Israel has a reckoning coming. The mercy they have shown is the mercy they will receive. I wish they would stop.
I’m no fan of Hezbollah but how is this different than spreading land mines? Even if you kill civilians in an air strike at least you can claim there were enemy combatants there. Here it is just “Eh, we’ll just kill people at random and see what happens.”
These were pagers specifically ordered by Hezbollah. Random civilians wouldn’t have had them.
Has that been verified?
Of course not.
So that kid was Hezbollah too then?
One of the deaths was a kid
How many injuries, I wonder.
It is extremely cool that we continue to take “Everyone wounded by these pagers was Hezbollah” at face value once again.
This, from the same organization that bombed hospitals, schools, and refugee camps while insisting every one of them was a Hamas command center.
Thousands of peoples were wounded. And by the nature of a pager you do wear them when out and about and not only at the HQ
There’s thousands of Hezbollah militants as well. We don’t know yet exactly how targeted the attack was.
Regardless “only” 9 people died so far. Thousands were wounded, but that’s much better than land mines would’ve been. This attack was extraordinarily targeted, and despite there being civilians hurt, they’re likely to be less hurt than the militants and unlikely to be among the dead. Every civilian death is a tragedy, but Hezbollah and Israel are in an armed conflict. Some civilian deaths are unavoidable. I much prefer Israel do this than the indiscriminate bombing on Gaza.
That’s still a lot more targeted than the air strike example.
Ah, yes, the 2758 people were all Hezbollah.
Most likely most of them were though. I mean I don’t think many people outside Hezbollah were using pagers, not to mention that most likely they tampered one or two batches of them only.
I am just wondering what the official government of Lebanon is thinking about this incident because in my opinion that’s a huge blow into the sovereignty of a foreign country. Imagine something similar happens in Israel or the US, do you think those countries would sit on the diplomatic table and negotiate?
The problem with explosions is that they injure everyone nearby, not just the person with the explosion in their pocket.
Agree, but the explosive inside is very low, so the damage is mostly going to be inflicted on the person who this pager belonged to. From the initial reports all the casualties were linked to Hezbollah and even the girl was a daughter of a member of Hezbollah.
Me personally, I don’t defend the actions of Israel, but still think it is a lot more targeted than dropping 2000lbs. bombs over densely populated areas. Another question is of course if this will achieve anything other than strengthening the resolve of those people.
Unfortunately, nowadays to win a war, you simply need to be the richer and more advanced nation, and Israel has the upper hand here.
That “even the girl was a daughter of a member of Hezbollah” part got me very angry.
Kids don’t deserve to get blown up, even if their parents are mass murderers.
I have never said that. What Israel is doing geopolitically is a grave mistake and would ultimately give birth to a lot more terrorists that they will kill ultimately and won’t lead to any long lasting peaceful solution in the region. And all this is happening with the silent endorsement of the West, which is even more disturbing.
Most would blame the mass murdering parent for endangering the child.
You can look up the videos. People standing three feet away are fine while the person with the pager is down for the count. Innocents are always harmed in war, but this was about as precise and just a strike as humanly possible.
I’m sure that’ll make that girl’s friends and remaining family feel much better.
The explosions had to happen at the same time to be effective, and so people who were being attacked were in a variety of places. Detonating explosives in an uncontrolled variety of public places is not precise.
They’re already at war though.
College campuses across the US/Canada will be holding memorial services, no doubt.
I wonder how they did it. Was the firmware hacked to make the batteries ignite or were separate explosives implanted in each pager?
Almost certainly it was explosives. Mossad very likely designed a functioning pager that contains explosives but looks identical to the original pagers and this is effectively a supply chain attack.
This is definitely one of the most interesting attacks that’s ever happened. It certainly doesn’t look like an accident. If it was indeed Mossad: take a bow, you’ve earned it. That was a pretty slick move. That was probably a difficult op to pull off. Gotta respect the craft, even if you disagree on the method.
How exactly did they pull that off? And with walkie-talkies too. There’s no way you can do that with normal RF. The only thing I can figure is they had to intercept the devices and tamper with them in some way.
I wonder if you wouldve said the same thing about 9/11
9/11 targeted and killed civilians. This attack largely struck Hezbollah militants, who are in open hostilities with Israel. Doing things this way is far better than the seemingly indiscriminate bombing in Gaza.
You know not everyone in Hezbollah is a « militant » right? They have a large political party and civilian governance apparatus. This is terrorism, nothing new to Israel.
Militants specifically use these pagers for security and stealth. Everyone else just uses phones.
It’s a brilliant way to target only combatants, and also expose them to their friends and neighbours. This attack is incredibly disruptive with very little collateral damage compared to alternatives.
