https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/17/dozens-of-hezbollah-members-wounded-after-pagers-explode-in-lebanon
Hezbollah official calls it the group’s ‘biggest security breach’ in nearly a year of cross-border fire with Israel.
Hey @oberstoffensichtlich@feddit.org, you were saying that "these were extremely surgical strikes, people in the vicinity weren't harmed"?
Thousands of people injured, all guilty of something ofc, because Israel would never do an attack which might harm innocents. Right? /S
You're genuinely pathetic enough to try and imply that none of the victims are innocent?
I loathe "people" like you.
I think they're implying this mostly hit Hezbollah members, not than none of the victims were innocent.
That said, you do know Hezbollah is basically the same as Israel, just without the backing of the USA, right? They also want genocide. The way this was dealt with was one of the best options when dealing with a group that wants to genocide your country. It also shows Israel chose to start the war with Hamas, and likely allowed the October 7 attack to happen, if they've had this capability all along.
The dad who's girl died literally brought this on himself. He chose religious fanaticism over family. He's in Lebanon, not Gaza, not West Bank - he could have chosen not to be part of a group that wants to wipe out a whole nother group. This is on him the same way it's on an antivaxxer when they're kid gets sick. There's plenty of damn good reasons to wish Netanyahu dead and in hell, but this ain't one. I doubt him and his right wing extremist possé came up with this operation since they would have deliberately chosen something with way more innocent casualties.
I think they’re implying this mostly hit Hezbollah members, not than none of the victims were innocent.
Based on... what exactly?
The clear implication is that "number of Hezbollah member > victims = no innocent victims."
And then you instantly jump into defending genocide. Holy fucking shit I honestly can't communicate with words how disgustingly pathetic I find that.
No, I'm not gonna engage with your whataboutism and start arguing with you about how "Hezbollah deserved this absolutely pathetic terrorist attack."
"Brought it on himself brought it on himself"
You fuckers still haven't realised that Hammurabi's law makes the whole world blind, huh? That was almost 4000 years ago, ffs. Read a book, preferably a modern one and not some tome of propaganda from thousands of years ago.
You're literally defending the death of a 9-year old girl. You have to be sick in the fucking head to do that. Honestly.
And you should read Popper's Paradox of Tolerance.
Eye for an eye makes the world go blind only works when one party doesn't exist solely to exterminate another.
That's what Hezbollah is.
I have never defended genociders - you on the other hand keep defending Hezbollah.
The world needs to deal with Hezbollah the same way it needs to deal with Zionism and the same way it eventually dealt with the Nazis.
Tell me dumbass, do you think Netanyahu and co. will stop his campaign on Gaza if everyone decided not to retaliate? Or would he just order his men to take advantage of the situation and shoot them down? Do you think the Nazis or any other group, such as Hezbollah, intent on genocide would accept peace?
Of course ideally such corrupt evil fucks could be eliminated with no innocent casualties. But that's unfortunately not the way the world works. Do you think innocent casualties didn't occur when other fascist evils were fought? You think only military personnel were killed in WW2?
You're either a naïve kid, or have thought up of miracle solution like a death note.
This was a case of monsters fighting monsters; we're lucky that this at least was an actual very precise strike one monster did to the others, rather than their usual M.O. of just striking buildings with missiles.
You're seriously saying "they deserve the 'eye-for-an-eye' treatment" while Israel is actively escalating the conflict?
I have never defended genociders
Oh okay. So where have I done that? In assuming that 3000 civilians who were harmed weren't exclusively Hezbollah? Which would be an utterly ridiculous claim seeing how many literal children there are involved.
So.. you've never defended genociders. Then let's see if you will. Is Israel committing a genocide in Gaza?
You think only military personnel were killed in WW2?
I've actually been in the military and have had training on what is and isn't legal to do in armed conflict. Have you?
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule12
Rule 12. Definition of Indiscriminate Attacks
Rule 12. Indiscriminate attacks are those: (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.
Anyone else confused about how these bombs are actually detonating? Articles say they are detonating via a text message sent 3x in error, theoretically causing either a spark or a "closed circuit" like a different article explained. The article (from al jazeera) says they have to look at the message but there's video of one igniting in a bag.
I'm curious because I think these pagers may actually constitute a public safety risk, similar to how heavily landmined areas risk exploding even decades later on someone unrelated to the initial conflict.
Nothing in an electronic device, save for a very overvolted capacitor, could come anywhere near to as explosive as these were. Even LiPo batteries don't explode like that.
These were explosives planted in the devices when being manufactured.
Not sure if you've seen videos of the explosions or the aftermath.
Both, al jazeera source says the explosive inside is PETN. What I'm asking is how tf did text messages and whatever in the walkie talkies ignite a spark strong enough to ignite the PETN? Is that true? Or is it possible some of these are still live or ignited in a faulty way? What is the risk to the public?
Afaik such an idea was nonsense previously. Why are we taking their word that this is sophisticated at any level when they've been simply brutal up to now?
Israel has a reckoning coming. The mercy they have shown is the mercy they will receive. I wish they would stop.
Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was among those injured by the pager explosions on Tuesday, Iran’s Mehr news agency reported.
Attacking ambassadors is a great way to become an international piriah.
It just says he was injured, which could happen if you were in close proximity to someone wearing one of the pagers. News here showed one of the explosions occurring in a grocery store, with plenty of people nearby, for example.
Obviously for getting in touch with them. That's what ambassadors do. Anyway, doesn't matter, Israel will never have a use for ambassadors.
Bibi really wants a war with Hezbollah, doesn't he? I mean you can't call it defending Israels safety anymore when you provoke any and all responses every other month with a missile here, a bomb there and now thousands of bombs everywhere. This is just another measure to keep Netanyahu in a conflict so that he doesn't have to bear the consequences of multiple corruption cases against him and the dissolving of his coalition outside unity cases in a war. Why is Europe and the US still covering for him? What is the rest of Israel doing?
I'm German. I won't touch this conflict with a stick from 10meters away. (Which means our government has similar issues, especially with all the fake news floating around and people who think this is their sign to show public antisemitism.... in Germany!!!!!!!)
Are they not already at war with Hezbollah?
They've been killing each other pretty much non stop for 40 years.
What's that if not a war?
During the last month there were not 1, not 10, not 100 but 807 alerts in Israel for missile attacks. Some of them weren't fired by Hezbollah, and some might have been the same alert in different areas, but that's still about 7 missile PER DAY even if we assume only 1 in 4 alerts was due to an attack by Hezbollah (side note: during the entire war, about 2,000 missile were launched from Lebanon to Israel, that's an average of about 6 per day). In addition to this, there were 452 aircraft intrusion alerts. Most of these attacks are against civilian targets.
Right now, there are about 79 thousand people (around 0.8% of total population) who are still evicted for nearly a year from northern Israel.
And just in case it needs to be said - the first attack was made by Hezbollah (on Oct. 8th) and without any provocation by Israel.
Not only is this a situation no sovereign country can stand, but it's also a violation of the Lebanon-approved UN Security Council's resolution 1701, that was the basis for ending the 2006 Lebanon War. Hell, just having missiles in the area is by itself a violation of the resolution.
Regarding political reasoning - A war in Lebanon is actually bad for Netanyahu. His interest is a slow-burning war so he can prolong the current situation as much as possible (once the war is over, the pubic will demand an election). In fact, that's probably the main reason you had "a missile here and a bomb there" and not an actual war.
A war in Lebanon is actually bad for Netanyahu. His interest is a slow-burning war so he can prolong the current situation as much as possible
The current situation is that he's in a war in Gaza and that is keeping him in office. He can still spin this as "we are fighting against an existential threat". Rocket defence and retaliation strikes aka the slow burning war in Lebanon is not enough for the Israeli society to unite behind Bibi. Only if they seriously attack. And I think Netanyahu wants to provoke such an attack.
Sending thousands of bombs God knows where they land is not a proper defense. It's a huge escalation where Hezbollah will answer. I think the best argument against this strike has been thrown around everywhere: What if Hezbollah made such an attack where 3000 bombs where sent to IDF people. We would talk about a terrorist attack. Why is that different now?
First off, I think we should contextualize what happened - according to some news sources, the bombs were supposed to go off in the first days of an Israeli attack that would probably start an all out war (Some Hezbollah operatives became suspicious). The operation wasn't intended to create an "escalation where Hezbollah will answer", rather opening a full out attack against Hezbollah to force them to stop firing missiles at Israeli civilians and abide by the UN resolution.
Israel didn't send "thousands of bombs God knows where they land". They planted bombs in hardware that is used exclusively by Hezbollah operatives and their accomplices to evade gathering sigint. Yes, civilians got hurt. That's the nature of war, and what makes it so horrible - people who might hold no malice nor pose any threat to the other side get hurt and die. The modern rules of warfare aren't designed to eliminate civilian casualties, rather mainly to deter the warring parties from using civilians as a tool of war. That's why an army can't hide behind civilian population, but given an army that's hiding behind civilian population, it's acceptable for the other army to fire at them as long as they take proper measures to minimize civilian casualties (this in meant only as an example, not directly relating to Hezbollah or Hamas). If any act that results in civilian casualties is not "proper defense" I don't think there has been a single case of "proper defense" in large scale armed conflict in modern history. People in the west might not realize it because for the last decades wars are fought away form their boarders, so it's easier to view civilian casualties as optional.
And you know what? I'd WISH all civilian casualties in war would be confined to people who are in direct proximity to enemy personnel. If I could press a button and replace all Hezbollah attacks against civilian targets with bombs sent to IDF personnel, I'd do so in a heartbeat.
