> More than 1,000 people, including Hezbollah fighters and medics
The CNN title implies that only Hezbollah members were targeted were reality seems different. It's crazy a country is capable of doing a "special security operation" on civilians of another country without any international sanctions.
That sounds nice, but by that logic no bomb would ever be fired. Under international law collateral damage must not be excessive, but it is permitted. If it was unacceptable, evil armies would do what they want and good armies would never fire a shot.
When you drop a bomb you at least know where it's going, here you have no idea.
Look at what's going on in Ukraine, if you can't tell a good from a bad shit you have to get your eyes checked. Hitting a column of tank isn't the same as targeting a civilian building
Wars are always bad and there will always be war crimes on all sides, it doesn't mean that everything is equal
In WW2 20% of US bombs fell within 1000 feet of their target, which were often in densely populated areas. Its only modern technology that lets us know where its really going
> In WW2 20% of US bombs fell within 1000 feet of their target, which were often in densely populated areas. Its only modern technology that lets us know where its really going
Is this supposed to be a gotcha ?
WW2 is the reason we updated the Geneva conventions to protect civilians lol
Then they also die/get injured. Being in close contact with a terrorist is a dangerous pass-time, and armies targeting foreign threats need to accept some level of collateral damage. In this case, we have thousands of injured terrorists, with hundreds dead, and an additional fraction of those numbers being non-military targets (civilians). It's certainly unfortunate and unpleasant, but this is an excellent ratio.
If it was targeting pagers used for Hezbollah's military wing then yeah, kind of justified. But Hezbollah is bigger than that, and seems this attack targeted the whole organization, not just the one that is commonly designed a terrorist organization.
I guess for an American comparison it's a bit like attacking all republicans for the actions of the Proud Boys or any other militia.
Let’s assume you accurately determine which thousand pagers are going to which people, and that you accurately determine which thousand are Evil Hezbollah Members and definitely not someone’s cousin or whatever.
Regardless of these (tenuous) assumptions, if you detonate a thousand small bombs, it seems fair to also assume that some of them might not be on the bodies of their intended targets, but rather outside on the counter by the shower or over by the car keys or something.
So no, I’d say this is a pretty tough sort of operation to justify.
There's a video of one that detonated inside a dresser, in someone's room. If there were thousands of those explosive devices some of them are inevitably, statistically speaking, not going to be with the intended target.
Pagers employ unencrypted communications and (because they are receive-only devices) use a broadcast system to deliver messages to the pager. [0] Israel is publicly very, very friendly with at least one very wealthy Five Eyes country, and may have less-public support from many other wealthy and technologically sophisticated countries. If Israel happened to not have the domestically-developed capability to get a copy of every single page sent in an area of interest, they could ask their good buddies at the NSA, CIA, or other such global intelligence agencies to shunt that information to them in a timely manner.
Given the organization's sophistication, there is absolutely no way that Hezbollah believes that the contents of their pages are secret. The worst-case outcome of a lost pager is that the organization temporarily loses convenient contact to the person at the other end of that pager. While this could potentially be operationally disastrous, it's more like losing your service weapon than it is leaving the plans for D-Day on a public bus.
These are not some random rednecks at a west Virginia Walmart. They're professional soldiers of a military organizations handling a secure communications device.
Not sure if you've ever been in the military, but when I was there, if I had left a secure device or my gun somewhere out of sight/reach and someone else got to it, I'd get in a ton of trouble and probably go to prison.
It's war. Much worse things have been happening in this war already (e.g. Hezbollah explicitly targeting Israeli residential areas and killing civilians). By contrast this action seems much more targeted and justifiable.
If your bar for taking action is "there can't even be a chance of hurting a civilian", then your army can't do anything, and your entire civilian populace is slaughtered when it's taken over by the enemy intent on destroying your country.
I am more pro-Israel in these conflicts, but you are a military target or you aren't, you don’t leave the military when you remove the uniform, only when you agree to leave the military.