And yes, it’s terrorism, an attack meant to inspire terror and disrupt communication networks with a chilling effect much larger than the actual damage. However it’s interesting as unlike most terrorism it does not target civilians.
It’s also terrifying to think we are living in a world where a malicious component attack is a legitimate concern. This is one of those moments that change the world - I’m sure every industry is thinking about the danger of their foreign supply chain right now.
Oh so everyone there who had a pager must have been a bad guy. Got it, solid logic. Can’t wait for the war to spread further.
unlike most terrorism it does not target civilians.
Also, unlike most of the IDF attacks.
IDF is closer to waffen SS than a terror cell…
To take this to it’s logical extreme, how do you feel about assassination attempts on high ranking Nazi officials? They’re non combatants, after all.
And I’m sure Islamic State and the Taliban have non-combatant elements too.
I don’t mind Israel defending against militant groups that fire rockets into Israel. I do mind them carpet-bombing civilian populations. This pager-thing seems to have the hallmarks of an operation that manages to cripple Hezbollah with a minimal loss of life and even fairly low civilian casualties. I much prefer Israel do this over the alternatives.
As does america have non-combat elements too.
The US army does indeed, and they would be valid military targets. People working for the EPA, perhaps not so much. Hezbollah however is structured towards support for the militant arm, as the Lebanese government handles civilian tasks.
Well it seems its up to the attacker to decide what is considered valid military targets. Al Qaeda viewed 9/11 as a valid military target.
Indiscriminate killing is always bad, no matter how targeted you think it is. In this case it was mass maiming, oh and a few kids died right? That’ll teach em to stop being bad people won’t it!
Its not rocket science how they did it. What is the impressive part? Are we really just going to say civilians don’t matter? Is it impressive to you because of how many people were hurt?
In no way is it required to respect the craft or the method.
I was about to say, they’re fucked in the head, but goddamn that was ingenious.
Is this a cyberattack, or pre-planted explosives?
My dad used to have one and it runs on single AA bsttery. It will burn if exploded but I doubt will that make “man fell on the groud bleeding.” Newer models might use recharable batteries, yet the BMC (logically thinking) should be sperated from the communication part as charging have nothing to do with it. How are you going to use SMS to hack a part of the system which isn’t connected?
If it is pre-planted explosives, that’s just wet work and nothing to talk about it.
Of course, the attacker can do a supply chain attack (by threating/hacking the manufacture, excluding explosives) as a stage to make the cyberattack possible.
Yeah this is what I’m confused about. In a lot of simpler devices like this the BMS is actually a daughter board and has no physical connectivity to the main circuits at all. And even if it had access you generally do not have the capacity to rewrite its code, because again code updating is not something that was ever expected.
NYT has a link up which it claims has been verified. It is a video of someone at a market who had one of these in their messenger bag. The video shows a decent size explosion, which blew a big hole in the bag and knocked the guy to the ground.
I doubt you could make an explosion that big with a AA battery. They must have planted the stuff in some massive supply chain hack.
Given how targeted the attacks were at certain people, does this imply a bunch of people walking around with explosives in their pagers, where they weren’t set off because they weren’t one of the targets?
NYT says this switch to pagers has been recent, after the Oct 7 attacks last year, when Hezbollah suspected that Israel was spying on the cell network, and using it to locate targets for strikes. So all these pagers got distributed to Hezbollah-affiliated people in short order . This system doesn’t use commercial networks, and has been called a “closed” network by the NYT.
If all that is true, then that means anyone with one of these closed-network pagers got it from being involved with Hezbollah in the first place.
Oh wow, that’s quite… something.
Yep, all the electrical engineers who have chimed in say it looks more like explosives.
A battery would get hot and start a fire. It wouldn’t instantly explode like this.
I cannot imagine how you’d cause this via a cyberattack. I’m sure they manipulated the devices somehow. Crazy move though. I struggled reading the first headline (not this one), because I just could not fathom that they mean actual literal pagers.
“Exploded” always sounded like an adorable kid word to me, like “He explodeded me!?”
I know its a regular and awful normal term but some things still sound funny to me
Sort of telling how you can teach people to associate good thoughts with awful things. Conditioning is a bitch.
Thanks for sharing.
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Israel might be the baddies…
Hey @oberstoffensichtlich@feddit.org, you were saying that “these were extremely surgical strikes, people in the vicinity weren’t harmed”?
Thousands of people injured, all guilty of something ofc, because Israel would never do an attack which might harm innocents. Right? /S
fairly sure hezbollah has more than 2800 members
You’re genuinely pathetic enough to try and imply that none of the victims are innocent?
I loathe “people” like you.
I think they’re implying this mostly hit Hezbollah members, not than none of the victims were innocent.
