It's weird how these headlines are written in the passive voice and as to blame Hezbollah. "At least 20 dead as walkie-talkies explode in Lebanon as Israel declares ‘new phase of war’ against Hezbollah"
How about Israel detonates 3000 explosives in Lebanon.
Are we supposed to feel sorry for terrorists who's lives are spent working out how to murder and blow people up, then when they get blown up with minimal collateral damage caused, what?
Honestly, I'm surprised at how great these people are at invoking emotional responses in their favor. It's incredible. They're certainly smashing the information war.
When the 11 kids got actually blown up by a missile strike while attending a soccer game in Israel, where was all the sympathy then? Do people even know about this?
I think your first point could plausibly be made by either side, not just about this specific incident. I don't think killing people is ever a justifiable solution to any issue and almost always makes things worse.
I think, no matter who the perpetrator is, it's undeniable that exploding electrical items on this scale, is an act of terror and aggression.
If you ask engineers who work for Tesla to review the Tesla Cyber Truck, they will tell you it's genius and amazing in every way because they don't want to get fired and they are likely also Tesla shareholders.
If you ask engineers who work for Toyota about the Tesla cyber truck, they have the expertise to identify all of the problems with the design and they are not going to get fired for telling you the truth.
Who would you rather listen to? It is the same situation when we are talking about Western journalists vs. Arab journalists.
I disagree because western journalists are often from secular society where telling the truth is more acceptable and encouraged. You're certainly not going to get thrown off a building for reporting some facts.
What happened to Salmon Rusdhie? He was almost murdered over publishing an image of the prophet.
Look up Yasmine Mohammed, she's an ex-Muslim who constant experiences death threats for her beliefs, or lack of there of.
My friend, I suggest you try some stronger arguments.
Your error is that you are thinking about journalism in idealistic terms, when in reality journalism does not operate on idealistic principals. Journalists are lying scoundrels who knowingly deceive people. They do this without any emotion in the same way that lion rips the guts out of a young gazelle. In their minds, it is OK to lie to cover up war crimes. It never occurs to them that people are going to take their word as the truth, because they do not care. They lie about everything because they are incompetent, craven, selfish, and so on. This is the mindset of a war criminal who commits genocide.
When Israel executes an air strike to kill the terrorists that are killing their civilians for no reason, your lot howl at the moon about "indiscriminate" "disproportionate" "genocide".
But when Israel ingeniously figures out a way to detonate explosives only on the terrorists bodies, you call that indiscriminate too?
It's pretty obvious that you just hate Israel. No matter what Israel does, you will never be happy.
Israel is here to stay. When people like you make peace with that, we will be able to live in peace.
Because they're the ones who ordered the pagers for their specific use.
Not to hand out like candy.
Obviously not All people injured are Hizbollah, however the vast majority are.
From some interviews I saw they claimed that the majority of patients at the hospitals were military aged men.
Perhaps more reliable info will come out to clarify the number, we will have to see.
What I'm noticing is that this attack, or series of attacks seems to upset people in a way they struggle to verbalize. They try to reach and call it terrorism or war crime but it seems to be neither.
Maybe the real explanation is that this kind of weapon is simply too powerful and terrifying and that's why people want it to be taboo? We become more and more dependent on technology everyday, we are slowly trusting our lives to self driving cars even starting to put electrodes into our brains. The thought of someone tampering with that, it's too scary.
It is the "distributedness". People like to split the world into clean zones: here is war, after this border, no more war. After all, the risk gradient jumps extremely when you cross the border from Poland into Ukraine.
An attack like this a) reveals that some people aren't what they perhaps pretended to be, e.g. civilians, b) shows that war can reach with very long fingers into places that considered themselves relatively safe.
Isn't it attacking a militant group who killed 11 children a few months ago? 11 children murdered by Hezbollah at a soccer game? Do you think anyone will actual sympathize with them ?
This is the nature of the game with these people, they're not an established military so what are you supposed to attack in order to stop your children being blown apart at a soccer game?
Edit: Added another source because I saw some cowardly accuse me of "spreading Israeli propaganda and then deleting their comment, there's a non-bias news outlets story too, the ABC".