Regarding Netanyahu - right now, he's slowly climbing in the polls. His plan is to keep his coalition from falling apart till the next election. Anything that disturbs the current situation is not in his interests (and, on the whole, the last time Netanyahu was proactive in anything other than a political capacity was about 2 decades ago). If Netanyahu wanted a war, he would have the public's support for it months ago (in fact, the public very much supports a large scale conflict in order to stop Hezbollah targeting Israeli cities). His hand is being forced by other parties in the coalition. The obvious "culprit" are the far-right parties, but I personally think the main catalyst are the ultra-orthodox parties. This gets a bit complicated, but bear with me: The ultra-orthodox parties need to pass a law that'll exempt their constituents from military service (long story short - they were exempt for years but due to court rulings, need a new law to keep that privilege). Galant (the minister of defense) is the one stopping the law from passing. Netanyahu was about to replace him and sell it to the public as Galant being the one who was against a war against Hezbollah. Actually, I'll go as far as saying Israel being forced to activate the bombs prematurely, thus stopping Galant from being fired, makes a war a bit less likely (Though obviously other factors have also been put in play, so the government can't just do a U turn).
They planted bombs in hardware that is used exclusively by Hezbollah operatives and their accomplices to evade gathering sigint. Yes, civilians got hurt. That’s the nature of war, and what makes it so horrible - people who might hold no malice nor pose any threat to the other side get hurt and die.
How is this argument different than defending the use of landmines?
So the pagers were ordered by Hezbollah. You send that text you don't know if they are at a daycare picking up their kids, if they lost the pager and it's sitting on some restaurant owner's countertop next to some other family, etc etc etc.
There are so many things that can happen between when those pagers get rigged and sent out and the time they are detonated.
If Israel seemed at all like they tried to avoid bombing and shooting civilians in Gaza we could at least defend their actions there by saying "clearly they are trying to avoid civilian casualties" (we can't, but we could) - but there is nothing but hopes and prayers to avoid civilian casualties in an attack like this.
Literally if any non-governmental entity did the same thing, no one would hesitate to call it a terrorist attack. And that's what it is here, a terrorist attack.
Edit: Acknowledging that I typed Hamas out of habit instead of Hezbollah. Corrected.
The pagers were used by Hezbollah, not Hamas. They are two different entities, and while it doesn't make any difference in the narrow context I'm replying to, it's really a basic detail that anyone voicing an opinion on the matter should know.
How is this argument different than defending the use of landmines?
From the Wikipedia entry about landmines: "The use of land mines is controversial because they are indiscriminate weapons, harming soldier and civilian alike. They remain dangerous after the conflict in which they were deployed has ended, killing and injuring civilians and rendering land impassable and unusable for decades. To make matters worse, many factions have not kept accurate records (or any at all) of the exact locations of their minefields, making removal efforts painstakingly slow."
Planting bombs inside pagers specifically used by Hezbollah isn't indiscriminate (unless by "indiscriminate" you mean "when they go off, they harm anyone in the proximity", but going by that definition everything with an exploding charge is "indiscriminate", yet only mines are banned). And obviously exploded bombs don't remain dangerous and aren't difficult to remove.
The pagers were used by Hezbollah, not Hamas.
I realize that, I was drawing a parallel between the two circumstances.
And again - when you drop a bomb, you can credibly have made an attempt to ensure no one is in the vicinity who you don't intend to bomb. (Not that israel seems to do this) - this is especially true with modern technology.
You cannot reasonably predict the path that a pager takes once it is shipped, no matter who it is intended for, not least because no one expects a pager to be the source of a deadly threat. You control who owns that "bomb" you have just sent into the world only until the moment it is unpacked and given to the first person who takes possession of it.
I realize that, I was drawing a parallel between the two circumstances.
Err... what circumstances? What was the purpose of drawing a parallel between Hamas and Hezbollah? What insight was I to gain by it? Asking seriously.
And again - when you drop a bomb, you can credibly have made an attempt to ensure no one is in the vicinity who you don’t intend to bomb. (Not that israel seems to do this) - this is especially true with modern technology.
Sorry, were you making two arguments or one? You asked about the difference between landmines and what Israel did. I thought the rest of what you said was to show how planting bombs in pagers is like landmines, not a new argument. If there were two arguments, you didn't respond to my answer regarding landmines.
I can talk about the difference, and you'll respond with a counter argument etc. Ultimately, it'll come down to me saying Israel is able to reasonably predict who'll carry the explosive and you saying they can't. The bottom line for me is this:
Some weapons have been banned from warfare while others haven't. The banned weapons follow certain criteria for being banned. exploda-pagers don't follow the criteria under which landmines have been banned. If you know of other weapons or tactics that are banned and are akin to exploda-pagers, we can discuss that. Otherwise, I'm left with the conclusion what Israel did falls within the bounds of a legitimate military operation. You can, of course, think differently.
It's war they wanted and it's what they have. Couldn't make it work in 75 years. We've heard enough and seen enough, nobody gets the benefit of the doubt in this. And I'm scared to even post this mild critic will make me an information warfare target. So tired of this shit.
He wants the US at war before the sea change. once elected or close enough to it Harris can change her tune.
Mark my words... us will be helping Israel with troops on this one.
Because fuck American taxpayer pussy.... We got a genocide in Levant to get done 🫡
Because Arab lives have no value in
Israeliwestern society.
FTFY.
To be fair, Jewish lives also only matters to the west if they are busy murdering brown people.
