to think that putting explosives in devices such as pagers and walkie talkies can lead to indiscriminate injuries and killings

[cakeorwine]

Let's get the first thing out of the way - it's not right to fire missiles and rockets at people - as that can cause indiscriminate injuries as well.

Putting explosives in devices such as pagers and walkie talkies - it sounds clever. Just send a signal and an explosion goes off potentially injuring and killing your opponent who has it. It will also disrupt communication methods.

But once you put the explosive in it, you lose control of where it goes and when it gets blown up. It could be a child has it. It could be on a plane - and might not be picked up by security.

You don't know where it ends up. Which means that it has the potential for unintended consequences.

What about any that didn't go off? Are there objects that have been booby trapped and are just potentially waiting to explode - and who knows where they are? The thing about booby traps is that you just don't know who will set them off.

Booby traps seem to be against the International Humanitarian Law if they can injure civillians.

Customary IHL - Rule 80. Booby-Traps (icrc.org)

Yes; I would agree with this.

Apparently people can only be lawyers (or Jewish) if they agree with your perspective. What a tiny little world you must live in.

I hope you're in defence, that would certainly make you very 'successful'; with your clients though if not in outcomes.

When do solicitors refer to defendants who they represent as clients?

Phew. That’s ok then. Only 7800 dead kids at the hands of a sophisticated nation state. That’s only

2600 Southports
355 Manchester bombings
2.6 9/11s

In just under a year. And comprised entirely of children.

Thanks Israel.

I can't read all the posts justifying wanton terrorism from the government of a supposedly civilised democratic nation.

To justify terrorist actions by stating we are only targeting those who commited terrorist acts against us is twisted, immoral thinking.

Imagine if the Northern Ireland peace process didn't happen. Would the UK government have been justified in doing the same thing to Republican dissidents. To not care who got in the way, to not care about civilians, children nearby.

To not care that people are being blinded, maimed and killed indiscriminately on a massive scale.

That so many, decry terrorism, but only when it's the other side doing it!

That so many have lost their sense of what is right and wrong, have lost their basic humanity is truly shocking and horrifying.

It seems that maybe terrorism by all sides is winning if it has led us to this. The loss of our soul and empathy for others appears to be the legacy of all this.

I despair!

Rape sadly appears to be a disgusting fact of war. No one has denied this and i am not defending anybody.

My point is simply that one can’t compare the atrocities committed and broadcast by Hamas themselves on 7/10 with the ‘alleged’ crimes of one or two bad actors (seemingly called out and charged by their own). Israel may well still be found not to have engaged in this war proportionately or indeed to have committed war crimes; but they have not yet been by a criminal court. A tribunal that actually has the evidence in front of them. And neither have there been ‘widely documented reports of rape’ committed by Israelis. This was what I was querying.

My main issue is with taking propoganda, or social media posts, and regurgitating them as ‘fact’ to make sweeping, factually incorrect assertions about a whole people.

This stuff is dangerous and used to dehumanise and justify the next atrocity. Be more conscious of the part we all play.

Hezbollah obviously shouldn’t be using violence either. It works both ways.
Just as, if 40,000+ Israelis had been killed and the rest starved and bombed we’d probably expect a similar response from the world

Who precisely do you think is in control of lebanon? I have never actually used the world lebanon here but your point is just a matter of semantics.

Hezbollah controls lebanon, they actually have a Lebanese army believe it or not with barely any weapons because hezbollah have them all. The country is run by a militia. They have de facto control (bit like pakistan and it’s army for a good while). Nasrallah hasn’t officially declared war yet is happy to bomb the north of Israel for 11 months.

I’m struggling to understand what kind of profound meaningful point you think you are making. For most it’s simple country A is defacto run by a terrorist organisation and has been bombing country B for 11 months (with no internal opposition).

Positively Orwellian around here,

The UN has unequivocally stated this unprecedented attack was a violation of international law. There no point hashing over whether Israel or whoever was justified to do it, because they were not.

On a side note, I am wondering just how young some posters are as there appears to be a lot of confusion over how pagers work. A few comments have raised my eyebrows:

1. Pagers receive cellular signals. They don’t operate on radio frequencies or microwave.
2. Pagers do not transmit any signals so cannot be traced via cell tower locations like a cell phone which both sends and receives cell signals.
3. Pagers do not have GPS. They cannot be tracked
4. Pagers are not secure communications, so they aren’t being used for “top secret” communications.
5. Pagers usually only send numeric codes- most often the phone number of whoever is trying to reach you for you to find a phone and call them. Or they send numeric codes corresponding to simple predetermined actions like Code:99 = report to duty station, or Code 22: come to command post
6. The amount of explosive was significant enough to kill and maim. In the mainstream videos showing others nearby not injured it is obvious to see others were protected by a till counter in one, and by the body of the man with the pager & and fruit counter in the other. Other videos are probably too distressing to air.
7. Exploding individual pagers doesn’t “knock out communications” because the system is still up and running and it is very easy to replace the pager…same as if it’d been accidentally dropped in the toilet.
8. If the objective was to knock out this method of comms, they could have easily jammed the cell towers or bombed them with zero injuries or casualties. The options were not blow up 5000 pagers or blow up 5000 buildings full of people.

I have nothing more to say to someone who wilfully denies a genocide, other than your ignorance will be studied with horror by future generations. My identity is not for you to question.

The pagers were encrypted.

The purpose is not to knock out comms as in “look you have no pagers” it’s to reduce the comms options and cause disarray. Hezbollah were told not to use phones and were given pagers as an alternative, now they will have to use their phones or figure out another method of communication unless they want to order some more pagers. They want to make sure Hezbollah are suspicious of their own kit.

