There are too many threads and this is too complicated a topic for a technology forum website so I’m not going to weigh in everywhere.

But you yourself recognize that a) Hezbollah is a de facto government, not just a military or terrorist organization and that b) its folly to do some sort of algebra on casualties in these conflicts and intent is what matters.

It’s hard to come up with a plausible intent for a strike that injured 2700 people, with only the weakest of targeting mechanisms across a population that ranges the gamut of occupations, other than terrorism.

We would certainly view it as such if Hezbollah blew up 2700 phones of the Israeli government and military.

That depends on who the 2700 people are, right? If it's 2700 random people, I agree. If it's 2600 Hezbollah operatives, not so much. If Hezbollah managed to surgically strike 2600 IDF soldiers, injuring and killing an additional 100 bystanders, I promise you I would offer the same analysis.

I'm measuring this against the standard of military operations conducted by western countries, the state of the art of which is Hellfire missiles fired into cars and apartment buildings.

I'm trying to be hedge-y as I write this stuff. We could absolutely learn things that would change my take on this!

The word "operative" does a lot of heavy-lifting for you. The people close to these pagers were not combatants. That is, they were not uniformed soldiers engaged in combat. Hence, they were not legitimate targets. They may not even have touched a gun if they served in Hizbollah's civil administration.

I can promise you that you wouldn't make the same "analysis" if someone were to poison a group of Israeli reservists on vacation. You recognize that Israelis who have served in the military can return to non-combatant status, yet you don't recognize that the same must hold true for people who have been or are affiliated with Hizbollah.

No. All members of the armed forces of a party to the conflict are combatants, except medical and religious personnel.

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule3

Yes. The term you used was "operative" and it is not synonymous with "member of armed force".

It indeed does. Unless you are a medic or a chaplain, if you are even under the effective command of Hezbollah, let alone employed by it, you're a valid combatant target. Uniforms and current participation in combat operations has nothing to do with it.

If you want to make the claim that Hezbollah operates schools and hospitals and that employment at those institutions doesn't designate somebody as a combatant, I will absolutely agree with you. But it's very unlikely, to me, that those people are carrying Hezbollah military command and control telecoms devices. We could learn otherwise, and if we do, I'll acknowledge that. But from what we're learning now, it's not looking likely.

No, you emphatically are not. The criteria is membership in the armed forces: https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule4 Had it been otherwise, practically everyone working for the Israeli state would also be a "valid combatant target". Including reservists since they are also "under the effective command" of the IDF. I have no idea who carries these pagers and neither does you, so I'll refrain from speculating.

In regular armies, activated reservists are valid combatant targets. Reservists become civilian, under the principle of distinction, when they are deactivated and fully integrate into civilian life. More applicably to the situation with Hezbollah, which is an irregular army, functional criteria apply; meaning, very roughly and in my paraphrase, "is some aspect of the armed wing of Hezbollah your day job?"

I don't know that we disagree much here. We both agree that simply because Hezbollah operates a school does not distinguish the employees of that school as combatants. There are civilian combatants; for instance, whether or not your yourself were ever going to take up arms in Syria, if you work in a Hezbollah arms depot or weapons factory, even if you're just counting the bullets, you're most definitely a combatant. It depends.

You're refraining from speculating on something I am clearly not refraining on. I get that. I am (much) further out on the limb than you are. When the evidence shows I'm way off on this stuff, I'll absolutely say so. The big place where our premises differ is: I believe Hezbollah pagers to be military equipment, and you believe random Lebanese people with weak associations to Hezbollah might carry them as well. I'll say right now that is not a crazy point of view; it's just one I don't currently share.

You are juxtaposing two different concepts. 1) military objectives (weapons factories) and 2) combatant status (fighters). Factory workers are not combatants. While I don't think Elbit Systems should be allowed to operate globally, killing their workers is not legitimate.

At this point it is not even certain that all exploded pagers were "Hezbollah pagers" and that it wasn't just a random shipment of pagers the Israelis booby-trapped. Pagers are still used by emergency and medical services in many parts of the world.

Rather than arguing about this, we can just note references to the law of armed conflict, and the definition of "direct participation in hostilities".

There is a big misunderstanding here; you seem to believe that because Hezbollah is so invariably coupled with civilian life and has by own decision foregone uniforms and other basic traditional military structures, this somehow raises the requirements for Israel to strike them. The opposite is true.

I want to push back on this because I am making a stronger claim. This kind of argument came up a lot in the Gaza conflict, and pulled in proportionality arguments and discussions about Hamas embedding military assets deliberately in vulnerable civilian targets. I'm saying none of that happened here. I don't believe (but I could be wrong, as I often am) that Israel just killed a bunch of Hezbollah medics and schoolteachers. They attacked, with great specificity, actual soldiers of a military peer with whom they are in open conflict.

I believe you can rules of engagement under IHL straight off the ICRC's documents; that this isn't even a tricky case.

