Comment by dijit

Comment by dijit 2 days ago

No there wouldn't.

Don't be silly, 11 criminals dead and one bystander is well within limits of even a civilian police force, military ones are considered much more broad.

NATO sets the acceptable loss threshold at 4:1; for every 4 combatants killed, 1 civilian is considered acceptable.

It's very fluid, but you'll be hard pressed to find something more conservative than this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio

Yes, this is callous, and cold, and awful, but emotion has no place here, we're talking about people on both sides who feel like they are fighting for their right to exist. This is quite literally war, and there will be casualties.

Truth be told, while I'm not giddy and children dying, I'm glad we're talking about so few civilian casualties despite causing so much damage to Hezbollah operatives and operations.

aguaviva 2 days ago

Don't be silly, 11 criminals dead and one bystander

You aren't even getting the military-civilian ratio for the first wave right. According to the Lebanese Health Ministry we have at least 6 civilians killed (including 4 healthcare workers and 2 children), so that's at most a 1:1 ratio, far less than the 4:1 rate that you cite as "acceptable". And this doesn't even touch on the vastly larger number of wounded (2,750 just for the first wave).

By all indications these devices were intended to maim even more so to kill -- and to do so a great scale. From Wikipedia:

  At least 12 people were killed after the first wave of attacks,[73][1][74] and more than 2,750 were wounded.[6][7] Civilians were also killed,[11][14][15] including four healthcare workers[75] and two children.[76]  It is not clear if only Hezbollah members were carrying the pagers.[20] Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said the vast majority of those being treated in emergency rooms were in civilian clothing and their Hezbollah affiliation was unclear.[77] He added the casualties included elderly people as well as young children.

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dijit 2 days ago

Interesting, at least 8 were confirmed as hezbollah by hezbollah earlier today[0]. The maths don’t work if they are telling the truth.
50% of 11 is a lot lower than 8.
I suspect that news outlets are picking and choosing “facts” based on their desired narrative already.
[0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd7xnelvpepo

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- aguaviva 2 days ago
  
  Interesting, it seems there's a conflict between what the Lebanese Health Ministry said, and what Hezbollah said (as of yesterday) -- and you're choosing to go with Hezbollah's numbers.
  It does seem that the reports are still coming in, and are in the process of being evaluated and fact-checked. I chose to go by WP because in most cases at least attempts to reconcile between different sources, though it's far from 100 percent accurate about anything.
  Hopefully we'll have better numbers within the coming week or so.
  
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