If the explosives were sufficient to kill and designed for that there would have been a lot more deaths.

I am.

@Flibflobflibflob please don't ruin @ToBeDetermined 's riveting rundown of the features of the pagers they know for certain, are being utilised by that lovely lot Hezbollah

If terrorists in the UK were firing rockets into civilian areas of a neighbouring country, that country would be justified in responding by specifically targeting the terrorists. How much do you know about Hezbollah? Hamas? Do you realise that the only people carrying those pagers were terrorists?

Is this propaganda? The UN confirmed Hamas raped women on Oct 7th and female hostages, this same UN has also confirmed IDF and Israeli prison guard rapes of Palestinian women.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/terror-and-security/sexual-violence-against-palestinian-women-un-report/

It is utterly chilling that you would dismiss the UN’s findings of credible reports for the rape of Palestinian women and accept the UN’s findings of credible reports of the rape of Israeli women only because some Oct 7th rapes were live-streamed. Is that what you think? Can’t be rape if it isn’t live streamed?

Please note, no rapists from Hamas or IDF have yet to be convicted in any court of law. The only arrests made thus far are for male rape.

https://news.sky.com/story/middle-east-latest-eight-dead-in-pager-explosions-include-hezbollah-fighters-militant-group-says-12978800

They were ordered to get rid of their mobiles as they could be hacked and to use pagers instead; as they are not networked they were considered safer as they couldn't be hacked, or traced. Now they don't have the pagers, many likely have no way of contacting other terrorists, and the boss terrorists have no way of contacting the drone terrorists. Which will (hopefully) make doing terrorism a bit trickier, at least until they all manage to find one another again. But even if they do all reunite, they'll have to work out how to keep in touch in the future... and they might be a bit nervy around technology for a while. What's more, this attack will have given them a big old scare - as you can see from the reaction, nobody even knew something like this was possible. This was an incredibly audacious, skilled and meticulously planned operation that demonstrates exactly what Mossad is capable of - and how far their tentacles spread. All the little terrorists are going to be looking over their shoulders for a long time, they now know they're being watched very, very closely. And who knows what else is in the pipeline...

Encryption merely means you are using a cipher instead of or with codes.
The communications are still in the open, so they are not secure. Pager encryption isn’t even a millionth as good as the basic encryption we have for free emails. You know emails are not considered secure comms, right?

No one can use pagers for secure comms to plan attacks. Pagers cannot convey enough information. You can only use them to convey short numeric sequences.

Sorry, but the fact there were deaths and amputations means that the explosions were in fact sufficient to kill or maim. If they were not sufficient to kill, then there would have been zero deaths.

The pagers were being used as an additional form of communication, I doubt very much that it is their only form of communication.

Hezbollah launched more rockets TODAY, so it didn’t affect their capabilities to attack Israel at all.

Yes, the true purpose of the attack was to cause fear. There is a name for that sort of attack….

My run down is not on a type of pagers, it is a list of the limited technology of all pagers.

A pager-bomb attack causes disarray for Hizbullah (economist.com)

"Months ago the group told its cadres to ditch their mobile phones, warning that Israel could hack them for surveillance and to target assassinations. Pagers were said to be a safe alternative, too low-tech to penetrate."

They won't be the only method of communication for all the terrorists obviously, it was reported that those higher up tend to rely on messengers. Plus not all pagers exploded, only the ones in that particular intercepted shipment. But it's caused huge disruption, and that's just the loss of the devices - hopefully many terrorists are too badly injured to ever return to 'work'. And I'm sure you agree that the fewer hezbollah there are in the world, the better...

An article written yesterday stating “disarray”- a now proven to be premature and incorrect assessment.

If they had been in disarray, then why did they get back to business as usual launching rockets into Israel TODAY? Less than 24hrs after the pager attack and while their walkie talkies were exploding?

The attack was more Psyops than anything.

😱 oh my gosh, how dare anyone try to take out terrorists!! Even if they picked them off one by one people would still have a problem or start throwing around “what ifs “, wouldn’t they. Hmmm I wonder why 🤔

What are you talking about? They don't need every single terrorist present to fire a missile, the attack has disrupted the organisation. Don't worry, I'm sure they'll still be people around who can fire indiscriminately into Israel - probably the big bosses who don't rely on pagers. But it will be harder to do any more serious attacks - and if Israel decides to attack them, they'll likely find defending themselves a bit trickier with a load of their fighters blind or ball-less.

And I have no idea why you've decided the article has been proven premature and incorrect? If you'd prefer an up to date one though, Israel has bloodied Hizbullah but is stuck in a war of attrition (economist.com) offers an even gloomier outlook for hezbollah:

"People close to the group describe a state of shock after the blasts. It has been obvious for months that Israel had penetrated the militia: it has had no trouble assassinating a string of top commanders. But the back-to-back bombings are by far the biggest security breach in its history. “Hizbullah’s military arsenal is virtually paralysed,” says Lina Khatib of Chatham House, a think-tank.
The group will need to spend months repairing its communications network and searching for leaks—hardly ideal conditions for a major attack against Israel. The attack also highlights a broader vulnerability for Iran and its allies: their reliance on imported electronics. Militias across the region will be nervous about what other devices might be compromised."

Because Hezbollah has about 50,000 members, about half active fighters and half reservists? Because many of them would already have been in position to carry out a planned missile attack from one of their many missile firing positions along the border as they've been doing for the last 11 months? Do you know anything about Hezbollah at all?

It’s horrendous for a civilised well organised country to use such an indiscriminate weapon.
they had no idea who is in the radius and no idea if innocent people would be injured.
it was clever in some ways but ethically no better than a landmire really.