Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

[Ungnome]

This is about as precision as explosives can be, unfortunately. If someone is standing near someone who happens to have an exploding pager, the chances of collateral damage are high. Bombs don't discriminate.... Still it's much better than lobbing rockets at locations where you think an enemy is, knowing full well the area is also full of non-combatants, which Israel has been known to do and WAY better than specifically targeting non-combatants, as Hezbollah and Hamas seem to actually prefer to do.

 

[Pale Rider]

FB friend:

Hey, media: do your jobs. The pagers, walkie-talkies, fingerprint scanners, and solar panels which were rigged with explosives by Israel and then detonated en masse in Lebanon over the last two days are IEDs. You should be calling them IEDs. This was an IED attack, the same as any Taliban member would use.

And no, as usual, it was not "surgically targeted". Anyone anywhere near the person unwittingly carrying the IED could be killed, and the Israelis had no way of knowing if the device was going to be detonated in a bathroom, a school, or a crowded marketplace.

 

[PrimalxConvoy]

This is about as precision as explosives can be, unfortunately. If someone is standing near someone who happens to have an exploding pager, the chances of collateral damage are high. Bombs don't discriminate.... Still it's much better than lobbing rockets at locations where you think an enemy is, knowing full well the area is also full of non-combatants, which Israel has been known to do and WAY better than specifically targeting non-combatants, as Hezbollah and Hamas seem to actually prefer to do.

From the BBC.

"At least 20 people have been killed and more than 450 wounded by a second wave of explosions from wireless communication devices in Lebanon, the country’s health ministry says...

...Twelve people - including an eight-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy - were killed and 2,800 others were wounded by the blasts, according to the Lebanese health minister...

...The Israeli military said about 30 projectiles crossed from Lebanon on Wednesday, sparking a fire but causing no injuries...

Twenty killed by second wave of Lebanon device explosions

Walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah blow up a day after pager blasts killed 12 people.

www.bbc.com

 

[abates]

Did no one in Hezbollah react to the pagers exploding by immediately taking apart their other technology to make sure there weren't bombs in it?

 

[Ungnome]

Look, Ideally none of the attacks should have occurred, but if they ARE going to occur this sort of attack isn't nearly as bad as randomly firing rockets indiscriminately or using high yield explosives(much bigger blast radius that what we've seen here) to take out one person. It's a tragedy that innocents have been caught in the crossfire, but, official or not, this is a war and until we humans evolve past the need to violently attack each other, I'd much prefer it be done in a targeted manner than the 'kill em all and let god sort them out' approach so commonly used by major powers and small ones alike these days. Only way I can see of making it more precise would be to use actual boots on the ground. Issue with that is it would have required Israel to send special forces INTO Lebanon to carry it out which would easily be construed by certain parties as an invasion and likely escalate things way more than this attack did.

 

[PrimalxConvoy]

Well, the walkie-talkies were possibly KOs.

Japan firm says it stopped making walkie-talkies used in Lebanon blasts

A Japanese firm whose name was on devices that exploded says it discontinued them a decade ago.

www.bbc.com

 

[Teufel]

Might want to step back over that line you just crossed Teuful.

If you and Ironbite want to get outraged over some uncharitable interpretation of my post have fun. I just fundamentally disagree with the worldview of some folks on here that Israel must be held to a unique standard of war that has never been applied to any other nation. Around 40 dead so far, at least 32 claimed by Hezbollah as its fighters. Pretty precise results. It'd be nice if no innocent people died or got hurt in war, but since that's never going to happen, I'll judge it case by case. And this particular operation has demonstrated for some folks it's not really about how many civilians are killed or how precise Israel is, because the vast majority of the dead are Hezbollah, it's just some people don't believe Israel has a right to do anything other than sit quietly and be killed by Iran and its proxy terrorist groups.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1836629631258022019

Link

As he spoke, the rumble of warplanes and large sonic booms could be heard over Beirut. “They will face a severe reckoning,” he said of Israel, adding that the attacks, which killed at least 37

The he being Nashrallah, leader of Hezbollah

From the BBC.

Twenty killed by second wave of Lebanon device explosions

Walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah blow up a day after pager blasts killed 12 people.

www.bbc.com

Why didn't you quote the part of the article saying the majority of the dead since the second wave explosions were claimed by Hezbollah as its fighters?

Hezbollah's media office on Wednesday announced the death of 13 of its fighters, including a 16-year-old boy, since the second wave of explosions.

It's weird, this random bloodthirsty imprecise IED terrorist campaign keeps killing so many Hezbollah fighters.

...The Israeli military said about 30 projectiles crossed from Lebanon on Wednesday, sparking a fire but causing no injuries...

A Hezbollah rocket hit a playground in the Golan Heights and blew up 12 Druze kids a couple months ago, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here about the rockets. That they aren't indiscriminate and don't kill civilians?

 

[NovaSaber]

I just fundamentally disagree with the worldview of some folks on here that Israel must be held to a unique standard of war that has never been applied to any other nation.

I disagree with the claim that anyone is applying a "unique standard" different from other countries.

You'd be wrong even if you were "only" accusing specific people here of hypocrisy on the subject, but no, you actually said "never been applied".

I'll be charitable and interpret "never" as hyperbole, but even so, that means at least that you somehow believe it's uncommon for people to say things like "civilians should never be killed in military actions" in reactions to news from wars not involving Israel.
And that's just blatantly wrong. I actually remember such things being said basically every single time there was news of US soldiers killing civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.

(The alternative would be that you're comparing what people are saying the ideal is for Israel alone (even though it's the same ideal for every country) and what actually happens for other countries. But, that would be literally using a double standard to accuse others of having a double standard.)

 

[MrBlud]

9 out of 2,800 is pretty good as far as warfare goes. I feel like if the US managed that kill ratio for Al Queda or ISIS op; you wouldn’t have a sitting member of Congress calling them to task.

We can look at Gaza to see what the kill ratios are when *they don’t* care.