Israel carried out its operation against Hezbollah on Tuesday by hiding explosive material within a new batch of Taiwanese-made pagers imported into Lebanon, according to American and other officials briefed on the operation.

The pagers, which Hezbollah had ordered from Gold Apollo in Taiwan, had been tampered with before they reached Lebanon, according to some of the officials. Most were the company’s AP924 model, though three other Gold Apollo models were also included in the shipment.

The explosive material, as little as one to two ounces, was implanted next to the battery in each pager, two of the officials said. A switch was also embedded that could be triggered remotely to detonate the explosives.

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60 points
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This is Israel’s version of de-escalating an escalating conflict. Disgusting animals.

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-4 points
Removed by mod
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0 points

Israel has a lot of computer knowledge. Maybe they think that it’s like a value in computer memory. Keep adding to it and eventually it’ll be zero again. (Or go negative)

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1 point

i just can’t wait for all of irans proxies to start investing resources into replicating such a successful strategy. i have the utmost respect for judaism but israel is a serious problem and they are no where near ready to stop swinging their dicks around.

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179 points

So…

They’re just casually admitting to another war crime?

Against someone I don’t even think they’re officially at war against?

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63 points

They’re not at war with Hezbollah, so it’s just terrorism really.

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6 points

Tell Israel:

Speaking to Israeli troops on Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said, “We are at the start of a new phase in the war — it requires courage, determination and perseverance.” He made no mention of the exploding devices but praised the work of Israel’s army and security agencies, saying “the results are very impressive.”

https://apnews.com/article/lebanon-israel-exploding-pagers-hezbollah-syria-ce6af3c2e6de0a0dddfae48634278288

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17 points
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Not that Israel needs an excuse to commit a war crimes on any day that ends in Y, but I don’t believe this is a violation of the Geneva convention.

It was a mass targeted assassination campaign against an opposition military force structure. I’m not saying it’s not a crime, just that I don’t believe it’s a war crime.

But I’m open to the very real possibility that I am wrong about that. So if I am, can you point me to the article(s) it’s in violation of?

I genuinely would like to fill that gap in my knowledge, if it exists.

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42 points
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiscriminate_attack

Even if they could somehow prove every single person in possession of those pagers was a combatant, those people were just everywhere spread out in society.

Imagine sitting on a bus and the person next to you you’ve never seen before explodes, and you do too

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27 points
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Those are rooted in actions like bombardments of civilian areas e.g. Dresden, Gaza, etc.

Just because an action has collateral damage, does not make it indiscriminate.

Again, it’s not like Israel isn’t already committing war crimes every day, I’m just not clear if this is one of them.

For example, when the Ukrainian’s assassinated the propagandist in St Petersburg at the cafe, there was collateral damage. Still doesn’t make it a war crime.

I am not comparing the morality of Ukraine to israel, I’m just giving you relevant example from recent history

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1 point

pagers are small enough that its likely a number of people were injured by pagers that had like fallen out of somebody’s pocket.

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109 points

When there are zero consequences for war crimes, the “rules based” law and order we virtue signal is completely meaningless.

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-5 points
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I’m as critical of Israel as any reasonable person but that’s like the one thing they did recently that was actually a (at least somewhat) targeted attack against their enemies.

Calling that a war crime unnecessarily and dangerously dilutes the term. Leveling cities and starving the fleeing population is a war crime and a crime against humanity. Intentionally shooting civilians, children, aid workers, and journalists is a war crime. How about we focus on those, it’s not like there’s a shortage of israeli war crimes to report on.

EDIT: Apparently Lebanon reports 2800 injured and 12 dead from these attacks… How many fucking explosive pagers were involved? I doubt a significant percentage of those were Hezbollah, which would make that a war crime. The callous inefficiency of IDF operations will never cease to amaze me.

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8 points

Why would you think only valid military targets were next to these?

Why are you still believing the IDFs first reports when the vast majority of the time they’re lying?

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-2 points

Why would you think only valid military targets were next to these?