There is no proof that Lebanese Hezbollah was responsible for the Magdal Shams incident you are referring to, and all of the facts suggest that it was an accident. It happened during what was virtually a firefight.
The Magdal Shams is a village in the Golan heights, which is a Syrian area that is illegally occupied by Israel. At the very least, it is a huge leap of faith to assume that the families of the victims condemn Hezbollah or Israel or who they think is responsible.
Whatever your beliefs are, I suggest not jumping to conclusions so quickly, especially on such a complicated topic
My friend, I suggest adopting a less juvenile attitude. As I stated previously, there is no proof of where the bomb came from, and the victims may have had allegiance towards the faction that you consider the "bad guys."
Misdirected attacks happen all the time in warfare, and tragically there's nothing in the slightest bit surprising about it. The circumstances around the Majdal Shams attack are still unclear, but it's highly unlikely that Hezbollah would deliberately target a soccer field in the middle of a Druze community in Israel-occupied territory. Most likely it was affected by EW or simply went off course.
> a global treaty came into force which “prohibited in all circumstances to use booby-traps or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects that are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material”. Has anyone told Israel and its jubilant supporters that, as Brian Finucane of the International Crisis Group points out, it is a signatory to the protocol?
indeed, war couldn't happen without rules. training, marching, maneuvering, following a battle plan- these all require discipline and rules to be effective.
if there were no structure, no rules, it would just be fighting- like animals. it could never reach the level of war. that takes human ingenuity!
The surprising thing is that there are rules between the parties. Of course every army has rules internally, but having international rules everyone is bound by isn’t obvious.
International law is quite literally a work of fiction. You can read the Geneva conventions and explore the implications of the rules in the imaginary world it sets up, but you have to understand that those rules are only valid inside of that imaginary world. None of it has any value in the real world, which is dictated by a different set of laws.
Would you prefer they bomb a house, school, or mosque, or some other place where they hangout with civilians to use then as shields? Because when they did that everyone was up in arms, and now they try a more targeted approach and they're "terrorists"...meanwhile Putin is basically trying to make a whole country freeze this year and I hardly anyone complains all calls him a terrorist, apparently, that's fine?
Israel is held to some impossibly high standards. Makes me wonder why?
Hezbollah has recently launched rockets into Israel and killed 11 children...as a start.
Hamas is responsible for the 16k people killed, they:
* Use their people as human shields.
* Spent billions of dollars on aid to build "attack tunnels" and buy weapons rather than spend it on education, health care, diplomacy and a real defense force.
* Broke the cease fire on October 7 by going on an ecstatic, orgy of violence against innocent people at a peace and love festival.
* Failed to return the hostages and murdered many of them.
* Failed to negotiate a peace deal for their people and bravely handing themselves in.
* Started a war without considering or caring about the consequences for their people.
* Brainwashed their own people to hate Jews and take up arms to it's impossible to distinguish soldiers and civilians.
* They've even brainwashed children to become "martyrs"
* Launched rockets into civilian areas in Israel every day.
* Setup headquarters in hospitals and schools...
The list goes on, but Hamas started this latest round of violence, they are responsible. I repeat again, there was a ceasefire on October 7. People calling for a ceasefire in Gaza have to understand this, and they have to understand these fanatics would just regroup and attack again.
Look at how Russia and Ukraine keep their military assets away from civilian populations, then look at what Hamas does, there is zero moral equivalence here. Putin is a total psycho monster, but even he doesn't build arms making facilities in residential areas.
Jihadists use our morals against us, they're extremely good at manipulation, they're ok with a hospital being bombed so long as it gets an emotional response and incites hatred against Jews. Which is working, clearly.
Spot on. Also the 16k number is reported by Hamas and is a propaganda number. The real count is closer to 2. Also, Hamas is responsible -- Israel has killed 0 civilians.
Do you think we should send independent investigators, and humanitarian institutions to do an assessment? Sure just wait for the Israeli investigation of their own crimes to finish, and in maybe a couple of decades, a few people can be let in for a couple of hours to verify the brutality.
