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)

That's the dark side of the moon. You, of all people, know we have the other side.

@Summernightsinthe21stcentury this is you too.

Yes but that's Israel's MO, it the hypocrisy that gets me, they pretend to have the moral high ground while carrying out acts of terrorism.

@cakeorwine

Everyday objects filled with explosives - so you can't be confident that it will explode when you want it to and who it will explode next to
They were pagers bought by Hezbollah and issued to Hezbollah, not picked up in a store by Joe Bloggs. The signal to explode was sent at 3:30 and went off at 3:30 across the country - the plastic explosive wouldn't explode without the signal. Agreed that they couldn't know who the person would be stood next to, but in the majority of cases the pager would have been in the victims pocket or on his belt, so unlikely to hurt anyone else.

The unintended consequences of an explosion - such as on a plane, a driver on a bus etc They were small explosions so unlikely to have any larger consequences other than killing the individual, but if that individual was flying the plane/driving the bus then you have a point about a higher death toll (luckily no-one was in that case!)

What have I done?

Absolutely I can see the hatred on the Palestinian side and I can also see that hatred on the other side.

You understand that both sides are right and both sides are wrong. Get your peace with that. And there is nothing you can do about it. Let it play out.

You are 1 of 8 billion people. You cannot speak for 'most of the world'.

Countries designate terrorist organisations and in the UK there are rules about how you can talk about that on SM

Your opinion won't count against that

No but I’m sure she can speak for everybody with a conscience and a speck of morality.

The precisely targeted attack disproves your point. If they wanted to murder indiscriminately, they would have set off bombs that killed everyone in the area. 🙄

I am talking about the majority of the world countries that supported the ceasefire and end of the Israeli occupation, not my opinion. Look at all the past UN votings.

Like they do in Palestine.

Yes the Israelis are really careful of not inflicting any damage on innocent civilians 😒

If you contextualised your posts it would be more helpful. I would not want to misunderstand you, for example.

It's wounded between 10-15% of Hezbollah's fighters, temporarily made the Lebanese hospital system completely unable to cope with Hezbollah launching a ground attack on Israel and completely disrupted enemy communications. All without having to send a single Israeli soldier into Lebanon. That is what it is has achieved.

Also, all those videos Hezbollah make, showing their fighters training and threatening to wipe out Israel; well, now they've just been completely shown up.

Hezbollah is responsible for thousands of deaths in Lebanon, they only have political power there through violence and intimidation and a huge amount of Lebanese people truly hate them.

I’m going to bow out of this thread as there’s really no point in people on opposite sides of a highly emotive and distressing topic keep going backwards and forwards.
I will say though that surely at the point the Palestinians were held as prisoners and pushed into a corner of their own land without adequate recourses that this was always going to lead to hatred and conflict?
And surely with such deep rooted hatred and the further hatred that will now be present, Israel will keep pursuing Palestine and anybody with the backbone to defend them (whether done in an acceptable way or not)?
A ceasefire needs to happen and Palestine needs to be freed. But I don’t believe there could ever be peace now and that Israel know it and won’t stop until every Palestinian is gone.
Every life lost in this is utterly tragic and the whole situation is heartbreaking.

Hezbollah is responsible for thousands of deaths in Lebanon, they only have political power there through violence and intimidation and a huge amount of Lebanese people truly hate them.

Yes, there's a good reason why so many Lebanese (and Syrians) have been celebrating the last 24 hours and creating meme after meme on social media, both those in the Middle East and their communities elsewhere.

They were put in what were the most likely items not to be picked up by random civilians - how or why would a regular person come into possession of a pager or walkie-talkie issued by a terrorist group? What item do you think would be more likely to be only handled by the people it was issued to - ie terrorists? Theoretically, someone might have dropped one and it might have been picked up by someone else, but even then would they have kept it? It's a pager, not a brand-new iPhone! If I found a pager on the floor I'd hand it in, or put it to one side so the owner could find it if they retraced their steps. I wouldn't keep it - why would I?! Imagine it was a doctor's pager, or an army-issued walkie-talkie that you found on the floor... would you just pick it up and put in your pocket? Why?!

I guess it depends on whose stats you are following.

The Hamas Health Ministry would have you believe it’s 40,000 civilians. Apparently none of whom are Hamas.
I guess if you support Hamas you will take what they tell you as fact.

How many civilians are Hamas and how many are innocent? I don’t know. Many Gazans were cheering in the streets after 7/10, and polls would indicate a huge proportion support Hamas although recent reports suggest Hamas fakes those polls so hopefully many civilians do not support Hamas, and like Iran, are just caught living under a horrific terrorist regime being used as human shields. Must be absolutely dreadful, I can’t imagine the impossible position. Saying that, there are clearly those who are holding the hostages and do support Hamas. The network of tunnels and military basis set up in schools and hospitals must make it very very hard to tell what’s what. An impossible task for Israel. I’ve no idea if they’ve approached this task proportionately until we hear all the evidence in front of the ICC. No findings of genocide have been found, despite many declaring it as fact. This is not to say it won’t. We just don’t know yet.

And in the meantime all this suffering continues. But it will continue so whilst a regime (and many in the west) continue to seek the eradication of the Jewish people. They do need to defend themselves. Although many in the west seem affronted by this idea, it seems they’d be happy if they were just raped and murdered quietly.

Well this really, they are engaged in a war and have just impaired their opponents ability to attack them without having to bomb any apartments. Hezbollah is a designated terror group that has basically taken control over an entire country.

The explosions were tiny, most of them survived, thats how small these detonations were. Israel isn’t doing this because they are big meanies they are doing this because they are at war. I saw a few videos where the person with the device was injured but people standing next to them were absolutely fine.

Terrorism is targeting of civilians to spread terror. They were targeting militants to reduce their ability to attack.

A terroist pager is probably one of the most guarded items they can have

There is a lot to say about all this but this angle to me is the least relevant

It's a bit late in the day to be worrying about innocent civilians being killed when it's been happening for over a year now just for this, let alone all the other incidences in the world.

According to Israel everyone is a Hamas leader, there seem to be more of them than DFS sales.

Actually they are !

In Ukraine, when Russia bombs a shopping centre or Rail Station, they wait 45-90 minutes and send missiles onto the same co-ordinates. This is deliberately designed to spread fear and to kill emergency medics, firefighters and aid workers trying to save lives. It is called 'double tap' and occurs after a strike.

In Gaza, the IDF before a strike against a single building perform a 'double knock' which is two sets of pyrotechnics ignited on the roof of the building. This is to warn people the building is going to be destroyed. Terrorists within and their staff and civilians have time to exit.

The regimes in Russia and in Iran, together with its Hezbollah puppet, kill indiscriminately. This is well documented.

Your morality is pretty wonky if you see Hezbollah and Hamas as the victims 😹

I assume you have the same energy for the many documented rapes and murders Israeli ‘soldiers’ have been committing for decades. Are you concerned with them?