Comment by borski

Comment by borski 2 days ago

19 replies

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Didn’t mean to imply you hadn’t watched them at all; was simply trying to use them as evidence.

> 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?

The point I’m trying to make is that there was a very small amount of explosive in each device. They could have added more material had they wanted to do more damage.

There were many ways to make this far more damaging, and they could simply have shot rockets or bombs from the air.

This was a targeted attack, focused on the specific users of these devices, who are Hezbollah militants. Bystanders were not intended to be harmed, which makes this, by definition, a discriminate and surgical attack on Hezbollah militants.

I’m not really sure what about that isn’t clear.

ivan_gammel 2 days ago

[flagged]

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  • borski 2 days ago

    1. Those pagers were purchased by Hezbollah, for Hezbollah. They were distributed by Hezbollah, to Hezbollah. I have extremely little doubt that Israel had intel telling them this, and that these weren’t used by hospitals by doctors and nurses.

    2. Of course you can’t guarantee this, but the expectation is that operatives have these devices on them, as it is how they communicate with the rest of Hezbollah. That is a reasonable assumption in the fog of war.

    3. Of course you can’t guarantee that. You minimize casualties by making the impact smaller but still meaningful; by using less explosive, but still enough to accomplish the goal.

    There are no guarantees in war. Ops fail sometimes. You try to predict collateral damage, which Israel clearly did, by targeting specific devices used by and distributed by Hezbollah, and by using a relatively small amount of explosive.

    Both of those things indicate that care was put into minimizing collateral damage. Even if they minimized the amount of explosive to avoid detection, that still accomplished the secondary effect of minimizing damage.

    This was as successful a military op as it gets.

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    • dragonwriter 2 days ago

      > Those pagers were purchased by Hezbollah, for Hezbollah. They were distributed by Hezbollah, to Hezbollah. I have extremely little doubt that Israel had intel telling them this, and that these weren’t used by hospitals by doctors and nurses.

      Hezbollah actually runs hospitals and employs doctors and nurses in them, so, "they were purchased by Hezbollah, for Hezbollah" is not, even if one assumes it is true, even remote support for "these weren't used by doctors and nurses".

      In addition to being a political party, and having an armed wing, Hezbollah operates a fairly extensive set of social services.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah_social_services

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      • borski 2 days ago

        Fine. The point is that Israel is at war with Hezbollah. Hezbollah operatives were the targets. That is who was targeted and who was hit.

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    • ivan_gammel 2 days ago

      > 1. Those pagers were purchased by Hezbollah, for Hezbollah. They were distributed by Hezbollah, to Hezbollah. I have extremely little doubt that Israel had intel telling them this, and that these weren’t used by hospitals by doctors and nurses.

      Do you have any hard evidence of that? It is absolutely plausible scenario that Hezbollah distributed some of the devices to non-members as part of civil defense plan. In case of the war they may want to have a reliable and authoritative communication channel to civilians.

      > Of course you can’t guarantee this, but the expectation is that operatives have these devices on them, as it is how they communicate with the rest of Hezbollah. That is a reasonable assumption in the fog of war.

      No, it is not reasonable assumption, on the contrary, and we have seen that. It does look like most of the victims weren’t on duty, so it is reasonable to assume that they won‘t be carrying the device all the time.

      > 3. Of course you can’t guarantee that. You minimize casualties by making the impact smaller but still meaningful; by using less explosive, but still enough to accomplish the goal.

      Minimize != avoid. They knew that the explosion may harm the wrong person, because they did not take the measures to prevent that (chosen method made it impossible). This is indiscriminate attack by definition.

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      • borski 2 days ago

        I think you have either intentionally or unintentionally missed my point, and you're talking past me now. War never has any guarantees. You do the best you can, and you do the best the intel suggests, and you minimize and avoid civilian casualties as best you can.

        Israel exploited an opportunity here to strike Hezbollah's communications network and leadership surgically; they did just that. No, there are never any guarantees there will be no collateral damage.

        I'm done explaining that, as I think I have been very clear.

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  • kcplate 2 days ago

    I think you need to look at the nature of the attack, the targeted, the design of the weapon, and the intended outcome. These devices were not designed specifically to be lethal (although some were). They were designed to send a message by maiming the targets and to create a distrust of needed comm tech by not just Hezbolah, but by Hamas and the Iranians too. I’m sure the designers of the attack realized that some would be lethal and that some non-targets would be affected. All that went in to the calculation. They decided the strategic and tactical payoff was worth the collateral damage. Welcome to warfare.

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    • ivan_gammel 2 days ago

      > They were designed to send a message by maiming the targets and to create a distrust of needed comm tech

      The „distrust“ cannot be seriously considered an objective, only if for short term. Next time they will add extra checks of incoming equipment, add random distribution and rotation of devices and problem will be solved.

      > Welcome to warfare

      Let’s not normalize it by such talks.

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      • borski 2 days ago

        > The „distrust“ cannot be seriously considered an objective, only if for short term. Next time they will add extra checks of incoming equipment, add random distribution and rotation of devices and problem will be solved.

        That's not true; for one thing, their communications infrastructure is now completely gone. Organizing is made much more difficult. Moreover, there is no guarantee that this wasn't Israel intending to force Hezbollah to use cellular means or other means of communication that Israel has already tapped/broken, giving Israel yet another advantage.

        Also, they don't know if there are other devices that are compromised, so the next days will either be tossing all battery-powered equipment they own or inspecting it all, causing disruption to their plans for battle, which means this was a massive win.

        > Let’s not normalize it by such talks.

        Hate to break it to you, but war is normal. People have been fighting wars since we've existed on this Earth. It's not fun to talk about, but war is war.

        I look forward to one day having real peace on Earth, but we're definitely not there yet.

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