That said, you do know Hezbollah is basically the same as Israel, just without the backing of the USA, right? They also want genocide. The way this was dealt with was one of the best options when dealing with a group that wants to genocide your country. It also shows Israel chose to start the war with Hamas, and likely allowed the October 7 attack to happen, if they’ve had this capability all along.
The dad who’s girl died literally brought this on himself. He chose religious fanaticism over family. He’s in Lebanon, not Gaza, not West Bank - he could have chosen not to be part of a group that wants to wipe out a whole nother group. This is on him the same way it’s on an antivaxxer when they’re kid gets sick. There’s plenty of damn good reasons to wish Netanyahu dead and in hell, but this ain’t one. I doubt him and his right wing extremist possé came up with this operation since they would have deliberately chosen something with way more innocent casualties.
I think they’re implying this mostly hit Hezbollah members, not than none of the victims were innocent.
Based on… what exactly?
The clear implication is that “number of Hezbollah member > victims = no innocent victims.”
And then you instantly jump into defending genocide. Holy fucking shit I honestly can’t communicate with words how disgustingly pathetic I find that.
No, I’m not gonna engage with your whataboutism and start arguing with you about how “Hezbollah deserved this absolutely pathetic terrorist attack.”
“Brought it on himself brought it on himself”
You fuckers still haven’t realised that Hammurabi’s law makes the whole world blind, huh? That was almost 4000 years ago, ffs. Read a book, preferably a modern one and not some tome of propaganda from thousands of years ago.
You’re literally defending the death of a 9-year old girl. You have to be sick in the fucking head to do that. Honestly.
And you should read Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance.
Eye for an eye makes the world go blind only works when one party doesn’t exist solely to exterminate another.
That’s what Hezbollah is.
I have never defended genociders - you on the other hand keep defending Hezbollah.
The world needs to deal with Hezbollah the same way it needs to deal with Zionism and the same way it eventually dealt with the Nazis.
Tell me dumbass, do you think Netanyahu and co. will stop his campaign on Gaza if everyone decided not to retaliate? Or would he just order his men to take advantage of the situation and shoot them down? Do you think the Nazis or any other group, such as Hezbollah, intent on genocide would accept peace?
Of course ideally such corrupt evil fucks could be eliminated with no innocent casualties. But that’s unfortunately not the way the world works. Do you think innocent casualties didn’t occur when other fascist evils were fought? You think only military personnel were killed in WW2?
You’re either a naïve kid, or have thought up of miracle solution like a death note.
This was a case of monsters fighting monsters; we’re lucky that this at least was an actual very precise strike one monster did to the others, rather than their usual M.O. of just striking buildings with missiles.
You’re seriously saying “they deserve the ‘eye-for-an-eye’ treatment” while Israel is actively escalating the conflict?
I have never defended genociders
Oh okay. So where have I done that? In assuming that 3000 civilians who were harmed weren’t exclusively Hezbollah? Which would be an utterly ridiculous claim seeing how many literal children there are involved.
So… you’ve never defended genociders. Then let’s see if you will. Is Israel committing a genocide in Gaza?
You think only military personnel were killed in WW2?
I’ve actually been in the military and have had training on what is and isn’t legal to do in armed conflict. Have you?
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule12
Rule 12. Definition 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
© 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.
RIP Taiwanese electronic device export economy.
None dare call it Terrorism.
Why is it okay for them to bomb Lebanon as well?
Because Arab lives have no value in Israeli society.
Because Arab lives have no value in
Israeliwestern society.FTFY.
To be fair, Jewish lives also only matters to the west if they are busy murdering brown people.
It depends on the Western country - some are much worse than others when it comes to the whole practice of defining people’s worth mainly from their race.
Some Western nations (maybe most of them in Europe) do tend to see value in all human live, Arab or otherwise, but many to indeed see no value in Arab life.
If I was to point a finger at the worst in Europe I would say Britain, Hungary, Austria and Germany.
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims.
While it’s likely there were civilians hurt by this, the target was undeniably Hesbollah. So no, not terrorism.
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Stunning that you’re being downvoted. This was a brilliant attack on a group that actually attacks Israel actually indiscriminately on the daily.
National order isnt based on tit for tat. If someone commits a war crime against you it doesnt mean you get to do it too.
In my opinion the time of day they chose to blow them shows they wanted as much collateral damage as they could.
What’s the advantage of making excuses for committing war crimes?
Is there any time of day it’s not atrocious? Seems like any time would have basically equal risk for collateral casualties.
To be effective it all had to be at once. It seems that they waited until the pagers were being used to coordinate a fresh wave of rocket attacks with promises of more to come before setting them off.
Because that time of day is when the most people will be out in public. It seems deliberately designed to cause as much damage as widely as possible. Likely to cause fear in the population.
They put explosives in the pagers but no shrapnel, so how does your conclusion make sense? If Israel wanted to simply cause mass damage, this would be a most incompetent way to do it.
