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Israel Planted Explosives in Pagers Sold to Hezbollah, Officials Say (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 2 months ago by breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca to c/world@lemmy.world

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Israel carried out its operation against Hezbollah on Tuesday by hiding explosive material within a new batch of Taiwanese-made pagers imported into Lebanon, according to American and other officials briefed on the operation.

The pagers, which Hezbollah had ordered from Gold Apollo in Taiwan, had been tampered with before they reached Lebanon, according to some of the officials. Most were the company’s AP924 model, though three other Gold Apollo models were also included in the shipment.

The explosive material, as little as one to two ounces, was implanted next to the battery in each pager, two of the officials said. A switch was also embedded that could be triggered remotely to detonate the explosives.

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[-] pandapoo@sh.itjust.works 27 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Not that Israel needs an excuse to commit a war crimes on any day that ends in Y, but I don't believe this is a violation of the Geneva convention.

It was a mass targeted assassination campaign against an opposition military force structure. I'm not saying it's not a crime, just that I don't believe it's a war crime.

But I'm open to the very real possibility that I am wrong about that. So if I am, can you point me to the article(s) it's in violation of?

I genuinely would like to fill that gap in my knowledge, if it exists.

[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 54 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiscriminate_attack

Even if they could somehow prove every single person in possession of those pagers was a combatant, those people were just everywhere spread out in society.

Imagine sitting on a bus and the person next to you you've never seen before explodes, and you do too

[-] pandapoo@sh.itjust.works 39 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Those are rooted in actions like bombardments of civilian areas e.g. Dresden, Gaza, etc.

Just because an action has collateral damage, does not make it indiscriminate.

Again, it's not like Israel isn't already committing war crimes every day, I'm just not clear if this is one of them.

For example, when the Ukrainian's assassinated the propagandist in St Petersburg at the cafe, there was collateral damage. Still doesn't make it a war crime.

I am not comparing the morality of Ukraine to israel, I'm just giving you relevant example from recent history

[-] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 15 points 2 months ago

Just because an action has collateral damage, does not make it indiscriminate.

It's definitely indiscriminate. They chose to use explosives that will cause large amounts of collateral damage. Even if the idea itself is fine, the 2750 injuries are 100% on them.

[-] AHemlocksLie@lemmy.zip 17 points 2 months ago

I haven't seen reports of significant collateral damage. I'm sure there was at least some, but that's different from large amounts of collateral damage. To be considered indiscriminate, I think it would need to have either used larger charges with a bigger blast radius or distribute the pagers more widely in the hopes that Hezbollah agents got them along with the public. From my understanding, which may be flawed, neither of those conditions are true, so while there almost certainly was collateral damage, I don't currently think it was widespread enough to consider the attack indiscriminate. If you have a source to contradict me, I'm open to reading it.

Fuck Israel's rampant genocidal war crimes, but I don't think this counts as one.

[-] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 6 points 2 months ago

Admittedly I can't find the civilian injury numbers (I don't think they're out yet), but I found this:

“Even if the attacks seem to have been targeted, they had heavy, indiscriminate collateral damages among civilians, including children among the victims,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement Wednesday after he met with Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib for talks.

At least, they were indiscriminate enough that the EU foreign policy chief found it appropriate to call them indiscriminate, which makes sense given that they were at least strong enough to kill or injure the guy sitting next to you on the bus if you're carrying a pager.

Also from here:

Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel. The group said two of its fighters were among the dead and threatened a “just punishment”.

Given that 12 have died so far (9 at the time of the article), I'd expect more than 2 to be Hezbollah fighters before I call the attack discriminate. Now while there is a chance they're more discriminate than this information implies, I doubt they got enough Hezbollah combatants or combat-adjacent members to qualify as valid military action.

[-] AHemlocksLie@lemmy.zip 6 points 2 months ago

Hmmm you may be right. We'll have to see how the numbers shake out to be sure either way, but I'll concede it at least sounds plausible the collateral damage is unacceptably high.

[-] yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 2 months ago

Large collateral damage is a percentage.

An attack that targets and harms mostly combatants with little collateral damage is not indiscriminate. I'm curious what the ratio of combatants to noncombatants is before arguing whether this attack was a war crime.

[-] Fedizen@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

pagers are small enough that its likely a number of people were injured by pagers that had like fallen out of somebody's pocket.

this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024

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