In fact it is a common tactic of Hamas, when it is discovered they have passionately murdered civilians, that they immediately claim that it was an IDF soldier. Such as the case with Shanni Louk
I admire the clarity of your moral compass. But consequently if that is ok, then targeting reservists is also ok, right? And since almost everyone in Israel is a reservist there are really no civilians in Israel only military targets, right? So, Hamas an Hezbollah blindly firing rockets are actually striking military targets with surgical precision
The problem for your “argument” comes when you apply the harsh light of actual fact to it. Israel has 169,500 active personnel and 465,000 reservists. This represents 6.6% of their population. Furthermore, those age 18-40 can be called up in a national emergency just as most countries can call up a draft. This is not the same as reservists and still represents a fraction of the population.
Attempting to pass off as fact that everyone in Israel is a reservist and are therefore legitimate targets is simple disinformation. You already knew that, though. But hey - you had a point to make, right?
I probably haven't used the right term, I thought reservists are people who went through military service. This article (with obvious agenda)
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/the-myth-of-compulsory-militar...
says that the enlistment rate plummeted from 75% to 50%.
So, >every other person in Israel has gone through military service. If you compare that to "collateral damage" when killing Hamas' terrorists, shooting rocets blindly is more accurate
That's a weird question. It's war. There's no morality involved. But if your question is "is it within the norms of war to strike service members when they're not in uniform", then the answer is emphatically "yes".
That's why countries make agreements such as the Genocide Convention, Geneva Conventions, etc. There are (meant to be) strict consequences for breaking these rules. (I noticed you change your wording from 'rules' to 'morality' - still wrong.) Breaking these rules is why we have the concept of 'war crimes'.
The word 'war' also implies two armies battling, rather than an invasion following occupation. In any case, the Geneva Conventions apply in all armed conflicts.
Since the Geneva convention still exists*, no, it is not "within the norms of war to strike service members when they're not in uniform". See Protocol I.
Targeting off-duty or non-uniformed service members violates both international law and the core moral principles of warfare, as outlined by the Geneva Conventions and other international agreements. Denying this isn't just factually wrong, it's deeply immoral.
* Along with the Principle of Distinction, Proportionality, Non-Combatant Immunity and Civilian Impact, etc.
This is likely to settle out as one of the most surgical non-infantry attacks in the history of modern warfare, and because Israel is involved, 20% of the commentary is about how the people who set it in motion belong in the Hague. Think about what that says to people weighing the (correct!) claims that Israel has committed widespread war crimes in its occupation of Gaza.
None of that changes the facts stated, or makes any substantial argument as to how this doesn't constitute a war crime.
> This is likely to settle out as one of the most surgical non-infantry attacks in the history of modern warfare,
No, it isn't. There's already reports of murdered children, and people as far away as Syria getting injured. The Iranian ambassador to Beirut was reportedly injured, meaning this could precipitate nuclear war.
> because Israel is involved, 20% of the commentary is about how the people who set it in motion belong in the Hague
No, it isn't. You're literally the only person mentioning the Hague in the whole thread.
But yes, they do. That's where war crimes are prosecuted, and this is a war crime (see above), even if 'just' one of many thousands.
> Think about what that says to people weighing the (correct!) claims that Israel has committed widespread war crimes in its occupation of Gaza.
Huh??
Explain to me, please, how more targeted war crimes excuse completely untargeted war crimes, and war crimes targeted at journalists, aid workers, health workers, teachers, children, families, little old ladies in churches, premature babies, etc.
What you're doing here is establishing yourself as someone who believes a weirdly, ahistorically, spectacularly surgical attack on Hezbollah fighters is a "war crime". Which is fine, but people are going to point that out when you call other things a war crime, and you might care about that, because in those other instances you might actually be right (if it's Israel you're talking about, it's very likely you will be right), and the extra credibility might be helpful.
What I'm saying is that you're setting yourself up to be dismissed as someone who believes "a war crime is when Israel does war".
If the Geneva Conventions (among other agreements) which you're so determined to ignore didn't exist, then you may have been right.
But, they do, and you're wrong.
You're also moving goalposts. Are you still standing by your statement that war has no rules/morality?
