Comment by ivan_gammel 10 months ago
It doesn’t look very surgical to me given the civilian casualties and general disregard of what can happen to innocent people. If anything this looks more like a state-sponsored terrorist attack than covert ops with collateral damage.
I'm not so sure. It certainly shook Hezbollah and no doubt some of the dead or seriously injured held sufficiently important jobs within the organization to cause problems.
On the other hand you now have a few thousand people who suffered unpleasant but not debilitating injuries who are now sadder, wiser, and very very pissed off. My impression is that many of those attacked could have been middle managers or mid-ranking officers. They're now veterans of a traumatizing national event, which will probably increase Hezbollah's standing among the general populace.
(The notion of Hezbollah as a mob of ak-47 wielding foot soldiers is a stereotype from movies and TV that seems to have taken root among many HN readers.)
I see it a bit differently, or at least I see a different possibility. Most of the injured were pager-owning Hezbollah members who were already pissed off in a way that has religious & ideological foundations unlikely to be changed regardless of events. The general populace might go either way, angry at the attack and/or angry at the Hezbollah members for attacking a much more powerful enemy and bringing the violence into their community.
I don't want to go on a pdf hunt for the one perfect paper now, but years of social science and historical reading inclines me to believe that external attacks almost always unify rather than divide a population.
Consider how Gaza has been pounded mercilessly for most of a year now, with the burden falling mainly on civilians, but they're not turning on Hamas.
Good point, but I'm also not sure it will cause a significant shift in positive support beyond anything already seen. Other commenters here have said 50,000+ rockets/missiles have been launch by Israel so far in this conflict. Those are much more damaging so I'm not sure support will increase base on this.
Hezbollah does exist to attack Israel, why would it matter that they are "pissed off"?
It is a militia. Sure, they also now formed a political party, but that doesn't really hide what their goals are.
I'm not saying it could have been worse. I'm saying it has been worse and usually is worse.
Otherwise:
1) UN Resolution: Done
2) Camp-David (or other such): Hezbollah has repeatedly refused to engage in any negotiations.
3) Something New: Okay, but until a never-before-seen peace genius comes up with that, and given the ineffectiveness of #1 and #2, we're left with the status quo where less bad options are the awful best to be hoped for.
> UN Resolution: Done
Well, not exactly. The recent actions of Hezbollah are connected to Palestinian cause. If Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved, what does it leave to Hezbollah? It may not collapse, but Palestine becomes a major political factor. That’s the reason I mentioned Camp-David and „something new“. If statehood of Palestine is secured and adequate solution for refugees is offered, it will be the key to resolution of many conflicts in that region.
It is targeted, by definition. Every pager was owned by a Hezbollah member or was about to be. Same with the walkies.
That there was collateral damage is unfortunate, but Israel was definitely not indiscriminately targeting civilians, which is what would make it terrorism.
This was a surgical strike that happened to have some unfortunate collateral damage. Well within the accepted rules of war.
It was not unfortunate collateral damage in the sense of unknown unknown. Civilian casualties must have been anticipated and nothing has been done to prevent them. It is not „accepted“ rules of war, but normalized disregard of human life.
Once again: watch any of the videos. The vast majority of them involve anyone standing around the operative walking away just fine. This was a targeted attack.
Some civilians got hurt, but the intent was not to harm them, and that is the point.
While it seems few bystanders suffered physical injuries, it's naive imho to think that this won't cause enormously elevated fear among the population at large. 'Koolaid' is still synonymous with mass cult poisoning in the US even though that incident happened ~50 years ago in a different country. Everyone in Lebanon is having nightmares about random electronic devices turning out to be bombs, even though they know that's logically not the case. Just like people in New York feel differently about seeing airliners than they did before 9-11.
> Once again: watch any of the videos
What makes you think that I did not watch them? And why do you think a few videos circulating online are representative of a few thousands explosions?
> Some civilians got hurt, but the intent was not to harm them
What makes „some“ any different than a hundred or a million? How can you be certain of the intent if civilian casualties were/should have been anticipated?
Do you have an example of a weapon of war that is more surgical? I think this is the typical Israel criticism that is devoid of any realistic basic to be honest.
Please spend some time reading this whole thread to understand better my arguments. Your question is based on flawed logic and does not require an answer in context of what’s going on.
And very possibly in violation of the Geneva Convention's prohibition of "indiscriminate" attacks:
Rule 12. Indiscriminate attacks are those:
(a) which are not directed at a specific military objective;
(b) which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; or
(c) which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by international humanitarian law; and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.(a) Disrupt Hezbollah’s communications network and take out operatives.
(b) The pagers were specifically distributed to Hezbollah operatives, not civilians. It targeted, by definition, the owners of those pagers, supporting the military objective.
(c) It was limited, by definition. This contained tiny amount of explosives, focused very much on targeting the owner of the device, not “civilians or civilian objects without distinction” (from military objectives).
No violation here.
An explosive going off in a grocery store while people shop is "limited, by definition"?
Yes? Watch the videos, people 3 feet away were completely unharmed.
A 30g explosive going off in a device that is owned by a militant? Yes, that is limited, by definition.
Once again, people in that grocery store who were standing near the militant mostly walked away - you can see that on nearly every video that has been released.
A non-targeted attack would have been a rocket hitting the grocery store. This was, by definition, a targeted attack. Even if a person had stood there and shot the militant directly, and there had been a civilian that caught a stray bullet, this would still have been a targeted attack.
As it is, eight Hezbollah militants have died, and the one civilian injury was a Hezbollah militant’s daughter; killing a child was clearly not the intent.
That’s a successful military operation.
Actual combat and conventional attacks on a guerilla force embedded in an urban civilian population is far more catastrophic and less surgical than the risk of being inside the ~0.5m lethal radius of these pagers.
It's a horrific attack with awful innocent deaths at the same time that any conventional attack that achieved the same impact on Hezbollah would have been even worse for those around them.