It depends on the Western country - some are much worse than others when it comes to the whole practice of defining people's worth mainly from their race.
Some Western nations (maybe most of them in Europe) do tend to see value in all human live, Arab or otherwise, but many to indeed see no value in Arab life.
If I was to point a finger at the worst in Europe I would say Britain, Hungary, Austria and Germany.
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims.
While it's likely there were civilians hurt by this, the target was undeniably Hesbollah. So no, not terrorism.
Likely because the bulk of those wounded by this attack were not Hezbollah
I don't even know how you'd reasonably expect to only injure your targets in an attack as widespread and remote as this one. Seems blatantly indiscriminate at best.
Likely because the bulk of those wounded by this attack were not Hezbollah
What makes you think that? These pagers were bought by Hesbollah to be used by their guys.
These pagers were bought by Hesbollah
All we know is that a bunch of exploding pagers were distributed through Lebanon. The IDF claims they were given to Hezbollah agents, but they've been caught lying regularly.
At least 12 people were killed after the attacks,[60][1][61] and more than 2,750 were wounded.[5][6] Civilians were also killed,[10][13][14] including four healthcare workers[62] and two children.[63] It is not clear if only Hezbollah members were carrying the pagers.[19] Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said the vast majority of those being treated in emergency rooms were in civilian clothing and their Hezbollah affiliation was unclear.[64] He added the casualties included elderly people as well as young children. According to the Lebanese Health Ministry, healthcare workers were also injured and it advised all healthcare workers to discard their pagers.[64][65]
Uhhh, because these were bombs - bombs that were remotely and indiscriminately detonated. Some of the people were driving, some standing next to children or on busses full of people. There are reports of children who died because they were standing next to a target at head-level with the pager.There's no guarantee they were even being carried by "Hezbollah's guys".
I don't even know why anyone would assume otherwise. This was a loosely targeted terror attack
Stunning that you're being downvoted. This was a brilliant attack on a group that actually attacks Israel actually indiscriminately on the daily.
National order isnt based on tit for tat. If someone commits a war crime against you it doesnt mean you get to do it too.
In my opinion the time of day they chose to blow them shows they wanted as much collateral damage as they could.
What's the advantage of making excuses for committing war crimes?
At a certain point it stops being worth it. If sending a brainwashed 11 yo to blow up a checkpoint means you can no longer trust having any technology near you, your family and friends it might cause hesitation.
Is there any time of day it's not atrocious? Seems like any time would have basically equal risk for collateral casualties.
To be effective it all had to be at once. It seems that they waited until the pagers were being used to coordinate a fresh wave of rocket attacks with promises of more to come before setting them off.
Because that time of day is when the most people will be out in public. It seems deliberately designed to cause as much damage as widely as possible. Likely to cause fear in the population.
Is there any time of day it's not atrocious? Seems like any time would have basically equal risk for collateral casualties.
Then maybe it shouldn't be done at all.
Maybe all an army has to do to take over the entire world is bring their families to the front. Can't shoot back at them because their families are there. So they pretty much win every engagement. Problem solved. No more wars.
I would agree with this if they somehow only harmed Hezbollah severely. That was not the case.
It's less antisemitic though. Please don't conflate Jewish people with Israel, it's caused enough problems as it is.
Damn. This must be one of the most terrifying cyber attacks of all time. Like, Mr. Robot level of breach and execution.
In that show they rig the UPS batteries of server buildings to blow up, this is basically the same idea on a smaller scale.
Either that, or they compromised the manufacturer of the pagers and put small explosive devices in there. Truly legendary and insane.
no way it was just the batteries.
batteries burn but don't detonate with shrapnel
it was altered devices with explosives added.
Yeah they got into the supply route and added c4 to all those pagers. Makes me wonder how many pagers or smartphones have added explosives still.
There are several reports that the devices were made with the explosives built-in.
According to the spokesperson of the Taiwanese brand in a press conference, those were all devices produced by a Hungarian licensee of the brand.
Hungary, you know, been voting with Israel in the UN and also has a Fascist government which is massivelly racist against Arabs.
Kind makes sense that those things were manufactured in a country very friendly of Israel and with their authorization, already with the explosis built-in.
The interesting second and third level effects to consider of this are around the impact on things like Globalization (if having to start paying attention to the alliances of the countries the stuff you buy comes from the places which are part of a supply chain stop being irrelevant) and even brand licensing (that Taiwanese company will have their name pop-up associated with this in every single internet search from now on)
Also curious about what will this to to "Made in EU" - Hungary might just have screwed the rest of us much more than ever before.
Mass producing disguised explosives is risky business.
Obviously they wanna price them low, to attract buyers in the target market. But if you price them too low, they become an opportunity for middlemen to resell to another market.
And now you’ve spread several batches of explosives to who-knows-where.
Hopefully they thought of that and restricted the detonation trigger to specific country codes. But that doesn’t erase the fact that there are explosives in the device.
This made me think that the whole unofficial production of everyday devices with explosives in Hungary was a great opportunity for well connected Hungarian criminals wanting to get their hands on what are probably military explosives which is typically highly controlled stuff hence valuable.