They wanted to cause fear, which is terrorism.
Is there any time of day it’s not atrocious? Seems like any time would have basically equal risk for collateral casualties.
Then maybe it shouldn’t be done at all.
Maybe all an army has to do to take over the entire world is bring their families to the front. Can’t shoot back at them because their families are there. So they pretty much win every engagement. Problem solved. No more wars.
And you are saying noone is allowed to fight on their own land, as it endangers the public.
At a certain point it stops being worth it. If sending a brainwashed 11 yo to blow up a checkpoint means you can no longer trust having any technology near you, your family and friends it might cause hesitation.
Wishful thinking, they aren’t fighting because they want to. Noone likes violence.
Ah, you see it from Israel’s POV. Interesting.
I would agree with this if they somehow only harmed Hezbollah severely. That was not the case.
I agree, but it’s still a step up from dropping a laser guided bomb on a 10 storey apartment building because somebody in Hamas might be there.
I guess.
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There you go conflating Jews and Israel. Apart from that you have an arguable point.
Israelis and cops just doesn’t sound as snappy.
It’s less antisemitic though. Please don’t conflate Jewish people with Israel, it’s caused enough problems as it is.
Israel is a terrorist organization. Radical, fundamentalist Jewish terrorism.
Likely because the bulk of those wounded by this attack were not Hezbollah
I don’t even know how you’d reasonably expect to only injure your targets in an attack as widespread and remote as this one. Seems blatantly indiscriminate at best.
Likely because the bulk of those wounded by this attack were not Hezbollah
What makes you think that? These pagers were bought by Hesbollah to be used by their guys.
These pagers were bought by Hesbollah
All we know is that a bunch of exploding pagers were distributed through Lebanon. The IDF claims they were given to Hezbollah agents, but they’ve been caught lying regularly.
At least 12 people were killed after the attacks,[60][1][61] and more than 2,750 were wounded.[5][6] Civilians were also killed,[10][13][14] including four healthcare workers[62] and two children.[63] It is not clear if only Hezbollah members were carrying the pagers.[19] 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.[64] He added the casualties included elderly people as well as young children. According to the Lebanese Health Ministry, healthcare workers were also injured and it advised all healthcare workers to discard their pagers.[64][65]
Because anyone within 5 meters of the pager also was hurt.
Uhhh, because these were bombs - bombs that were remotely and indiscriminately detonated. Some of the people were driving, some standing next to children or on busses full of people. There are reports of children who died because they were standing next to a target at head-level with the pager.There’s no guarantee they were even being carried by “Hezbollah’s guys”.
I don’t even know why anyone would assume otherwise. This was a loosely targeted terror attack
Whats scarey here is the amount if energy stored in smart phones. Pagers hold a fraction of the energy and the application here to the smart phone is the same.
I read in a NYT headline that they were pagers with explosives added in.
Here’s the article I saw but didn’t read.
Upvoted for the honesty
If you see the video there is no way a battery behaves like that, even if you drive a nail into them they more rocket flames than explode (I used to work in a battery lab).
I should clarify, typical cells won’t explode, you could defeat safety features for pressure release in a can cell but at that effort they would have just added something more energetic.
I doubt the lab experience.
Lithium ion batteries do explode, off-gassing and pressure alone can do significant damage when contained. While typically closer to a thermite reaction, conditions determine damage which have been killing people from either heat or poisonous gas. I can point to state occuption work regulators that have a documented case of an explosion while plenty of deaths from battery fires can be found in the news.
Oh shit… Let me call the police about this! Sure thing! Right away!
Wait a minute!
LOL! You think I’m that stupid? You call them! Here, take my phone! I’m just gonna go hide behind that 1" thick steel wall! Oh, should we just run over to the station? It’s safer that way.
Great, can’t wait for the conspiracy theories from this one.
Isreal wants to start ww3!
Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was among those injured by the pager explosions on Tuesday, Iran’s Mehr news agency reported.
Attacking ambassadors is a great way to become an international piriah.
What was ambassador doing with Hezbollah exclusive pager?
Hezbollah exclusive? Were the walkie talkies Hezbollah exclusive? They are just devices with a specific function
Why did he have the pager tho?
Hezbollah is a legitimate political party in Lebanon, with millions of voters.
Ambassador, communication device …
Communication with whom? These pagers were ordered by Hezbollah.
Obviously for getting in touch with them. That’s what ambassadors do. Anyway, doesn’t matter, Israel will never have a use for ambassadors.
an eight-year-old girl was among those killed
And what was she doing with it? /s
It just says he was injured, which could happen if you were in close proximity to someone wearing one of the pagers. News here showed one of the explosions occurring in a grocery store, with plenty of people nearby, for example.