> you're setting yourself up to be dismissed as someone who believes "a war crime is when Israel does war".
Israel set themselves up for that belief, not me.
By doing war crimes. A lot of them. Like this one.
Consider, if you would, that this effort to move the Overton Window on what constitutes war crimes is severely misguided. And you really ought to stop.
> No, it isn't. There's already reports of murdered children, and people as far away as Syria getting injured. The Iranian ambassador to Beirut was reportedly injured, meaning this could precipitate nuclear war.
Why would Israel fire nuclear weapons at Lebanon and Iran, two non-nuclear states?
edit: Also, can you cite anything to back this claim?
> Targeting off-duty or non-uniformed service members violates both international law and the core moral principles of warfare, as outlined by the Geneva Conventions and other international agreements.
I don't mean just it's in one of the articles of the Geneva Convention I mean where you're making your inference more specifically.
Hezbollah is a political organization with a paramilitary wing. The wing is designated as a terrorist group in many countries, the organization as a whole is designated as a terrorist group by not as many countries. France or EU as a whole, for example, consider Hezbollah a political organization and only the paramilitary arm as the terrorist group.
I think this willfully ignores the fact that Israel did occupy southern Lebanon for 15 years, never built a civilian settlement, and unilaterally withdrew from there under assurance from the UN that it would enforce an agreement to keep Hezbollah north of the Litani river, which the UN manifestly does not enforce.
From the article you linked to:
>> every policy expert I spoke with agreed that the chance that Israel would actually establish settlements in southern Lebanon is very low. Natasha Roth-Rowland, a scholar of the Israeli far right, explained that there simply isn’t the political will to advance settlements in Lebanon
This is the third comment on this thread you've written prosecuting the idea that Israel is on the eve of invading Lebanon. That's not very plausible. Israel isn't mobilized to invade Lebanon and lacks the capacity to do so while engaged in Gaza.
> This is the third comment on this thread you've written prosecuting the idea that Israel is on the eve of invading Lebanon. That's not very plausible.
Jerusalem Post, one of the major newspapers in Israel also believes that:
"Maj. Gen. Ori Gordin, the head of the Israel Defense Force’s Northern Command, is pressuring decision-makers to launch a large-scale incursion into Lebanon, while Gallant and IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi have expressed doubts over launching a war against Hezbollah"
The internal politics is that Gallant doesn't want to, he wants a ceasefire in Gaza and a hostage deal, but Netanyahu is currently looking to replace him and Netanyahu doesn't want a ceasefire/hostage deal in Gaza:
If Gallant goes, chance of war with Lebanon increases dramatically.
> Israel isn't mobilized to invade Lebanon and lacks the capacity to do so while engaged in Gaza.
Israel actually has almost no forces in Gaza right now - that isn't the problem. The IDF is much more committed militarily to the West Bank.
It is true there isn't yet a full scale mobilization of ground forces yet, but these wars usually start with air attacks while the ground mobilization occurs.
(a) These are a bunch of comments about what you believe Israel wants to do, not what it's capable of.
(b) You wrote, elsewhere on the thread, that Israel was set to take southern Lebanon in the near term. Israel is not mobilized to do anything like that.
> These are a bunch of comments about what you believe Israel wants to do, not what it's capable of.
In this article from yesterday, you can clearly see Gallant and Netanyahu both support an invasion of Southern Lebanon, only that Gallant doesn't want to do it now.
The reporter says clearly: "the Israeli military and security cabinet have been ramping up preparations for a war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which they hope would allow tens of thousands of displaced Israelis to return home"
> You wrote, elsewhere on the thread, that Israel was set to take southern Lebanon in the near term. Israel is not mobilized to do anything like that.
Israeli newspaper are clearly saying that many in Israel are advocating for an invasion of Southern Lebanon because now is a good time. Here is a JNS article from today:
"IDF Maj. Gen. Ori Gordin has reportedly argued behind closed doors that current conditions are favorable for the IDF to swiftly implement such a move."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/sep/17/middle-ea...