I'm wondering if some of the stuff which was suppsed to have been used for this won't pop-up elsewhere in the EU in the hands of some criminal group, possibly even used for a terror attack.
The possible implications of this shit just keep in getting better and better.
As someone who's accidentally punctured a large lithium ion battery with 100% charge I can tell you that explode isn't exactly the right word. While I'm sure you could create an enclosure that could explode from the pressure, the battery itself just kinda shoots out a small jet of fire along with some toxic gas.
Cool video. But that looks like what I expected. The videos of the pagers are small direct explosions and not really the heavy flame and smoke of the videos.
That powerbank in the bus.. whoa.. and those guys with the ebike in the elevator.. stuff of nightmares.
Yeah, being trapped in a lift with a burning Ebike battery sounds like not much fun at all.
They have over-pressure vents and will vent pretty violently and catch fire, but should not explode due to pressure build up.
They still explode in some cases. Plenty of clips of li-ion not just catching fire but exploding similar to how a firework might explode.
Probably not. It was almost certainly the case that these pagers were already connected to explosives, probably to be IEDs. All Israel would have had to do is page the pagers to detonate them. I can’t think of any other logical explanation.
I don't think the thousands of pagers built this way really count as "improvised."
That being said, it makes me wonder if this went in any way according to plan - 8 deaths and 2750 injuries is a large scale attack, don't get me wrong. But they've now announced Mossad has compromised the supplier of the pager, which they will undoubtedly audit, and instill new policies on device security. I wouldn't be surprised if that means they discover a lot more compromised electronics, allowing Hezbollah to pinpoint the compromise. Because 2750 survived, you now have 2750 people very interested in finding it.
In all, for 8 deaths, they've made their own work harder.
That being said 2750 injuries could be a large enough number to scare members out of the org.
I heard they recently switched to pagers because cell phones where deemed to be compromised. So I think besides the direct deaths and injuries, this attack also targeted lines of communication and trust in technology as a whole (or anything supplied by your superior even).
Yeah, that's what I read too. It's a smart way to force the weaponized pagers into the hands of your enemies.
Also sort of shows the attack wasn't too sophisticated. Mossad might not even have compromised the cell phones, they just fed bad intelligence to whoever and they had a likely supplier already compromised.
In all - it doesn't look too good for any intelligence personnel in Hezbollah.
besides the direct deaths and injuries, this attack also targeted lines of communication and trust
Exactly. The psychological impact of this attack should not be underestimated.
It will have Hamas' leadership and operatives second guessing so many of the mundane things that they interact with on a daily basis.
Im more surprised that Hezbollah issues them. I'd thought pagers were cheap enough as consumer items that they'd just give their guy a wad of cash and say go pick up such and such pager for me.
Would have at least severely hampered any precision from man-in-the-middle attacks on supply lines such as these. Especially when being embedded within a civilian city.
If those pagers had explosives, I wonder if the explosives were put there as a sabotage or for "destroy if found" functionality
Perhaps the latter? My first thought is still that the pagers intended use was for triggering explosives, and they were simply triggered early by the other side.
You would not put it inside the pager if you want to use it as a trigger. You would also not ready-make thousands of those and let thousands of people carry them around.
Yeah, I've been wondering how the fuck they pulled this off. If it turns out that the only pagers that exploded belonged to Hezbollah members, then that would signal to me that this was done entirely digitally.
I've heard that batteries (can't remember if it was laptop or phone batteries) contain the energy of a small grenade, but getting it to release that energy all at once without physical access is absolutely fucking wild and has serious fucking implications for device security.
I'll save you time. Licensed factory in Europe, making Chinese beepers, was compromised or owned by Israel. They then put explosives in the pagers and set them to explode when paged a certain code.
They knew hezbollah was the purchaser, and would disperse them amongst its members.
I think its stupid unless it stopped some imminent horrible attack. Otherwise, Israel has given themselves away, and only killed 8 people for it. Maybe they had trouble rigging them to steal their communications.
Specifically in Hungary, same country that has been voting with Israel in the UN and also has a Fascist government.
It sure makes manufacturing involving explosives much more easily to go ahead if the local government has approved of it.
I'm curious what this will do to the "Made In EU" brand in the rest of the World.
It wasn't "stupid". As a psy-op, it further complicates Hezbollah's communications, sows fear among Hezbollah members, demonstrates Israel's far-reaching capabilities, makes civilians suspicious of Hezbollah officials, etc. If Israel does something similar a couple more times, Hezbollah will have to resort to bicycle couriers and smoke signals.
It also undermines Hezbollah's credibility. The Lebanese people are not stupid. They know that Hezbollah is a shadow government allowing Iran to control Lebanon and use it as a staging ground for attacks on Israel. That leaves Lebanon in a permanent state of semi-war with Israel, not to mention its involvement in multiple other external conflicts. None of which is helpful for the health and prosperity of Lebanon.
