- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
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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two kids died in these explosions with much many more wounded.
well guess what we call groups that kill civilians with bombs?
You could tell Israel did it by the wanton disregard of civilian casualties and the lack of a global governmental backlash against the act.
What I’m surprised is that were able to get them to believe the propaganda that pagers would be a much more secure communication medium.
They are anything but. Somebody with a laptop and a $20 USB SDR stick can see every piece of text flying though the air.
They might be in regards to emanation.
It’s funny how confident comments like these are without really thinking it though.
Go ahead, explain yourself then, since you seem to think I’m some sort of idiot. Because I have actually done this. And no vague psuedointellectual nonsense, technical details please. Frequencies, protocols, software, that sort of thing. Let’s hear your experience in the field.
My brother in christ, you are still missing the point.
So you pick up a message that reads “867-5309” and the receiver picks up their landline and calls.
So you have a phone number now. One that you probably already had given the organization we’re talking about. If the call is staying landline and within the boundaries of their country, you aren’t picking up shit with your SDR. You need to have a physical tap somewhere.
They swapped cell phones which send and receive for pagers that receive only. Think for 2 seconds what that means for tracking. To say nothing of also losing the fucking microphone, camera, GPS…
There’s a reason pagers are allowed into SCIFs where phones and other devices which send are not.
There’s more to security than your experience picking up unencrypted shit with an SDR.
I appreciate your explanation. Thank you. The point was, I’d have liked to see a comment like that from the start instead of the snarkiness. I tend to get irritated when people just insult each other going “nuh-uh” without any substance. Nobody learns shit that way. If somebody is wrong, just correct them.
I brought up emanations in my first reply…
I even couched it with a “might be” because I’m aware there’s lots I don’t know.
It wasn’t that you may be wrong. It was your overconfidence and hyper-fixation on one type of security.
I agree, but they probably could’ve worded it better. The pagers were meant for Hezbollah but that doesn’t mean they exclusively went to Hezbollah.
So true. Could you imagine being in Hezbollah and not giving your personal Hezbollah-issued one-way pager away to someone else?
More like everyone’s suddenly
gangstaa ‘health worker’ when their pager explodes
Why should we all not expect our next Amazon device to be just a friendly brick with an ad on it?
Because, unless you can easily open the thing to see inside, there’s enough space in side of all new phones to blow our leg or our faces off apparently.
Now thanks to this, phones don’t fly. So hey, you’re going to Hawaii? Better ship your phone separately on time so it gets there before you do. You want flights to be safe and not full of these dangerous bricks. Ofcourse, screw the mail man who will have to drive from the Continental United States over to Hawaii. It’s a water truck… details details…
Should I buy a new device for my kids and or family or myself? Nope unless the thing is transparent like an iMac.
An iMac is an old model personal computer sold by Apple, where the chassis was mostly translucent with bright colors.
This is crazy that we tolerate such a breach of social trust.
How do we know these were actual terrorists and not just random people that bought a pager?
They’ve classified infants as Hamas terrorists before so I’m a bit skeptical.
I mean the people carrying the pagers were likely with Hezbollah, but the 2750 people injured? Yeah no.
The splodey ones all came from the same batches that were bought by Hezbolla-linked companies and distributed by them to hezbolla members. They didnt just ‘upgrade’ every pager made by gold apollo. Only batches destined for Hez.
Of course, theres undoubtedly a lot of people who ended up with one of the booby trapped batch, who are just regular doctors, nurses, workers, etc, and theres no certainty that the person who was issued the pager was holding it at the time. Could have been their kid, or wife, or whatever, so the attack was still not very discriminate.
It’s worth noting that Hezbollah members aren’t just militant fighters. There are also social services and Parliamentary members
Hezbollah organizes and maintains an extensive social development program and runs hospitals, news services, educational facilities, and encouragement of Nikah mut’ah. One of its established institutions, Jihad Al Binna’s Reconstruction Campaign, is responsible for numerous economic and infrastructure development projects in Lebanon. Hezbollah controls the Martyr’s Institute (Al-Shahid Social Association)
Hezbollah holds 14 of the 128 seats in the Parliament of Lebanon and is a member of the Resistance and Development Bloc. According to Daniel L. Byman, it is “the most powerful single political movement in Lebanon.” Hezbollah, along with the Amal Movement, represents most of Lebanese Shi’a. Unlike Amal, Hezbollah has not disarmed. Hezbollah participates in the Parliament of Lebanon.
This was such a cool way to kill bad guys. I hope to read more about how they did this like their Stuxnet virus blew up Iranian centrifuges
lol. Bad guys?
Terror organization (Hezbollah) = bad guys.
Sounds about right.
And who are the good guys?
Are you one of the good guys? Oh shit am I?
Hezbollah is a government. Which has a large number of civilian members, including doctors that treat people.
