Comment by tptacek
Comment by tptacek 2 days ago
These aren't civilian devices.
Comment by tptacek 2 days ago
These aren't civilian devices.
And neither are against the laws of war. The US has decided to reduce their usage, but Russia uses air deployed landmines with high dud rates and it is not a war crime.
this was a special shipment created for the terrorists. this isn't just putting a bomb into every pager.
>this isn't just putting a bomb into every pager.
I never claimed otherwise. Again, the claim isn't that innocent people are carrying the pagers, is that the pagers are around innocent civilians. It's not any different than drone striking terrorists at weddings[1], which also drew criticism from human rights groups. Even if we assume the targets are definitely terrorists, that doesn't solve the issue of civilians who happen to be nearby.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wech_Baghtu_wedding_party_airs...
Any kids killed were accidental as opposed to the Hezbollah rockets shot at northern Israel. When those rockets killed 12 kids playing soccer those deaths were intentional.
what alternatives would you propose?
1. heznobollas stop firing rockets into Israel?
2. Israel sending smart bombs with much higher collateral damage?
3. an engraved invitation later to members (hehe) of heznobollas to come and be fired upon in an open space to avoid kids?
4. or are you suggesting instead that Jews should just get used to getting fired upon and let their cities be destroyed because you don't care about Jewish kids getting killed?
anything I've missed?
How do you know this? you can't know it. You have no idea how many people had these devices.
it was a shipment of pagers paid for by heznobollas to communicate because they thought mossad was able to listen and track everything else. it was never a general Lebanese market pager that happens to be used by heznobollas occasionally. they bought in bulk and handed them out to their soldiers.
During wartime? Yes.
Technically that would be a targeted attack, and if “somebody” were able to pull that off it would be an absolutely massive win for that “somebody.”
I wouldn’t like it, but I certainly could not call that terrorism, as it explicitly targeted militants.
> So if somebody turned the phones of all members of X army (say IDF) into bombs, and exploded them at mass when a lot of them would be off duty with their families, would that be ok?
Yes. Because it would be an attack targeting active military personnel during a time of war, even if they happen to be around non-combatants at the time.
That doesn't seem correct. Israel's enemies are not justified for attacking Israel even if the majority of their "citizens" are military reservists during wartime. If we want to play the non-combatant tally game, then a strike on Israel becomes deeply justified as an attack on an entrenched dual-purpose position.
...but that's ridiculous, and we should apply the same standards of morality to our enemy even when they refuse to cooperate. Lebanon is not and cannot be treated as a zone including nothing but combatants, and neither can Israel. By crossing the line of terrorism (make no mistake: they were aware of the threat to civilians), Israel is further damaging international support and again blurring the lines between the IDF and their enemies. The UN just convened to tell Israel to renounce their occupied territories in the next year - the days of "lawn-mowing" civilian infrastructure without criticism have passed.
If we keep seeing the Dahiya doctrine and Hannibal directive proliferate, there will be no way for a morally defensible US administration to support IDF operations.
The claim isn't that they're "civilian devices", it's that they're "devices all over civilian society". That's relevant because bobby trapping them is liable to cause casualties.