Lebanon is a natural trading nation and always has been. It is a beautiful country full of kind people with excellent commercial instincts. They are held down as a nation by the fact that Hezbollah has turned the country into a pawn of the Ayatollah.
The obvious solution is to just procure their equipment from China only as they are naturally not allied with Israel if only because geostrategicaly they'd adversaries of the top Israeli ally, the US.
Given the indiscriminate nature of this attack this might imply purchasing decisions all over the World from much more than merely "members of groups deemed terrorist by the US".
Well sure. Modern war is all about adaptation. Exploding pagers were never going to be a knock-out blow, just a clever psy-op. One among many, I'm sure.
The point being that sometimes things that look "clever" if you only look at the obvious primary effects are not at all clever when you also consider secondary effects.
If only when it comes to "ease of eavesdropping" it might very well be in the best long term interest of the Israeli Security Services that the rest of the World keeps on acquiring Made In Europe and Made In US devices which this action will likely impact (one thing are accusations of "backdoors" in certain devices a whole different thing is seeing on TV a mass attack were a batch of devices all made in a nation allied with Israel contained explosives and that were detonated in all manner of arbitrary places hitting thousands of arbitrary people).
Then there's the possible impact on Israeli Allies' exports of electronics given these pagers were specifically manufactured in Hungary (a very strong ally of Israel) by a company licensing the brand name - is it really a good idea for anybody in a political, state or security position in any nation not allied with Israel to buy any device with remote access capabilities from made in any nation allied with Israel or with a significant part of the supply chain passing thorugh one of those nations. If they're willing to have explosives put in them and detonated in the middle of crowds of civilians, what else are they willing to do - it's the same reason why buying Security Software from an Israeli company is extremelly stupid for any company (even in allied nations) only now Electronics is also included, there's very obvious proof that they will do just about anything (rather than merelly an unproven risk of industrial espionage) and the risk also includes things sourced from nations allied with Israel.
Time will tell just how big those two classes of secondary and tertiary effects really are.
Mind you, as I see it anybody who gets in bed with ethno-Fascists like the Zionists deserves all the damage that comes from them having no limits whatsoever to what they'll do.
When I say "clever", I dont necessarily mean it was a good move toward their long-term goals. I mean that it was ingenious and skillfully executed, requiring the coordination of many parts, and displaying deft trade craft.
Frankly, arguing whether "ethno-fascist Zionists" or "Muslim fundamentalists" are worse is kind of pointless. Neither is high on the list of things I support.
Most Israelis are not "ethno-fascist Zionists" any more than most Gazans or Lebanese, or even Iranians, are Muslim fundamentalist theocrats. All of those populations are caught in bad situations that were set in motion decades ago. On balance, if forced to choose a side to support, I would support Israel, like most other Westerners. At least they have a functioning democracy and largely adhere to Western values. The Israeli religious right wing is extremely problematic, of course, but it looks to me like they are headed for defeat in the next election. We can't say the same about Hezbollah or the Iranian theocracy or any of Iran's other proxies.
The bottom line is: FUCK ALL RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM. Doesn't matter whether it is Muslim, Jewish, Christian, or Hindu. They all suck.
Thats a fair opinion, although I think its likely to cause the opposite reactions than you listed. But again, who really knows.
Also I'm sure most people in most places are good people, just like anywhere, Lebanon included.
Good point. I should have qualified what I said by saying that the Israeli operation may have the effects I listed. But, as you say, it might backfire and have the opposite of the intended effect. I guess that is always a risk with these types of operations.
Maybe the truth is both will happen, but its not clear which would be the majority opinion, or the opinion of those in power.
Getting batteries to release energy isn't very difficult, even getting them to release it quickly isn't very difficult. What's difficult is getting them to release it over the course of a few milliseconds. Which is what you would need for an explosion.
If the battery simply dumped all its power over the course of 30 seconds that's basically just a fire that you can run away from.
Also I wouldn't have thought a pager had that much charge, I wouldn't have thought this sort of thing would be possible as they would tend to just go off with a loud bang, assuming you could even get them to release all the energy at once l, which again I wouldn't have thought was possible.
For fairly obvious reasons I don't think we're ever going to find out how this was done.
Maybe there will be a faulty one laying somwhere now thrown away by the owner? That will be nice for analysis.
I am surprised the name of the manufacture is not out. This basically raise privacy concern.
They were on TV over here (Portugal) doing a press conference were they explained the devices were made in Hungary by a company which licensed the brand name from them (a Taiwanese company) so the manufacturer's name (which I totally forgot) is definitely out.
That will give a lot of idea to other people maybe soon having a phone on you will be a big risk
They've done a similar thing at a smaller scale with individual phones in the past. What is different is this time it's not targeted at a specific person and instead involves thousands of devices going off simultaneously. It's not a big risk unless you have nation state level threats up against you because it's hard to pull off, they have to get a functioning device with explosives in it into the hands of the target and the effort involved in doing that is significant.
This is definitely one of the most interesting attacks that’s ever happened. It certainly doesn’t look like an accident. If it was indeed Mossad: take a bow, you’ve earned it. That was a pretty slick move. That was probably a difficult op to pull off. Gotta respect the craft, even if you disagree on the method.