Are the garbage collectors bad guys?
Until you account for all the innocent people it hurt.
Involving civilians is bad no matter whose side is doing it.
You misunderstand, they’re being sarcastic.
Ed: to be specific they reference the most famous result of unexpected consequences.
The US government created a virus managed stucnet that infested and threw off industrial controllers of a specific brand they knew were used with Iranian centrifuges that enrich nuclear material. Their plan worked and the centrifuges were destroyed.
Later on they found out stuxnet accidently infected a bunch of other controllers, ones that were in hospitals, power plants ect. It ended up being one of the most widespread viruses ever.
Essentially they’re saying planting bombs in pagers could never have unexpected consequences. /S
No, they were being serious.
The marvel-brained lib has had a comment removed for justifying Israeli attacks on hospitals and schools.
Bro you cannot possibly lack that much critical thinking and still be alive.
They have 7 accounts, and they all have similar content removed by mods.
Bro, what other shit they did or didn’t do ain’t got shit to do with this comment here. You’re wrong, accept it and move on.
The other shit they did informs us of they way they think.
I understand why you’d assume they’re being sarcastic, but someone who literally believes Israel is killing bad guys isn’t going to express sarcasm that way. Those are not the posts of someone concerned with blowback.
What is Israel trying to do, beat Canada’s record for war crimes added to the Geneva Convention?
Or are they trying to piss off the Middle East enough to get them all to bomb them all at once so they can demand the US send in troops to protect them, dragging the world ever closer to WWIII because their sociopathic leader wants to genocide a people to get real estate?
Canada’s record for war crimes added to the Geneva Convention?
what?
Canada in WWII basically invented a bunch of entirely new warcrimes
There’s a reason Nazi Germany was terrified of Canadians and convinced they were demons sent from hell itself
EDIT: Got which world war wrong. Nazi Germany feared Canada because of what Canada did in WWI
Link or source, please. This sounds intriguing.
Whoops, got which world war wrong. It was world war one
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-forgotten-ferocity-of-canadas-soldiers-in-the-great-war (I know, ew, National Post)
https://www.cbc.ca/history/SECTIONSE1EP12CH1LE.html (holy shit CBC update this part of your site. This one is more to back it up in that even with pride behind it, it kind of has an underlying tone of… Holding back)
It’s hard to find direct proper sources since it seems we’ve buried that part of our history some and Google sucks ass these days, but I’ll edit in more as I find them
EDIT: https://web.viu.ca/davies/H355H.Cda.WWI/Cook.PoliticsOfSurrender.pdf (university site)
First link is behind a paywall, second link doesn’t have anything about war crimes, third link is an academic paper talking about surrendering germans and how they were often killed by Canadian forces. It notes that killing of surrendering forces was an all participants type thing not entirely specific to Canada though. Even notes that Britain was particularly bad about surrendering enemies due to fake surrenders in the South African War just a decade or so before.
Who is a terrorist state exactly?
Both?
I mean I’m no fan of Israel, but Hezbollah ain’t exactly the Red Cross.
And, frankly, this is one of the least morally concerning things Israel has (presumably) done. The pagers were targeted specifically because they were used almost exclusively by Hezbollah.
They were not exclusively used by Hezbollah.
Also, you’re equating a government with it’s militant wing.
Is it proper to call an Israeli Doctor a member of IDF? That is what you are doing.
Hospital administrators (A government position for non insane countries) are Hezbollah.
Yeah that’s a fair point wrt non-militant roles, my assumption was that they were primarily used in the military since their purpose was to avoid the issues with mobile networks being used to track them.
But we don’t know exactly how the devices were distributed, so you’re right that there were potentially a large number of non-military Hezbollah staff.
They’ve been doing the same for Hamas. Hospital administrator? Hamas. And so Israel bombs out their apartment killing them and their entire family. You know, back when there were apartments.
Same for police.
That one is what gives away Israels genocidal intent. Getting rid of police gets rid of the first line of defense against civil disorder, and the people most likely to do stuff like distribute food and supplies.
Police very rarely end up fighting as militantsin occupied countries, too. Unless you fire them en masse, which occupying countries shouldn’t do, if they’re smart.
Edit: We do know multiple EMT teams and doctors were hit by the beepers.
So…
They’re just casually admitting to another war crime?
Against someone I don’t even think they’re officially at war against?
They’re just casually admitting to another war crime?"
From the article,
according to American and other officials briefed on the operation.
So in other words, they’re denying it officially. Just as they deny possessing nuclear arms.
Against someone I don’t even think they’re officially at war against?
Do they recognize Hezbollah as a country? Can’t officially be at war with someone you don’t recognize - those are just termed “police actions.” An oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one.
They’re not at war with Hezbollah, so it’s just terrorism really.