“Customary international humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby traps – objects that civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use – precisely to avoid putting civilians at grave risk and produce the devastating scenes that continue to unfold across Lebanon today. The use of an explosive device whose exact location could not be reliably known would be unlawfully indiscriminate, using a means of attack that could not be directed at a specific military target and as a result would strike military targets and civilians without distinction. A prompt and impartial investigation into the attacks should be urgently conducted.”

https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/18/lebanon-exploding-pagers...

They are not booby traps, since they are not traps to begin with. No one sane calls rigging the military comms of your enemy to blow a "booby trap".

Sure, your understanding of ihl is better than hrw's and anyone who disagrees with you is insane.

These pagers almost certainly went off on n the hands of doctors and clerics.

But again, this isn’t about some sort of ethical counting and categorizing of the injured. What can the intent of this attack be other than to spread terror? To say to the broad populace we will harm you when you least suspect it, independent of the military status between our countries and we will do it in surprising and asymmetric ways.

It eliminated their entire command and control network, hospitalized hundreds of their officers and command staff, put the IRGC on notice that it has been comprehensively infiltrated, and will force months of internal investigations and purges.

Further, it comes during a time where Iran has been publicly messaging about retaliation for the killing of Ismael Haniyeh, so there's a geopolitical angle to it as well: "we can do this, think about what we'll do next if you try launching another 300 drones at us".

I don't think it's very hard to make a military validity argument here (of course, it's easy for me to do that, since I'm shoplifting an argument from Noga Tarnopolsky and Oz Katerji here).

Spreading fear is generally considered terrorism - not a proper military objective. You have to realize that the argument you're making goes both ways here.

In every military conflict in the history of warfare, combatants have taken steps to inspire fear in their adversaries. You may be providing a definition of terrorism, but I don't think it's a useful one; I think you need to refine it more if you want to make it operable here.

In any case, where you use the word "fear" I would probably use "deterrence".

Deterrence indeed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice_massacre

I have no idea why you think that is a comparable event.

What I think may be happening here is that my reply to Kasey is being read as a justification for attacks on civilian populations. That is not a thing I believe; as you know, from the rest of this thread, my contention is that this attack targeted combatants.

Deterrence happened to be the stated purpose of the Lidice massacre. And it probably "deterred" the Czech resistance. That in and of itself did not legalize the attack. Here we have an Israeli attack involving indiscriminate maiming. You are claiming that "inspiring fear" and "deterrence" legitimizes this attack. The attack targeted pagers and anyone in vicinity of those pagers. That's exactly equivalent of dropping a bomb in a trashcan and saying you targeted soldiers that may or may not pass by as the bomb detonates.

I don't think it's productive to reply like this without acknowledging that we're operating from different premises. You're calling this "indiscriminate maiming", and I'm claiming these "maimings" are extraordinarily discriminating: they exclusively target Hezbollah military personnel, the only people carrying these devices. You clearly disagree with that premise, but that's the dispute, not whether one of us believes that massacring an entire city is a legitimate use of military force.

It's not a matter of "operating from different principles", it's a matter of facts. Among the killed were a 10-year-old girl and among the wounded were Iran's ambassador to Lebanon. Mouthbreathers will say "Iran bad so wounding ambassador good", but an ambassador is a noncombatant, hence wounding them is prima facie evidence of an indiscriminate attack.

Moreover, I use the word "indiscriminate" because it has a specific meaning in IHL which you, apparently, is unaware of. Let me cite ICRC (https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule12):

> 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

> (c) 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.

It is clear that whoever detonated these remote-controlled bombs had no control over who they injured. Thus, the effects of combat couldn't "be limited as required by international humanitarian law". Hence, the attack was indiscriminate. If you don't trust my interpretation of the IHL, read the ICRC's interpretation:

> But this reasoning begs the question as to what those limitations > are. Practice in this respect points to weapons whose effects are > uncontrollable in time and space and are likely to strike military > objectives and civilians or civilian objects without > distinction. The US Air Force Pamphlet gives the example of > biological weapons.[17] Even though biological weapons might be > directed against military objectives, their very nature means that > after being launched their effects escape from the control of the > launcher and may strike both combatants and civilians and > necessarily create a risk of excessive civilian casualties.

Moreover, there is the principle of proportionality. You claim "deterrence" motivates the attack and the loss of civilian life. But spreading fear is not a military objective in the first place, hence it does not full-fill the principle of proportionality.

>That is, they were not uniformed soldiers engaged in combat. Hence, they were not legitimate targets. They may not even have touched a gun if they served in Hizbollah's civil administration.

Had precision strikes existed in 1944, nobody would complain if a Nazi office party got hit with a missile just because "they were civil administrators, not soldiers"

It wouldn't matter. They would have been considered combatants then, and are explicitly designated so under the Geneva Conventions now. Unless you're a medic or a chaplain, you cannot safely work for (or, really, even be "under the effective command of") Lebanese Hezbollah under the laws of armed combat.

To Kasey's point, the reciprocal is true, too! The laws of armed combat permit Hezbollah strikes on Israeli command and administrative staff.