9/11 targeted and killed civilians. This attack largely struck Hezbollah militants, who are in open hostilities with Israel. Doing things this way is far better than the seemingly indiscriminate bombing in Gaza.
You know not everyone in Hezbollah is a « militant » right? They have a large political party and civilian governance apparatus. This is terrorism, nothing new to Israel.
To take this to it's logical extreme, how do you feel about assassination attempts on high ranking Nazi officials? They're non combatants, after all.
Militants specifically use these pagers for security and stealth. Everyone else just uses phones.
It's a brilliant way to target only combatants, and also expose them to their friends and neighbours. This attack is incredibly disruptive with very little collateral damage compared to alternatives.
And yes, it's terrorism, an attack meant to inspire terror and disrupt communication networks with a chilling effect much larger than the actual damage. However it's interesting as unlike most terrorism it does not target civilians.
It's also terrifying to think we are living in a world where a malicious component attack is a legitimate concern. This is one of those moments that change the world - I'm sure every industry is thinking about the danger of their foreign supply chain right now.
And I'm sure Islamic State and the Taliban have non-combatant elements too.
I don't mind Israel defending against militant groups that fire rockets into Israel. I do mind them carpet-bombing civilian populations. This pager-thing seems to have the hallmarks of an operation that manages to cripple Hezbollah with a minimal loss of life and even fairly low civilian casualties. I much prefer Israel do this over the alternatives.
The US army does indeed, and they would be valid military targets. People working for the EPA, perhaps not so much. Hezbollah however is structured towards support for the militant arm, as the Lebanese government handles civilian tasks.
Well it seems its up to the attacker to decide what is considered valid military targets. Al Qaeda viewed 9/11 as a valid military target.
Indiscriminate killing is always bad, no matter how targeted you think it is. In this case it was mass maiming, oh and a few kids died right? That'll teach em to stop being bad people won't it!
Its not rocket science how they did it. What is the impressive part? Are we really just going to say civilians don't matter? Is it impressive to you because of how many people were hurt?
In no way is it required to respect the craft or the method.
How exactly did they pull that off? And with walkie-talkies too. There's no way you can do that with normal RF. The only thing I can figure is they had to intercept the devices and tamper with them in some way.
I'm no fan of Hezbollah but how is this different than spreading land mines? Even if you kill civilians in an air strike at least you can claim there were enemy combatants there. Here it is just "Eh, we'll just kill people at random and see what happens."
These were pagers specifically ordered by Hezbollah. Random civilians wouldn't have had them.
How many injuries, I wonder.
It is extremely cool that we continue to take "Everyone wounded by these pagers was Hezbollah" at face value once again.
This, from the same organization that bombed hospitals, schools, and refugee camps while insisting every one of them was a Hamas command center.
Thousands of peoples were wounded. And by the nature of a pager you do wear them when out and about and not only at the HQ
There's thousands of Hezbollah militants as well. We don't know yet exactly how targeted the attack was.
Regardless "only" 9 people died so far. Thousands were wounded, but that's much better than land mines would've been. This attack was extraordinarily targeted, and despite there being civilians hurt, they're likely to be less hurt than the militants and unlikely to be among the dead. Every civilian death is a tragedy, but Hezbollah and Israel are in an armed conflict. Some civilian deaths are unavoidable. I much prefer Israel do this than the indiscriminate bombing on Gaza.
Most likely most of them were though. I mean I don't think many people outside Hezbollah were using pagers, not to mention that most likely they tampered one or two batches of them only.
I am just wondering what the official government of Lebanon is thinking about this incident because in my opinion that's a huge blow into the sovereignty of a foreign country. Imagine something similar happens in Israel or the US, do you think those countries would sit on the diplomatic table and negotiate?
The problem with explosions is that they injure everyone nearby, not just the person with the explosion in their pocket.
You can look up the videos. People standing three feet away are fine while the person with the pager is down for the count. Innocents are always harmed in war, but this was about as precise and just a strike as humanly possible.
I'm sure that'll make that girl's friends and remaining family feel much better.
The explosions had to happen at the same time to be effective, and so people who were being attacked were in a variety of places. Detonating explosives in an uncontrolled variety of public places is not precise.
Agree, but the explosive inside is very low, so the damage is mostly going to be inflicted on the person who this pager belonged to. From the initial reports all the casualties were linked to Hezbollah and even the girl was a daughter of a member of Hezbollah.
Me personally, I don't defend the actions of Israel, but still think it is a lot more targeted than dropping 2000lbs. bombs over densely populated areas. Another question is of course if this will achieve anything other than strengthening the resolve of those people.
Unfortunately, nowadays to win a war, you simply need to be the richer and more advanced nation, and Israel has the upper hand here.
That "even the girl was a daughter of a member of Hezbollah" part got me very angry.
Kids don't deserve to get blown up, even if their parents are mass murderers.
I have never said that. What Israel is doing geopolitically is a grave mistake and would ultimately give birth to a lot more terrorists that they will kill ultimately and won't lead to any long lasting peaceful solution in the region. And all this is happening with the silent endorsement of the West, which is even more disturbing.