Tell Israel:
Speaking to Israeli troops on Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said, “We are at the start of a new phase in the war — it requires courage, determination and perseverance.” He made no mention of the exploding devices but praised the work of Israel’s army and security agencies, saying “the results are very impressive.”
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.
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
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
I’m as critical of Israel as any reasonable person but that’s like the one thing they did recently that was actually a (at least somewhat) targeted attack against their enemies.
Calling that a war crime unnecessarily and dangerously dilutes the term. Leveling cities and starving the fleeing population is a war crime and a crime against humanity. Intentionally shooting civilians, children, aid workers, and journalists is a war crime. How about we focus on those, it’s not like there’s a shortage of israeli war crimes to report on.
EDIT: Apparently Lebanon reports 2800 injured and 12 dead from these attacks… How many fucking explosive pagers were involved? I doubt a significant percentage of those were Hezbollah, which would make that a war crime. The callous inefficiency of IDF operations will never cease to amaze me.
Why would you think only valid military targets were next to these?
Why are you still believing the IDFs first reports when the vast majority of the time they’re lying?
Why would you think only valid military targets were next to these?
That’s… not a war crime is. I don’t want to be the guy who justifies the death of civilians, because each one is a tragedy, but unfortunately in war there is such a thing as greater evils.
Why are you still believing the IDFs first reports when the vast majority of the time they’re lying?
Now that’s fair. And of course we can as well point out that their whole war is self-inflicted to start with so there’s not much legitimacy to any of their acts of war, even the less illegal ones.
This is terrorism and a violation of International humanitarian law. It’s not a war crime because Lebanon and Israel are not at war, yet Israel just attacked civilians in public, including health workers, and even officials in Parliament. Lebanese civilians are people like anyone else, yet this isn’t treated like the mass terrorist attack it is in most Western Media.
Thousands of pagers simultaneously exploded across Lebanon and parts of Syria on September 17, 2024, resulting in at least 12 deaths, including at least two children and two health workers, and at least 2,800 injuries, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health.
Photographs and videos filmed by victims and witnesses to the incident and reviewed by Human Rights Watch showed pagers exploding in various locales, such as grocery stores. Other videos that appear to be linked to the incident show adults and children in emergency rooms with severe penetrating traumatic injuries to their heads, torsos. and limbs, and other injuries consistent with the detonation of high explosives.
Hezbollah, in a statement, said that the pagers belonged “to employees of various Hezbollah units and institutions” and blamed the Israeli government. US and former Israeli officials speaking to the media said that Israel was responsible for the attack. The Israeli military has not commented.
“Customary international humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby traps – objects that civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use – precisely to avoid putting civilians at grave risk and produce the devastating scenes that continue to unfold across Lebanon today. The use of an explosive device whose exact location could not be reliably known would be unlawfully indiscriminate, using a means of attack that could not be directed at a specific military target and as a result would strike military targets and civilians without distinction. A prompt and impartial investigation into the attacks should be urgently conducted.”
- Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa Director at Human Rights Watch
It’s not a war crime because Lebanon and Israel are not at war,
Their defense minister literally just said it was a war…
Speaking to Israeli troops on Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said, “We are at the start of a new phase in the war — it requires courage, determination and perseverance.” He made no mention of the exploding devices but praised the work of Israel’s army and security agencies, saying “the results are very impressive.”
They’re desperately trying to start wars to drag the US in while Biden is still in office.
If an all out war happens, there is 100% chance Biden dives into it.
Kamala there’s a slight chance she does the right thing, and trump’s price to go against Russia’s allies will be ridiculously high.
So they want Biden to be the one to react.
I swear it’s got to be to drag the middle east into a massive war to maybe trigger some sort of clause that forces the US to go to war for Israel or end up with massive penalties. It’s the only thing that makes sense that isn’t just, “For the Evilulz”
And I swear to fuck if the US was actually stupid enough to enter a deal that forces them to go to war and send troops if the entire Middle East turns on Israel…
I mean, bibi seems to have the US by the short and curlies. I have no doubt that if things got spicy enough the US would gladly send boots on the ground to die for Israel’s actions. I could even imagine bibi saying “oh we’re so hurt, you guys do this, and we will stay back to defend our territory” while some poor schmuck from winsconsin gets exploded by an ied.
Pagers. Can’t imagine who the foremost users of pagers would be in 2024.
*cough doctors *cough
I have not seen a doctor with a pager in a long time and I have spent a ton of time in hospitals over the past year. They all have smartwatches now.
Is this universal around all of Lebanon or only the hospital you were at? There were reports claiming medical personnel were hit with the pagers.
Absolutely impressive stunt by Mossad. Incredible targeting
Target large swathes of civilian populations is incredible targeting?
Only to those that think race/religion is what determines if someone is a legitimate target.