Do you think there might be a chance the "Gaza Health Ministry", aka, Iran wouldn't be fudging these numbers to provoke an emotional response by people in the west? The same people who believe children are fine to be martyred and use them as suicide bombers or human shields?
Irgun/Herut/Likud is just as guilty of all of these “charges”… I think you just lack the ability to rest the blame on Israel.
They could have dropped cash over Gaza as reparations for the prior 75 years of genocide.
Not sure if you're confused, acting in bad faith, or just don't know what genocide is OR Israel is just really bad at doing genocide?
Seventy-two percent of respondents said they believed the Hamas decision to launch the cross-border rampage in southern Israel was "correct" given its outcome so far, while 22% said it was "incorrect". The remainder were undecided or gave no answer.
Now remember that figure was BEFORE the latest wave of violence, so just after October 7, apparently the majority of people in Palestine thought killing 1200 innocent civilians is ok? It seems like some level of self-defence is warranted given there is now more Palestinians than ever before who hate them?
Because Israel already inflicts the same exact type of violence onto them. Why do people magically forget 2018? 2014?
Palestinians have the right to defend themselves, and especially the right to return to the land and property they were displaced from.
Take a look at that photo, the hysterial guy on the track over the top of the girl who was raped and killed and try explain to me what on earth that has to do with "self-defense".
They're ecstatic because they killed a Jew and they think they're doing god's work, don't be a fool.
Please cite the sources for this maybe? The ITF personnel won't be counted as Civilians, correct? Even before adding the Hannibal directive death's, by ITF's own people, these figures are not correct.
>The 7 October attacks on Israel killed 1,139 people, including 815 civilians.
From the linked wiki. Not 1200. This would be much clearer when the Hannnibal directive kills are excluded. Such a shame that the most moral Army would kill their own.
IDF gunships killed 1000 of those people. Notwithstanding the previous 15 years' worth of provocation since the disengagement and withdrawal from Gaza.
But my apologies, I have to consider your feelings when I think there are better alternatives to killing 300,000 people with bombs and starving another 1 million.
Israel doesn't want to live peaceably with its neighbors. It only exists to kill for sport. Really betrays the whole "never again" message I grew up with.
A lot more people died in the rubble of German cities during WWII and, except some German nationalists, no one gives a f_ck. Heck, the German far left sometimes taunts the right-wingers by screaming "Bomber Harris, do it again!"
The reason is that they were our enemies.
Edit: Can any of you downvoters explain to me how this isn't a case of blatant double standards?
If someone hates the Nazis so much that civilians in Nazi-controlled cities are fair game, someone else is going to hate Hamas in the very same way.
A lot of us consider it good and just that the the Allies won WWII, despise the Nazis, and yet consider the civilian bombing to have been morally wrong.
But this is off topic. Criticism notwithstanding, Israel's attack is very cleverly designed to minimize civilian casualties. This is the opposite of carpet-bombing Beirut.
It's not about that, it's about anti-Semitic propaganda spread by Iran.
Why is no one so passionate about Ukraine? Ukraine is actually being invaded and Russia is actually committing genocide in Ukraine and is actively trying to destroy Ukrainian culture by banning the language and other Ukrainian culture artifacts in Russian occupied Ukraine.
The invasion of Ukraine has reached 1 million casualties, this includes Russians yes, but Putin and his generals send them to die like shit, including conscripts. Anyway that is more than 20x the number of people lost in Israel - Gaza.
Russia has kidnapped children, let that sync in?
When I login to Facebook, all I see are my "woke" friends posting "from the river to the sea" and "enough is enough, Israel are terrorists". Weirdly, most of the "queer" people who support Hamas are the most likely to be murdered by them for doing "haram".
I never see anything about Putin, who is a much, much worse terrorist than Israel will ever by, why do you think no one is just as upset about that situation ?
It is different in Central and Eastern Europe, as the battlefield is much closer and we have extensive experience with being under the Russian yoke in the past.
But I think that any movement can have just one massive cause celebre, and the Palestinians cornered the market for that cause among the Western Left. Already in Spain, there is barely a Ukrainian flag to be seen among the hundreds of Palestinian flags.