Is this a cyberattack, or pre-planted explosives?
My dad used to have one and it runs on single AA bsttery. It will burn if exploded but I doubt will that make "man fell on the groud bleeding." Newer models might use recharable batteries, yet the BMC (logically thinking) should be sperated from the communication part as charging have nothing to do with it. How are you going to use SMS to hack a part of the system which isn't connected?
If it is pre-planted explosives, that's just wet work and nothing to talk about it.
Of course, the attacker can do a supply chain attack (by threating/hacking the manufacture, excluding explosives) as a stage to make the cyberattack possible.
NYT has a link up which it claims has been verified. It is a video of someone at a market who had one of these in their messenger bag. The video shows a decent size explosion, which blew a big hole in the bag and knocked the guy to the ground.
I doubt you could make an explosion that big with a AA battery. They must have planted the stuff in some massive supply chain hack.
Yep, all the electrical engineers who have chimed in say it looks more like explosives.
A battery would get hot and start a fire. It wouldn't instantly explode like this.
Given how targeted the attacks were at certain people, does this imply a bunch of people walking around with explosives in their pagers, where they weren't set off because they weren't one of the targets?
NYT says this switch to pagers has been recent, after the Oct 7 attacks last year, when Hezbollah suspected that Israel was spying on the cell network, and using it to locate targets for strikes. So all these pagers got distributed to Hezbollah-affiliated people in short order . This system doesn't use commercial networks, and has been called a "closed" network by the NYT.
If all that is true, then that means anyone with one of these closed-network pagers got it from being involved with Hezbollah in the first place.
Yeah this is what I'm confused about. In a lot of simpler devices like this the BMS is actually a daughter board and has no physical connectivity to the main circuits at all. And even if it had access you generally do not have the capacity to rewrite its code, because again code updating is not something that was ever expected.
I cannot imagine how you'd cause this via a cyberattack. I'm sure they manipulated the devices somehow. Crazy move though. I struggled reading the first headline (not this one), because I just could not fathom that they mean actual literal pagers.
"Exploded" always sounded like an adorable kid word to me, like "He explodeded me!?"
I know its a regular and awful normal term but some things still sound funny to me
Sort of telling how you can teach people to associate good thoughts with awful things. Conditioning is a bitch.
I wonder how they did it. Was the firmware hacked to make the batteries ignite or were separate explosives implanted in each pager?
Almost certainly it was explosives. Mossad very likely designed a functioning pager that contains explosives but looks identical to the original pagers and this is effectively a supply chain attack.
Oh shit... Let me call the police about this! Sure thing! Right away!
Wait a minute!
LOL! You think I'm that stupid? You call them! Here, take my phone! I'm just gonna go hide behind that 1" thick steel wall! Oh, should we just run over to the station? It's safer that way.
Whats scarey here is the amount if energy stored in smart phones. Pagers hold a fraction of the energy and the application here to the smart phone is the same.
I read in a NYT headline that they were pagers with explosives added in.
Here's the article I saw but didn't read.
If you see the video there is no way a battery behaves like that, even if you drive a nail into them they more rocket flames than explode (I used to work in a battery lab).
I should clarify, typical cells won't explode, you could defeat safety features for pressure release in a can cell but at that effort they would have just added something more energetic.
I doubt the lab experience.
Lithium ion batteries do explode, off-gassing and pressure alone can do significant damage when contained. While typically closer to a thermite reaction, conditions determine damage which have been killing people from either heat or poisonous gas. I can point to state occuption work regulators that have a documented case of an explosion while plenty of deaths from battery fires can be found in the news.
Editing this again because when this story first broke I had assuming that this was a targeted attack on very specific people. I had also conflated Hezbollah and Hamas - and yes, I do know the difference, I just wasn't paying as close attention between work, personal things, and Lemmy posting and made a mistake. And while I don't support their attack on Hezbollah, I was still impressed with what I had assumed was a very targeted attack. But now as more information comes out, this really looks to be no different that if they had sprinkled land mines around someone's home... sure, it might get that person, but it can also get innocent people as well, and that isn't impressive. In summary, fuck Israel. Fuck Hamas. Fuck Hezbollah.
This goes to show that Israel could have taken out Hezbollah Hamas leadership at any time... there was no need to raze Palestine other than to move people out so that Israelis can move in and rebuilt.
He did. But the proponents of Greater Israel do actually include Lebanon. They also include Jordan, Syria, parts of Egypt, Parts of Saudi Arabia, and parts of Iraq.
This ideology is dominant in the ruling party of Israel.
does it still stand? are Hamas using the same supply chain of altered pagers?
signs point to no.
Yes, it still stands... if Mossad is able to get to Hezbollah's leadership that completely, I think they are likely more than capable of doing the same with Hamas' leadership.
I'm sure Israel caught a lucky break through whoever they had in Taiwan, to get this opportunity.
Israel has assassinated a staggering number of high ranking Hamas officials, less so for Hezbollah but their leadership has also been targeted