Notably, this doesn't apply to anyone who hasn't supported such strikes in the war against terror.
or to any US ally; the hypocrisy has been around for a long time already
if 20 Mossad agents had been assassinated in Israel _in the same way_, we'd be hearing the story told in a whole different way
Edit: my comment is 100% factual and unopinionated. I'm just quoting an NPR report. To downvote this is to be a propaganda agent.
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/17/g-s1-23452/hezbollah-pagers-e...
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/17/g-s1-23406/scores-of-hezbolla...
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/17/g-s1-23452/hezbollah-pagers-e...
That's the first link in your own comment. The URL and title mention thousands. Are you a bot?
From the first link:
“Reports from Lebanon said Hezbollah recently received a new batch of imported pagers, which were being used to share information about possible Israeli drone strikes and other attacks.”
From the second link:
“The Lebanese armed group Hezbollah said the pagers belonged to the group’s officials and blamed Israel for orchestrating what appeared to be an unusual synchronized attack on Hezbollah’s communications system.”
Based on that, and the limited effective range of the blast (as visible in videos and the fact that the injuries are consistent with a pager in a hand or a pocket), it’s likely that the majority of injuries were of Hezbollah personnel.
> Are you a bot?
No.
<https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/17/world/middleeast/israel-h...>
Ordered by, and delivered to, Hezbollah.
Hezbollah itself claims 100,000 members, by which this would represent ~3% of the total force as targets of the attack.
The devices in question were ordered by, and delivered to, Hezbollah, per an NYTimes report I've just mentioned in another reply to another of your comments.
Wikipedia reports some civillian deaths, "including four healthcare workers and two children" citing NBC News, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and Associated Press:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_pager_explosions#...>
Given the very many highly motivated eyes on this story, I'm highly confident that if there were credible reports of a higher civilian casualty rate we'd be hearing about it in spades.
It's clear that there was some broader damage, but overall the attack was highly specific to Hezbollah. Arguments that this wasn't a highly-specifically-targeted attack don't pass the credibility test.
Again, I'm not uncritical of Israel, and try to follow the many nuances of the overall situation. I also realise that it's exceptionally difficult to remain dispassionate when its you and yours who are subject to attacks, and in a conflict spanning generations.
The downvotes seem reasonable to me.
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/17/g-s1-23452/hezbollah-pagers-e...
1. It appears that the AUMBC referenced replaced their equipment but that had nothing to do with this and their doctors weren't impacted.
2. Your note of "...other enemies of Israel will be significantly more motivated retaliate in some equally creative/unpredictable fashion..." is strange considering that this is already the norm. Almost all (perhaps all) of the attacks against Israel have been from terrorists targeting civilians.
Dumb and cruel, could have used it to nearly the same effect by just telling hezbollah.
If you're getting GPS data, collecting people's movements for a month or three probably provides 99% of what you will ever want to know. Once the patterns have been established you're into diminishing returns territory, while the risk of discovery goes up, which would neutralize the value of the explosive attack.
The strategic value of such a perfectly targeted surprise attack is massive, notwithstanding the relatively low fatality rate. Injuries are expensive and often devastating, and the psychological impact is brutal. Logistically, Hezbollah (and many other organizations, militant or not) are going to have to review and/or replace part of their communications tech. That's a massive technical disruption, a significant economic cost, and risks further exposing supply chain information. It's also going to create paranoia about many other electronic devices, poison in the food, and so on.
I'm not sure about the ethics of this. If one were certain that only Hezbollah officers were being targeted then it would be an acceptable kind of asymmetric attack through a novel vector.
However this also seems to have impacted quite a few civilians, and there is a claim (unverified so far) that a hospital just replaced all its pager equipment a couple of weeks ago and would otherwise have been impacted: https://x.com/SuppressedNws/status/1836080190855795092
If this happened in the US pursuant to one of the wars we've been involved in, we'd definitely be calling it terrorism and/or a war crime. It's a big strategic win for the Israelis in the short term but can hurt them two ways in the longer term. Hezbollah and other enemies of Israel will be significantly more motivated retaliate in some equally creative/unpredictable fashion, and non-aligned economic partners of Israel are likely to view Israeli products with renewed skepticism, hurting exports.