It works the other way as well, former Soviet Bloc nations usually don't care about the Palestinians at all, or are pro-Israeli.
The size of a local Muslim community probably matters, too. Muslims care about their brethren in faith, at least verbally. In the recent General Election in the UK, the most Islamized constituencies punished neutral Labour candidates and turned out heavily in favour of pro-Palestinian candidates of third parties. It cost Labour some previously left-wing seats, though it didn't threaten their majority in the UK as a whole, as the Muslim population is highly concentrated in a few urban areas and can influence only several seats country-wide.
Well I'm talking about countries like the USA, Australia, Japan, where people are very far away from both battlefields yet seem extremely concerned about Gaza and almost not slightly concerned or informed about Ukraine, Uighur and other current genocides.
I jut think Iran and terrorists put way more focus on information campaigns than democratic nations do. It's not in our DNA to tell stories so we're behind the eight ball.
These information wars are scarily powerful though, the number of "useful idiots" per day seems to be getting bigger all the time.
I've been reading articles about the western world finally waking up to it.
In a way, social media seems to be a backdoor into our world, but it's often outlawed in dictatorships and autocracies...I wonder why? :)
What I hear is people hysterically screaming about how "Palestine" has a "right to defend itself" then I see a bunch of kids screaming "from the river to the sea" on Campus. I don't see anyone protest like that for Ukraine, or the Uighur population in China, do you know why? Because Iran is funding universities and creating useful idiots:
So I mean, people complain about Ukraine, but it's a different type of complaining. Ukraine is actually being invaded and Russia is actually trying to commit genocide of Ukraine and Ukrainian culture. But seemingly, most people don't care.
I (unfortunately) logged into Instagram today, and some 28 year old woman I know was posting all this Pro Hizbollah stuff, with quotes like "enough is enough". I have never seen that person post anything about children getting blown up by Russia...Why is that?
I don't see anyone protest like that for Ukraine, or the Uighur population in China, do you know why?
Because of anything Iran is doing, no.
But rather, and very simply because their own government (and to some extent their colleges directly, via their endowment funds) is/are supporting the genocide in Palestine, while at least doing something about the other 2. That, and because Palestine resonates with their social justice narratives, and "strikes a chord" with them ideologically and psychologically in a certain way that the other 2 genocides do not. You can make of this fixation what you want. But by all indications -- those are the drivers.
Nothing whatsoever to do with Iran. And it's really very straightforward actually.
Don't let yourself be bamboozled by scare stories in National Review, please.
Gaza looks like the aftermath of a major WWII battle, and it has been that way for years because of an air/sea/land blockade that prevents efforts to rebuild. Not just the residential buildings are destroyed, but also water/energy infrastructure. Due to the demographics of Gaza, this mostly impacts women and children. So, it is undeniable that Israel bombed infrastructure knowing that it is mostly women and children who will be harmed.
Putin absolutely 100% does not do that kind of bombing in Ukraine. Even contested cities do not look 1/10th as bad ad Gaza. And he has helped cities such as Mariupol rebuild...
I recommend honestly considering the possibility that your opinion on this topic is based on lies. Sorry to break the news to you, but reality is a bitch
Ukrainian forces abandon these cities in the East one by one as Russians completely flatten them with artillery and massive glide bombs, leaving no place to shelter. They're just open wastelands by the end of it, as if a nuclear bomb had gone off.
Not really replying to the above comment, but Do we think Putin should have bombed Gaza? Atleast there would have been sanctions against the bombing entity. Their athletes could have been banned, unlike the ITF people who goes to Olympics after committing crimes against humanity in Gaza. The double standards are not just bad, they are literally evil, I must say.
The current war began with a surprise attack that included airlanding into a music festival, murdering as many as they could and kidnapping people like Shani Louk, a 22-year-old tattoo artist, who were brought into Gaza from the festival, tortured and murdered. She was last recorded on a pickup truck, lifeless, legs visibly broken, as local men spit on her and record that with their phones. A still from the video: https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA1i...
I don't think scenes like these did any favors to the people of Gaza when it comes to international sympathy. Such behavior doesn't leave many options either. I have little doubt most countries would've responded the same way as Israel did.
