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)

The devices are being used by a terrorist organisation to coordinate attacks against the Jewish people. If you are not involved in those attacks you won't have a pager supplied by the organisation. Collateral damage in the form of harm to civilians is regrettable but inevitable in this conflict.

It's 50/50

I think it's the nature of the thread question. There is no 'good' warfare that doesn't maim people. It's all hideous

Depends if you can be confident that the explosive devices are only in the pockets of those people and aren't anywhere else.

I wonder what would have happened if one had exploded on a plane? Or if a driver had been injured and ploughed into children?

Sadly war is a bit more complicated than that.

if you have a regime whose stated aim is the destruction of a country, and who will resort to the most brutal of tactics to enforce this, then what does your country do to protect its own children?

if they continue to launch rockets at your playgrounds and schools, killing children playing football. Do you do nothing ?

I have no answers and I have no idea whether Israel is proportionate and I do not support their government. I’m just sick of people with no knowledge of Middle Eastern politics or connection to the area ‘picking a team’ based on what social media algorithm they’re on.

Who knows where they could end up?

Do you?

This will continue to escalate until there is more and more countries dragged in.
Israel don’t give a fuck. Look at the sheer volume of people dead and displaced in Palestine.

Again, my question is - what WAS that actually supposed to achieve? It was a terror tactic pure and simple, it certainly hasn't actually had any major affect other than to prove yet again that the Israelis are hypocrites, incense and inflame relations between various nations in the region and edge the ME closer to all out war.

Did you miss the two children and four health care workers who have been killed?

Hezbollah are a terrorist organisation and the pagers were specifically for their use.

This, unlike a lot of what is going on in Gaza, was actually a brilliant calculated strike on terrorists.

The ratio of civilian deaths to combatant deaths was incredibly low.

This was a military coup and many will be looking up to Mossad for achieving it.

How many innocent civilians would the terrorists who were killed have killed if they weren't killed?

And then tell me how many of those would have been collateral killings as opposed to deliberate kills?

What ratio of innocent civillians killed to terrorists would be too much for you?

It's a war.

I saw a picture of a phone shop. That could easily have been fixing the pager for someone or something.

It's a very tightly targeted attack. Much more specific than lobbing bombs and missiles around. It'd be better if there were no attacks at all but as far as these things go it's about as clinical as they could have been.

Ratio is irrelevant when you are at war fighting for your survival.

Is it?

@cakeorwine ,

‘What ratio of innocent civillians killed to terrorists would be too much for you?’

Innocent civilians have been killed in every single war.

There are benchmarks for what is a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ ratio and, I can assure you, this operation was an exceedingly good ratio. The explosives were small and mostly on the bodies of enemy combatants.

I'm not interested in the usual whataboutery.
The pp said ONLY terrorists had them. That is blatantly untrue. It's clear from these type threads that plenty of people think Palestinian children don't count. That seems to now be extended to Lebanese children.

I’m not sure committing genocide of a country that you’ve locked behind walls and imprisoned is ‘fighting for survival’ but you crack on!

This is what it achieves:

“I am a medical worker, but the grudge I have now … I will insist on teaching it to my great-great-grandson. I was neutral, but now I’m going to take a side,” Yusuf said

And so it goes on. And on. Which is probably the aim.

One wonders what would have happened if one if those people with a pager was on a plane when it exploded.

It's ingenious for many reasons an it's really only Mossad who could have done this - and so successfully, too.

It will have the terrorists, and Iran, absolutely on the back foot now. They have no idea what else is waiting for them if they choose to pursue more indiscriminate missile attacks on Israel.

Ratio is irrelevant when Muslims/arabs are the victims. There. Fixed that for you.

Mossad has done exactly what they set out to do:

They have taken out legitimate (to them) targets, either through death or injuries that mean the victim is no longer able to be combatant.

They have proved they can infiltrate the supply chain.

They have seriously disrupted communications.

They have caused fear/terror and mistrust of the chain of command.

They have exposed 'sleeper' agents, including those in positions of power, working in hospitals and as aid workers etc.

Yes it is tragic that children have been killed, but as a PP put it, "The ratio of civilian deaths to combatant deaths was incredibly low" which shows how incredibly targeted the operation was - war is hell and children always suffer, but far fewer this way that with rockets/mines/bombs and so on.

We are always going to lose innocents in war. There is nothing we can do about that.

OP, what is your point?

Are you unaware of all the previous acts of war and terrorism where civilians have been killed and injured?