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How Israel Built and Sold Explosive Pagers to Hezbollah (gizmodo.com)

submitted 1 month ago by jeffw@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

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[-] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 37 points 1 month ago

From a technical standpoint, this is an incredible achievement. From a moral or rational one, though, JESUS FUCKING CHRIST THIS IS TERRIBLE.

I just don't even have the energy to list all the ways this is an insane and destabilizing thing to do. Fuck. God, I wish we had any electoral power of America's terrible foreign policy.

[-] Deceptichum@quokk.au 2 points 1 month ago

God, I wish we had any electoral power of America's terrible foreign policy.

You do, but it means not supporting at least two parties.

[-] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I agree, although so far there don't seem to be enough of us.

[+] nonailsleft@lemm.ee -16 points 1 month ago

Do you think it's worse than Hezbollah firing rockets over the border?

[-] Wrufieotnak@feddit.org 11 points 1 month ago

Nah, I would say pretty much same idea of disregarding civilian life.

So you see Israel also as terrorist club now?

[+] nonailsleft@lemm.ee -19 points 1 month ago

Not really

It's a country that was attacked by Hezbollah, and is trying to take them out with as little civilian casualties as possible

I don't think there are many countries that would just sit back and take it because they can't accept any collateral

[-] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 17 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The reasons why this is such a big f'g deal are many.

First, this IS textbook terrorism. An entire country full of civilians is paralyzed with fear of any item blowing up at any moment. In addition to the killing and maiming, this is deliberate.

Second, Mossad is innovating new theaters of warfare. Others will imitate this. This further legitimizes any place -- hospitals, schools, houses of warship -- as legitimate venues for bombing. And that includes in the US.

Third, this is ANOTHER escalation! Most of us don't want a giant regional war! And yet people act like Hezbollah was so provocative that they gave Israel no choice. Netanyahu is clearly the instigator! Hezbollah is actually in a terrible place to fight a war. They do not want this, but feel constantly compelled to maintain their credibility. They have repeatedly taken a minimalist approach because they really don't want to fight this war. This could end instantly if Israel just accepted a ceasefire in Gaza. Ironically, Israel is escalating in Lebanon because there is basically nothing left to blow up in Gaza and Netanyahu needs a constant war to stay out of jail. The claim that this is to let residents in the north go home is the same as the claim that the war in Gaza was to bring back hostages. A year later, ask the kibbutzim how that worked out.

All of this is common knowledge in Israel. The head of the military is about to be replaced for repeatedly stating that all of this is contrary to Israel's security!

It's just insane.

[-] nonailsleft@lemm.ee -4 points 1 month ago

Why doesn't Hezbollah try not firing on Israel? Turns out when they do, Israel doesn't strike back. I think it's stupid to think Hezbollah should be free to attack Israel but any response is 'escalation'. If you're serious that you don't want war rule n°1 should be: don't start shooting rockets at them

[-] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 month ago

This is such a weird, unproductive observation that people make all the time.

First: my point is that we in the US should recognize that Israel's actions are making the US and Israel less safe. It would definitely be nice if Hezbollah stopped fighting, but that is essentially a non-sequitur. It's not a counter argument that what Mossad did is a good idea that any of us should support.

Second: this observation that they could end the war by not fighting is true of every side in every war. Russia could end their war in Ukraine if they stopped invading. Ukraine could end the war if they surrendered and let Russia invade them. Hezbollah and Israel could both end this war by not fighting it. What practical guidance does that provide?

I'm not interested in watching this like a history channel documentary. When I type, I'm expressing what I think we should all say and do as people with (supposedly) the ability to influence our governments. I don't have control over Hezbollah. I don't really have control over Israel or the US either, but at least I'm supposed to.

[+] Hlodwig@lemmy.world -8 points 1 month ago

Bruh... Chill... Hezbollah is launching rocket indiscriminately at civilians, Israël is carefully choosing its target with these device. Average lebanese dont give a fuck about this, they want Hezbollah to get the fuck back in Iran and want a normal and not corrupted government... Thats all. They fear much more about their own country going deeper into the shit and another accident due to poor government control (like Beirut harbour explosion), than Israël commiting surgical strike near them (most of lebanese see the death of this douchbag as a good news).

And its not an escalation, assassination of high ranked dickheads of Hezbollah/Hamas/Iran has always been their creed. It was like this before Netty, it will be the case after, and until no other threats to Israel exist (So basically until Iran political implosion).

Netty and his braindead settlers are only opportunists of a war between Israël and Iran that never ended. But the situation would have been the same if Netty never existed...

[-] Tagger@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Carefully choosing to murder 2 kids?

[-] Hlodwig@lemmy.world -4 points 1 month ago

Much careful than sending randomly launched rocket on civilian... All the victims were from Hezbollah or related to them. Hezbollah representative in Lebanon is the one responsible for his son death, his choice of hatred and war is what lead to his son death...

[-] Wrufieotnak@feddit.org 9 points 1 month ago

This is as little civilian casualties as possible for you? I disagree with that evaluation.

[+] nonailsleft@lemm.ee -8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

3000 hits and 2 kids dead? Those are solid stats compared with 'conventional' attacks and especially with those from Hezbollah

[-] Wrufieotnak@feddit.org 9 points 1 month ago

That the other 3000 hits are Hezbollah people is said by the Israel army, which is not exactly known for being truthful regarding non israelian civilian casualties, to say it in a neutral way.

