taking the moral high ground is easy when you are not the one making decisions, and while the lesser of two evils (in your car bomb example) doesn't make sense on a personal level, it does make sense on a macro level
How far back are we willing to go for that? Who evicted whom? When? How many times? In what order?
Indiscriminate attacks are those [0]:
(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.
The fact that the pagers were obtained by Hezbollah to be used for their communications, and consequently could be expected to be exclusively in the possession of combatants means the attack was not indiscriminate.
Causing collateral damage does not make an attack indiscriminate. The standard for permissible collateral damage is that an attack must not cause loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian property, etc. that is excessive in relation to the anticipated concrete and direct military advantage [1].
The fact that it was so specifically targeted, combined with the small size of the explosive charges means collateral damage could be expected to be minor. And the evidence so far suggests that to have been accurate. The death of a single child is tragic, but negligible in comparison to the military advantage gained by thousands of combatants dead or wounded.
[0]: https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule12
[1]: https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule14
In your scientistic rationalization using weaselwords like "expected to be exclusive", "the [subjective] standard for permissible..", "a death is [objectively] negligible", and so on, it is rather the case that your explanation is so laden with prejudiced pseudoreasoning that you are blind to it and unwittingly helping to spread ideological misinformation.
A country has a right to defend its citizens. It can go to war to do so. War is horrible and civilians die.
It's funny, everyone on Hacker News at least completed high school in principle. But there's so much brave conservatism that high school education should have infused students with enough critical thinking to make them think about what they're really saying, regardless of how complex or simple their version of words is.
Sadly these sorts of people don't realize (or don't care, end justifies the means and by any means necessary, after all) all they are going to weaken is the already weak consensus on how to make war a little more humane, not weaken Israel.
Wow- the lack of self awareness in your statement is flabbergasting
AFAICT the stock pager models are ~95 grams, and people are suggesting 3-5g of added explosives. If they used RDX, then 3g would be ~5.5 cubic centimeters, which seems like rather a lot to try to squish into a small pager unless the design also replaced the standard battery with a smaller one to make room.
In contrast, a M67 fragmentation grenade uses ~156 grams of explosives.
Basically I'm saying it sounds like the bombs are small enough that it's not quite fair to call them "indiscriminate", especially if the trigger logic involves a Hezbollah radio network that nobody else would be using.
If you believe this tactic was just, then I trust that if Mossad obliterated your child in the process of assassinating an enemy of Israel who happened to be nearby then you would be able to forgive and forget, since it was for the greater good and they tried their best. Even if they were targeting the wrong person, as it sometimes goes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer_affair
Incidentally when they later killed the actual target of that operation they did so by detonating a 100kg car bomb on a public road, also killing 4 civilians and injuring 16 others.