That’s… not a war crime is. I don’t want to be the guy who justifies the death of civilians, because each one is a tragedy, but unfortunately in war there is such a thing as greater evils.

Why are you still believing the IDFs first reports when the vast majority of the time they’re lying?

Now that’s fair. And of course we can as well point out that their whole war is self-inflicted to start with so there’s not much legitimacy to any of their acts of war, even the less illegal ones.

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22 points

I swear it’s got to be to drag the middle east into a massive war to maybe trigger some sort of clause that forces the US to go to war for Israel or end up with massive penalties. It’s the only thing that makes sense that isn’t just, “For the Evilulz”

And I swear to fuck if the US was actually stupid enough to enter a deal that forces them to go to war and send troops if the entire Middle East turns on Israel…

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7 points

I mean, bibi seems to have the US by the short and curlies. I have no doubt that if things got spicy enough the US would gladly send boots on the ground to die for Israel’s actions. I could even imagine bibi saying “oh we’re so hurt, you guys do this, and we will stay back to defend our territory” while some poor schmuck from winsconsin gets exploded by an ied.

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They’re just casually admitting to another war crime?"

From the article,

according to American and other officials briefed on the operation.

So in other words, they’re denying it officially. Just as they deny possessing nuclear arms.

Against someone I don’t even think they’re officially at war against?

Do they recognize Hezbollah as a country? Can’t officially be at war with someone you don’t recognize - those are just termed “police actions.” An oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one.

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17 points

What is Israel trying to do, beat Canada’s record for war crimes added to the Geneva Convention?

Or are they trying to piss off the Middle East enough to get them all to bomb them all at once so they can demand the US send in troops to protect them, dragging the world ever closer to WWIII because their sociopathic leader wants to genocide a people to get real estate?

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13 points

He also needs to stay in power to keep himself out of prison. Sound like someone you know?

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15 points

Canada’s record for war crimes added to the Geneva Convention?

what?

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22 points

Canada in WWII basically invented a bunch of entirely new warcrimes

There’s a reason Nazi Germany was terrified of Canadians and convinced they were demons sent from hell itself

EDIT: Got which world war wrong. Nazi Germany feared Canada because of what Canada did in WWI

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12 points

Link or source, please. This sounds intriguing.

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-9 points

Absolutely impressive stunt by Mossad. Incredible targeting

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-2 points

It’s like something from Cyberpunk 2077 lol.

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1 point

Target large swathes of civilian populations is incredible targeting?

Only to those that think race/religion is what determines if someone is a legitimate target.

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-45 points

This was such a cool way to kill bad guys. I hope to read more about how they did this like their Stuxnet virus blew up Iranian centrifuges

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2 points

lol. Bad guys?

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-8 points

Terror organization (Hezbollah) = bad guys.

Sounds about right.

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2 points

And who are the good guys?

Are you one of the good guys? Oh shit am I?

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0 points

Hezbollah is a government. Which has a large number of civilian members, including doctors that treat people.

Are the garbage collectors bad guys?

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31 points

Until you account for all the innocent people it hurt.

Involving civilians is bad no matter whose side is doing it.

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7 points
*

You misunderstand, they’re being sarcastic.

Ed: to be specific they reference the most famous result of unexpected consequences.

The US government created a virus managed stucnet that infested and threw off industrial controllers of a specific brand they knew were used with Iranian centrifuges that enrich nuclear material. Their plan worked and the centrifuges were destroyed.

Later on they found out stuxnet accidently infected a bunch of other controllers, ones that were in hospitals, power plants ect. It ended up being one of the most widespread viruses ever.

Essentially they’re saying planting bombs in pagers could never have unexpected consequences. /S

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5 points

No, they were being serious.

The marvel-brained lib has had a comment removed for justifying Israeli attacks on hospitals and schools.

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19 points

The way that they pulled off this attack is interesting from a cybersecurity standpoint, but we can’t ignore the fact that Israel had no way of knowing who was near the devices when they exploded. They very nature of this attack made it impossible for Israel to know how closely they were targeting the bad guys or how many civilians were nearby.

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