The kids are especially put in the foreground of the discussion because they are definitely innocent. For any regular middle age man? Fat chance when the IDF even says schools and hospitals are terrorist buildings. They just call them terrorist, because they only kill terrorist. You got killed? Means you were a terrorist.

[+] nonailsleft@lemm.ee -6 points 1 month ago

Info that those hit were by far and large Hezbollah members is also coming from journalists on the ground. Speculating that Hezbollah distributed these pagers to anyone but their members is wishful thinking on the part of those that want to convince themselves

[-] Wrufieotnak@feddit.org 5 points 1 month ago

Can you give me a link to articles from the journalists on the ground please, I'm not doubting you, I just haven't seen them myself yet. I only saw articles which reference officials from both sides (which doesn't really mean anything between Hezbollah and Israel)

[-] WanderingVentra@lemm.ee 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I'm doubting them. The IDF always lies and this person is defending a genocidal country and terrorist, ethnostate. It's like giving Nazis the benefit of the doubt. But I'd also be curious to see these articles of proof that everyone killed was Hezbollah. The pictures I saw before showed lot of collateral damage and I doubt the two children were Hezbollah. This method of attack is very fire and forget, there's no way they have that info unless they have journalists at every hospital asking if the people coming in with blown off hands are Hezbollah.

[-] nonailsleft@lemm.ee -1 points 1 month ago

Here's one example:

The explosions maimed many Hezbollah members, according to footage from hospitals reviewed by Reuters. Wounded men had injuries of varying degrees to the face, missing fingers and gaping wounds at the hip where the pagers were likely worn.

There's also footage of some of them going off. Together with the reports of people with missing fingers (holding the pagers) and the relative low number of casualties vs the number of affected devices show that the explosive force was rather limited. It would be extremely unlikely that these devices, distributed to those that needed to be securely reachable by Hezbollah, caused many collateral damage.

[-] Wrufieotnak@feddit.org 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

First: thank you for providing the article!

But that is not what you claimed earlier. Reuters specifically doesn't claim they are or are not Hezbollah members. Just that they saw videos of hurt people.

Just to make my stand point clear: I don't mean that this attack mostly attacked civilians, I just don't think we are at a level of information yet, where the full broadness of the attack is clear. If it really would be 2 innocent on 3000 hits, then yes, that would a "good" number.

[-] nonailsleft@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago

If you expect journalists to verify who is and who's not affiliated with Hezbollah at the hospital doors I hope you understand that that's just an impossible bar to clear.

But if you Occam's razor that bitch, it's just statistically impossible that so many men and not women and children would be injured or dead, with these kind of injuries, if it were any different. There's plenty of footage where you can see the force of the blast.

[-] FelixCress@lemmy.world 28 points 1 month ago

Israeli government are terrorists.

[-] rimu@piefed.social 21 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/2024/turning-everyday-gadgets-into-bombs-is-a-bad-idea/

That blog post describes how it works in more detail. We now live in a world where any battery could be a bomb, there is no way to detect it and the equipment for making those bomb-batteries costs $15k on Ali Express.

[-] Danterious@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 month ago

I had a feeling that this war would start something like this. Israel has been a testing ground for advanced military technology/ideas for a while. Now that they are engaging in war it was inevitable that techniques or ideas that they have been hiding would eventually get used leading to the world being more dangerous than it was before.

Also as a side note this is why low tech is such a good idea. A small amount of dependencies usually means something is safer in the long run.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

[-] catloaf@lemm.ee 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Going low-tech is what got them here. The change to bulkier devices gave Israel the opportunity to insert explosives. Using existing small devices would not have given them that opportunity.

Of course, that would mean Israel could continue spying on their cellular communication. It's a risk calculation.

[-] Danterious@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Well maybe I should've been more specific. The reason why I mentioned low tech is because it tends to favor localized production and tech that can be easily repaired/modified/created. The pager and walkie talkie attacks came from them not having control over how the tech was produced. If they did have control over that then it would be less likely that this happened and even if it did they would be able to recover quicker.

PS I actually don't really care about Hezbollah doing this. They suck. It is just in principle it would be better.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

[-] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 month ago

Yep. I had a feeling this genocide would continue with more terrorism.

[-] recklessengagement@lemmy.world 15 points 1 month ago

Sounds like another reason to standardize easily replaceable batteries.

If you can't trust a battery in a device, you should be able to replace it with a trusted one.

[-] daltotron@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 month ago

I mean I dunno, even if you switch to some sort of li-on AAs (something which I think would also be good for other reasons, like making recycling potentially easier, being able to swap batteries between devices, making batteries slightly cheaper), I dunno how many people are gonna want to slice open their own batteries and run tests on what comprises them. Since the half-life on any given set of batteries is probably in the range of multiple years, or at least several months, you'd probably be able to set up an attack before any government agency or private battery replacement or analysis would start getting off the ground to sus out what you're doing.

I think the only reason this might be harder with replaceable batteries, would be that the potential for batteries to get swapped out of devices means that you're less certain to see any kind of explosion from a given device that you've modified, and you're less certain to hit the particular targets that you want, but it doesn't seem like either of those would really be a big problem for whoever would want to do this sort of terrorism in the first place, so I'm not sure that's a major deterrent.

[-] Annoyed_Crabby 1 points 1 month ago

Israeli and the opposition party should start checking their electronics for explosive

this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2024

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