Good job uncritically posting a fake screenshot. It's edited from the public stats page you can find on third-party 4chan archives. You can even check the numbers at a given date from the Internet Archive.
You do in some countries. For instance, knowingly possessing video of the Christchurch massacre is illegal in New Zealand, due to a ruling by NZ’s Chief Censor (yes, that’s the actual title), and punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
> there’s been a (tense) ceasefire for nearly the last 20 years
True, but much of that was spent by Hezbollah fighting in the Syrian Civil War on behalf of Assad (their historical benefactor in Israel).
Now that the civil war is de facto over with Assad in control of most of the country except rump Turkish and de facto Israeli (Jabal al Deize) exclusion zones, Hezbollah returned to antagonizing Israel.
The Israel-Hezbollah conflict was bound to happen even if 10/7 didn't happen.
He’s not referring to the Gazan attacks of October 7, but the Hezbollah rocket attacks that started on October 8 and continue to this day, flouting the 18-year ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah and causing the evacuation of over 95,000 Israelis from northern Israel.
Israel has had a “no comment” policy for many years. Why? I can think of a few reasons. One is that some operations, if acknowledged by Israel, would trigger a proportionate response by the target, but if not acknowledged would allow the target to save face by downplaying what happened, if neither side actually wants war.
That probably doesn’t apply to this case, but has occurred in the past. And no-comment policies are more effective when applied unconditionally.
Hamas may be the “legitimate” government of Gaza (or at least the most recently elected one), but Hezbollah is not the legitimate government of Lebanon; it’s a minority party with outsized influence in parts of Lebanon due to its militia and intelligence services.
From your source: "killing at least nine people and wounding around 2,800 across [Lebanon]". That's a total casualty count, and does not distinguish civilian from Hezbollah casualties.
Hezbollah itself claims 100,000 members, by which this would represent ~3% of the total force as targets of the attack.
The devices in question were ordered by, and delivered to, Hezbollah, per an NYTimes report I've just mentioned in another reply to another of your comments.
Wikipedia reports some civillian deaths, "including four healthcare workers and two children" citing NBC News, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and Associated Press:
Given the very many highly motivated eyes on this story, I'm highly confident that if there were credible reports of a higher civilian casualty rate we'd be hearing about it in spades.
It's clear that there was some broader damage, but overall the attack was highly specific to Hezbollah. Arguments that this wasn't a highly-specifically-targeted attack don't pass the credibility test.
Again, I'm not uncritical of Israel, and try to follow the many nuances of the overall situation. I also realise that it's exceptionally difficult to remain dispassionate when its you and yours who are subject to attacks, and in a conflict spanning generations.
It says thousands were injured, not that the thousands injured were civilians. In fact, it’s likely that most casualties were Hezbollah operatives.
From the first link:
“Reports from Lebanon said Hezbollah recently received a new batch of imported pagers, which were being used to share information about possible Israeli drone strikes and other attacks.”
From the second link:
“The Lebanese armed group Hezbollah said the pagers belonged to the group’s officials and blamed Israel for orchestrating what appeared to be an unusual synchronized attack on Hezbollah’s communications system.”
Based on that, and the limited effective range of the blast (as visible in videos and the fact that the injuries are consistent with a pager in a hand or a pocket), it’s likely that the majority of injuries were of Hezbollah personnel.
Please explain to me how exactly Mossad got these pagers into only Hezbollah hands. It was just a shipment of pagers that was interfered with while in transit. There were absolutely non Hezbollah that had these things. Also please explain to me how nearby innocents were protected. That's right, they weren't.
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 AR924 model, though three other Gold Apollo models were also included in the shipment.
If you want to run with this argument, they have been at war since 1948, when all of Israel's neighbors including Lebanon invaded Israel following the UN vote to grant Israel statehood and Israel's declaration of independence.
There has been a UN-brokered ceasefire since the later 2006 war. Minor issues have occurred since then, but October 8 was the first major escalation between the two in almost twenty years.
Thousands were injured, yes. How many of the thousands injured belonged to Hezbollah? It’s a safe bet that the majority of injuries were sustained by owners of these Hezbollah-supplied pagers.
International law allows, to some extent, collateral damage during war (and Israel and Hezbollah are certainly at war). What percentage of collateral damage would you say is acceptable here? 50%? 20%? None?
Hezbollah are also terrorists. You might think it is ok to fight terror with terror, all I am trying to point out is that this is indeed a response in kind.
Hezbollah started encouraging its operatives to switch to pagers months ago, out of fear that Israel would compromise or had compromised their cell phones.
A lot of what I have been following is from here[1] and mentions:
- "Today's attacks exposed many members at various levels. While the group says many of those injured are medical staff or administrative personnel and not fighters..." as well as
- "Then we started seeing CCTV from inside shops and supermarkets of these small explosions targeting people doing their groceries or paying at the checkout.
Then for hours on end [we heard] the wail of sirens. The internal security forces were asking people to get off the streets because traffic was overwhelming the city."
And from my understanding of that region's geopolitics, isn't Hezbollah a political party? So this is like reading about a nation state blanket bombing targets that are of members of the Republican party right?
I just noticed my use of 'mostly' which unintentionally is doing more heavy lifting than it should. I was incorrect to use that word, but the point remains.
https://web.archive.org/web/20201224040114/https://archive.4...