The claim isn't that they're "civilian devices", it's that they're "devices all over civilian society". That's relevant because bobby trapping them is liable to cause casualties.

It's like cluster bombs and landmines. You have no idea where all these things are. You have no idea how many of them exploded and which didn't and it's extremely hard to clean up the duds.

And neither are against the laws of war. The US has decided to reduce their usage, but Russia uses air deployed landmines with high dud rates and it is not a war crime.

this was a special shipment created for the terrorists. this isn't just putting a bomb into every pager.

>this isn't just putting a bomb into every pager.

I never claimed otherwise. Again, the claim isn't that innocent people are carrying the pagers, is that the pagers are around innocent civilians. It's not any different than drone striking terrorists at weddings[1], which also drew criticism from human rights groups. Even if we assume the targets are definitely terrorists, that doesn't solve the issue of civilians who happen to be nearby.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wech_Baghtu_wedding_party_airs...

the blast radius is much smaller. from the market video, the people around him were fine, and only the heznobollah guy was considering the impact of terrorism on future generations.

Were the kids killed also terrorists?

Any kids killed were accidental as opposed to the Hezbollah rockets shot at northern Israel. When those rockets killed 12 kids playing soccer those deaths were intentional.

what alternatives would you propose?

1. heznobollas stop firing rockets into Israel?

2. Israel sending smart bombs with much higher collateral damage?

3. an engraved invitation later to members (hehe) of heznobollas to come and be fired upon in an open space to avoid kids?

4. or are you suggesting instead that Jews should just get used to getting fired upon and let their cities be destroyed because you don't care about Jewish kids getting killed?

anything I've missed?

Hezbollah has said it's attacking Israel because they're committing genocide in Gaza and that they will stop as soon as Israel withdraws. That's clearly the best alternative.

and Israel will stop fighting in Gaza as soon as all the hostages are returned alive and hamas is eliminated for good. sounds like the heznobollah guys don't really care about the lives of their own kids.

Israel has made no such promise. In fact they have done the opposite and promised to continue fighting (their word for genocide) after the safe return of all hostages.

The goal of eliminating Hamas is an obvious unachievable. They can claim Hamas (or a Hamas alternative) is active in any areas they wish to do their genocide, this is already the case on the West Bank.

How do you know this? you can't know it. You have no idea how many people had these devices.

it was a shipment of pagers paid for by heznobollas to communicate because they thought mossad was able to listen and track everything else. it was never a general Lebanese market pager that happens to be used by heznobollas occasionally. they bought in bulk and handed them out to their soldiers.

Cool man, checked in on the story lately? Because literal solar panels are now exploding across Lebanon. I'm sure everyone within 20 yards of them is clearly a terrorist.

you know what? this is brilliant.

the news that I can find reasonable sources for is that the terrorists stopped using phones because Israel could track them and send spicy suppositories, so they switched to pagers - and the pagers immediately blew off things they were fond of. At this point, they panicked and went to their 2way radios to ask for instructions from their terrorist leadership..... and their f*cking radios blew up.

I love that now there's completely random stories of things blowing up (which aren't actually happening, otherwise there would be more serious reports and evidence).

So it sounds like they already have ptsd from evil western infidel technology - it's pretty much biblical in its magnitude - can you really trust that electric toothbrush? what about those hair clippers? those Nike shoes? shoelaces next?

it sounds like Israel achieved their objective, these people are now reduced to trusting only stone age technology. their attacks on Israel will now be much less organised and easier to defend against.

it's sad that Israel had to burn this phenomenal trump card, it sounds like they were saving it for a ground invasion?

Notably, these are not booby traps. (The defining feature of booby traps is that they are triggered by the victim.)

No. That's one definition, but not the only one.

I believe you are mistaken. Please find any source that defines it in a way that isn't victim-triggered. Every single one I've checked includes similar language.

Says who? Pagers are used by doctors and icom are used by pretty much anyone who needs that communication, like construction workers in a site.

Not the ones distributed to Hezbollah.

Being linked to Hezbollah carries certain occupational risks.

So if somebody turned the phones of all members of X army (say IDF) into bombs, and exploded them at mass when a lot of them would be off duty with their families, would that be ok? This is what happened here.

During wartime? Yes.

Technically that would be a targeted attack, and if “somebody” were able to pull that off it would be an absolutely massive win for that “somebody.”

I wouldn’t like it, but I certainly could not call that terrorism, as it explicitly targeted militants.

> So if somebody turned the phones of all members of X army (say IDF) into bombs, and exploded them at mass when a lot of them would be off duty with their families, would that be ok?

Yes. Because it would be an attack targeting active military personnel during a time of war, even if they happen to be around non-combatants at the time.

That doesn't seem correct. Israel's enemies are not justified for attacking Israel even if the majority of their "citizens" are military reservists during wartime. If we want to play the non-combatant tally game, then a strike on Israel becomes deeply justified as an attack on an entrenched dual-purpose position.

...but that's ridiculous, and we should apply the same standards of morality to our enemy even when they refuse to cooperate. Lebanon is not and cannot be treated as a zone including nothing but combatants, and neither can Israel. By crossing the line of terrorism (make no mistake: they were aware of the threat to civilians), Israel is further damaging international support and again blurring the lines between the IDF and their enemies. The UN just convened to tell Israel to renounce their occupied territories in the next year - the days of "lawn-mowing" civilian infrastructure without criticism have passed.

If we keep seeing the Dahiya doctrine and Hannibal directive proliferate, there will be no way for a morally defensible US administration to support IDF operations.

Fortunately for its members, the IDF is not an amateur terrorist organization and they do check their hardware. Also the exploding hardware did not go off on a national holiday, but during business hours on a weekday.