The most amazing part is, people on here argue that Palestinians have "right to defend themselves", killing Shani isn't defending anything, in fact what would it have achieved? They knew exactly what they were doing, and they knew the response would be harsh, but they did it anyway because Hamas doesn't care about anyone.
I can think of multiple specific instances where the Israeli military killed children in Gaza, which are confirmed by humanitarian organizations on the ground as well as video/photographic evidence. But I will not name these specific victims here, because that would not prove anything. It'd be intellectually dishonest. Go read "The Two State Delusion" by Padraig O'Malley, or the ICC case by South Africa against Israel
The Palestinian government is incompetent, and they bear some responsibility, but this is like blaming the antelope for getting eaten by a crocodile.
I am not saying that you should blame the crocodile and not the antelope, because both animals act according to their nature. However, I am saying you have to recognize that the antelope is having its innards ripped out while the crocodile is going to be just fine. If we are under the assumption that Palestinians should not be industrially killed, then the correct response is to beat the crocodile with a stick so that it releases the antelope from their jaws.
The tendency to blame Iran for supporting factions in the region is totally hypocritical considering Israel's perverse relationship with the United States. Considering this, Iran's security concerns are actually totally legitimate.
The Palestinian government has no presence in Gaza; it has made repeated deals with Hamas for all-Palestine elections which would change that and return control of institutions in Gaza to the Palestinian government, but Israel (which, even before the recent crisis in Gaza, exercises control of much of the West Bank and whose cooperation would be required to fulfill those agreements) has prevented them from being carried out.
Unlike rockets and other military weapons, electronic household gadgets that unexpectedly explode in your face nationwide is absolutely a thing that induces terror and fear. As a civilian, I can feel reasonably safe in my home but this supply chain attack upends everything. Contrary to what most consumers believe, there are layers upon layers of resellers and licensed subcontractors of manufacturers. Platforms such as Amazon comingle their inventory.
So what will detonate next? My RTL-SDR stick at home that I unluckily happened to purchase from a comingled manipulated Amazon batch?
This is nothing short of scandalous, and I wonder how Mossad agents can even sleep at night.
I think this is an important point and I agree that this pager bombing fits the definition of terrorism.
Terrorism = Firing a blank cartridge from a gun in a crowded movie theater. Even if it was only a blank cartridge, the entire theater and surrounding businesses need to be rapidly evacuated and cleared by the SWAT team, children are traumatized, it makes the local newspaper, theater has to hire an armed guard and invests in security cameras...
Pagers I understand but I have two walkie-talkies at home so it’s definitely not something reserved for military use. I hope these attacks don’t continue onto more civilian focused products
Does it not entirely depend on the delivery mechanism? If I receive an order from the US military for Radios and I put bombs in them, what would be the risk of hitting civilians when detonating them? Wouldn't that be OK because the probability of a military Radio being given to someone non-military is negligible? If you undermine the Hezbollah supply chain and specifically deliver to them, isn't that pretty targeted?
People associate behavior and objects with things they are familiar with. This gives them some kind of grounding in context so they can more easily dissociate with potential threats.
There is a good example of this in batman, which outlines the situation well.
The joker says:
Nobody panics when things go “according to plan.” Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all “part of the plan.” But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!
We expect that soldiers and gang bangers have risks associated with that behavior, but mayors should not.
Same with this the GP wants to believe that the pager is in a different class of 'risk' than the walkie talkie at home, and now walkie talkies are used in an attack, they are adjusting their world view.
Edit: Spelling and punctuation.
I could just be talking out of my ass too.
As I understand, and I'm not sure many do at the moment, Hezbollah put in a very specific order from a specific supplier.
It is not the case that they just used their local/national stores and bought out pagers from some common supply available to ordinary civilians.
Their destination was known.
Can't really comment on your paranoia regarding new hardware. I can't say there's no reason not to be with surveillance tools everywhere.
However, unless you're putting in orders for a terrorist organisation I don't think you need to worry that the Shin Bet will willy nilly add explosives.
How about Israel detonates 3000 explosives in Lebanon.