this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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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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[–] [email protected] 181 points 2 months ago (10 children)

So...

They're just casually admitting to another war crime?

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

[–] [email protected] 111 points 2 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 64 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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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[–] pandapoo 18 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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

[–] pandapoo 27 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (8 children)

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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[–] [email protected] 98 points 2 months ago (2 children)

State sponsored terrorism.

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[–] [email protected] 82 points 2 months ago (4 children)

This makes more sense than them being able to remotely overload a battery to make it explode.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Overloaded Li-Ion batteries don't reliably explode. I would have expected them to place the explosive inside an oversized battery pouch along with a heating element in series with the battery. A microcontroller on the board could go short-circuit upon receiving a certain message, making a large current flow through the heating element and triggering the explosive.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

The violence of a Li-ion explosion is loosely correlated to the battery's state of charge, so near flat batteries would just pop and fizzle. That would be a very unpredictable and inefficient strategy.

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[–] [email protected] 81 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (9 children)

You could tell Israel did it by the wanton disregard of civilian casualties and the lack of a global governmental backlash against the act.

What I'm surprised is that were able to get them to believe the propaganda that pagers would be a much more secure communication medium.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The articles keep repeating "Hezbollah", but the target of the attack appears to have been the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon.

Much like the US bombing of an Iraqi airfield to kill the Iranian diplomatic delegation to Baghdad, this appears to be an entirely illegal and recklessly deployed assassination plot aimed at one guy. The thousands of injuries and the eight dead (at least two being children under the age of 11) are just collateral damage the IDF has once again blanket-tagged as "Evil Muslim Militants".

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[–] [email protected] 72 points 2 months ago (7 children)

How do we know these were actual terrorists and not just random people that bought a pager?

They've classified infants as Hamas terrorists before so I'm a bit skeptical.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 2 months ago

The splodey ones all came from the same batches that were bought by Hezbolla-linked companies and distributed by them to hezbolla members. They didnt just 'upgrade' every pager made by gold apollo. Only batches destined for Hez.

Of course, theres undoubtedly a lot of people who ended up with one of the booby trapped batch, who are just regular doctors, nurses, workers, etc, and theres no certainty that the person who was issued the pager was holding it at the time. Could have been their kid, or wife, or whatever, so the attack was still not very discriminate.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 months ago (3 children)

They literally killed a child in this attack.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago

I mean the people carrying the pagers were likely with Hezbollah, but the 2750 people injured? Yeah no.

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Israel is truly disgusting and abhorrent.

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[–] [email protected] 61 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

This is Israel's version of de-escalating an escalating conflict. Disgusting animals.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Imagine if everyone's phone exploded to execute like 10 guys.

Edit: The take aways here are

  1. Israel is a terrorist nation, that views civilian casualties as bonus points

  2. any country who imports their electronics instead of making their own is susceptible to this kind of tampering.

  3. The press is covering a terror attack like its some kind of new video game

  4. All the unexploded ordinance can be delivered to Hezbollah as a gift. If the rumor is true that this was triggered because they became aware of the bombs, there will likely be many israelis killed by these explosives in the near future.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Who is a terrorist state exactly?

[–] [email protected] 43 points 2 months ago (8 children)

Both?

I mean I'm no fan of Israel, but Hezbollah ain't exactly the Red Cross.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Both but one is supported by the USA so they get unlimited free passes

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Thar makes a lot more sense than the headlines claiming that the pagers were "hacked" by some remote exploit.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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

what?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Link or source, please. This sounds intriguing.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Whoops, got which world war wrong. It was world war one

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-forgotten-ferocity-of-canadas-soldiers-in-the-great-war (I know, ew, National Post)

https://www.cbc.ca/history/SECTIONSE1EP12CH1LE.html (holy shit CBC update this part of your site. This one is more to back it up in that even with pride behind it, it kind of has an underlying tone of... Holding back)

It's hard to find direct proper sources since it seems we've buried that part of our history some and Google sucks ass these days, but I'll edit in more as I find them

EDIT: https://web.viu.ca/davies/H355H.Cda.WWI/Cook.PoliticsOfSurrender.pdf (university site)

[–] phdepressed 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)

First link is behind a paywall, second link doesn't have anything about war crimes, third link is an academic paper talking about surrendering germans and how they were often killed by Canadian forces. It notes that killing of surrendering forces was an all participants type thing not entirely specific to Canada though. Even notes that Britain was particularly bad about surrendering enemies due to fake surrenders in the South African War just a decade or so before.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Not op - as far as I can tell they weren't particularly warcrimey for WW2.

They killed a bunch of German POWs during the invasion of Sicily and killed 20 civilians while burning down a town for a supposed civilian killing a commander (turned out it was an enemy combatant).

Both deeply abhorrent but not "inventing new crimes"

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago (7 children)

I wonder how many pager carriers were on planes at the time?

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

two kids died in these explosions with much many more wounded.

well guess what we call groups that kill civilians with bombs?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

Reminds me of the time Mossad sent letter bombs against Palestinians living abroad.

https://youtu.be/gS5cDF0IC_Y

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

Reading reddit and seeing everyone trying to justify this nonsense is frighting.

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