode doesn’t seem to change that.

      Reply View 3 replies
      • FerretFred 2 days ago

        > only the thousands of Hezbollah pagers blew up, right?

        Hopefully! Just out of curiosity I had a look for that brand of pager on eBay, but didn't see any. I'd hate to think that there were a few rogue units out there that had potential to cause harm!

        Reply View 0 replies
    • analog31 2 days ago

      It may be legal but with little or no civilian demand due to preference for cell phones. The only person I know with a pager is an on call doctor.

      Reply View 0 replies
  • dqv 2 days ago

    > Weren’t they already selling pagers to Hezbollah?

    Apollo pagers are everywhere and sold through resellers through out the world, even in the US. Let’s not do Hasbara-style speculation

    Reply View 0 replies
  • mihaic 2 days ago

    > Weren’t they already selling pagers to Hezbollah?

    I don't have info about those specific models, but this is pagers and not rockets. If someone makes an order for 5000 units I can't image you'd have an expectation to do a background check with references.

    It's basically like ordering 5000 units of Raspberry Pi, would you consider that a military export?

    Reply View 5 replies
    • PepperdineG 2 days ago

      Raspberry Pis ending up in Russian weapons used in Ukraine is currently an issue actually, which it's illegal to export them to Russia.

      Reply View 0 replies
    • prepend 2 days ago

      For the US, at least, I am forced to confirm that those 5000 raspberry pis aren’t going to a terrorist organization. Isn’t the EU the same way? So it’s not that it’s a military export, but that it’s a sanctioned organization (Iran and Hezbollah).

      Reply View 2 replies
      • mihaic 2 days ago

        How are you realistically able to do this though? It's not like they can't order batches to some neutral-country intermediary and then ship them from there.

        Reply View 1 reply
        • fooker 2 days ago

          It's about assigning liability and making it more difficult, not a definitive solution.

          Reply View 0 replies
    • ryathal 2 days ago

      Communications equipment is commonly restricted for it's potential military use.

      Reply View 0 replies
  • aprilthird2021 5 hours ago

    Only the military wing of Hezbollah is considered a terrorist group by the EU, so a Hungarian company could legally sell them equipment provided it was to the political or social arms of the organization (how they determine this with an obviously fluid org like that I'll never know).

    Reply View 0 replies
dqv 2 days ago

This stunt is great for Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions folks though. Here in the US, many states require fealty to Israel in the form of promising you won’t boycott them if you want to do business with that state’s government. Now there’s an easy out: no one is boycotting Israel, they’re just avoiding the liability of Mossad intercepting and tampering with a shipment.

Reply View 2 replies
  • nebula8804 2 days ago

    Would that even hold up in court? Would be amazing at counteracting these unconstitutional laws. The biggest problem is that these laws are much easier to get passed then to get repealed. Because each repeal requires a long winded lawsuit that can sometime only get the law slightly altered.

    Reply View 1 reply
    • aprilthird2021 5 hours ago

      It would not hold up in court because the requirement to not boycott Israel is stronger for businesses than it is for individuals who want to contract with the state government.

      There is a federal Office of Anti boycott Compliance that any employee of any company can tip off and have the company punished if it's believed they did not give a fair shake to an Israeli supplier or bidder of any kind.

      Reply View 0 replies
ExoticPearTree a day ago

Well, pagers are not military products. And second, except for ordnance, you don't need any license to manufacture any product.

For products that can have dual-use capabilities, you need an export license that is given per customer (at least in the EU) where some due diligence is performed. If the company is a reseller in Lebanon and there are no export bans for that country, they can be sold/bought without an issue.

The fact that somewhere in transit they were modified, the manufacturer or seller cannot be held liable for it.

Reply View 0 replies
kranke155 2 days ago

They will fold. It’s Israel and Germany and France will push the EU to memory hole this.

Reply View 0 replies