Comment by runarberg 2 days ago
The rules of war prohibit planting explosive in objects which are likely to be picked up by civilians. The rules of war also discourages fighting in civilian areas. Members of an enemy organization are not automatically valid military targets according to the rules of war. Especially when they are just going about their civilian lives far away from the battlefield.
This is attack consistent with terrorist tactics, not warfare.
> The rules of war prohibit planting explosive in objects which are likely to be picked up by civilians.
Yes, and?
They didn't just leave a bunch of attractive nuisance bombs all over Lebanon; they specifically targeted devices provided by Hezbollah to coordinate activities which were meant to be carried around on their persons. That seems like the opposite of leaving them where civilians might pick them up.
Man if only we didn’t live in a global society where carrying electronic communication devices in non-combatant (aka civilian) settings was the norm, you’d maybe have a point here. Multiple children have been reported as killed. Do you think that may fall under the category of “indiscriminate?”
I don't think civilians regularly carry military-grade pagers.
And fwiw, I heard of two tragic cases of children dying, which sounds remarkably low to me so far. If this were truly indiscriminate, this number would be significantly higher and we would've heard of it by now.
The fact of unintended victims doesn't make an attack indiscriminate - it's a failure to distinguish military from civilian targets and/or using attacks that are as likely as not to kill civilians. You need to minimize civilian casualties, not prevent them entirely.
The targets here were, according to the reports seen so far, Hezbollah members - an organization currently at war with Israel. They were sent small charges in a format that could be reasonably expected to remain on or by the target, minimizing the likelihood of collateral damage.
This is not, btw, the same as saying "totally ok from a moral standpoint," or that the civilian deaths and injuries aren't bad, or that it wasn't irresponsible or evil or whatever you might think about it. I don't even necessarily think that the attack was a good move for Israel independent of the ethics. I just disagree that indiscriminate is an appropriate description - if anything, the discriminating and sophisticated way the bombs were delivered is part of what makes the thing disconcerting.
I don’t think most of us here on HN are experts in international humanitarian law, and certainly not in this thread. The sources I have read which includes opinions from such experts seem to make it pretty clear that this attack did indeed violate international humanitarian law[1]:
> Whitson said the high casualties of the attacks demonstrate that booby-trapped devices are “inherently indiscriminate”.
> “They’re incapable of being directed at a specific military target, and it’s very obvious from what we’ve seen and what was completely predictable that it would injure military targets and civilians without distinction,” she told Al Jazeera.
> Whitson added that the explosions were a “deliberate decision on the part of Israel” to create chaos in Lebanon. “This is exactly why booby traps of ordinary civilian objects are illegal – because not only do they cause physical harm and injury, they cause psychological and emotional harm.”
> Huwaida Arraf, a US-based human rights lawyer, echoed Whitson’s remarks, saying that the explosions violated the prohibition on indiscriminate attacks as well as a ban on booby-trapping devices associated with civilian use.
> That latter curb is laid out in the 1996 Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps, and Other Devices – a UN treaty.
1: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/18/do-lebanon-explosio...
Most of here on HN can only speak of our own morality on the matter. And it seems that quite a few HN users have no problems with this blatant act of terrorism, or at least deem that any problems they do have with it are worth it for some—in my opinion—twisted reason.
EDIT: As I was writing this, the Intercept emailed me the daily newsletter including this article which also cites experts in international humanitarian laws casting doubts on the legality of this attack.
https://theintercept.com/2024/09/19/israel-pager-walkie-talk...
> “I think detonating pagers in people’s pockets without any knowledge of where those are, in that moment, is a pretty evident indiscriminate attack,” said Jessica Peake, an international law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. “I think this seems to be quite blatant, both violations of both proportionality and indiscriminate attacks.”
How likely are Hezbollah terrorists to hand over their communications devices to regular citizens? I’d say it’s not a very likely scenario. Obviously there will be some cases where people are adjacent who are innocent, but the same is the case when dropping bombs and shooting up a building where there at with a machine gun.