Exploding pagers
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If I had read that in a work of fiction I would have thought the writer had too much imagination.
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Amazingly smart (and very scary) operation. Very little "collateral damage." Almost all of the "victims" are senior commanders and members of Hezbollah. They didn't have to kill lots of people to achieve their aims. Injury is sufficient. They have disrupted the organization and made everyone suspicious of necessary communication devices ... and of each other.
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Seems like the ideal time to use this chit would be a day or two before a major attack, no? Any bets?
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That was the basis of a story I read/heard yesterday, but there were hints/rumors that Mossad found out that someone inside Hezbollah had gotten suspicious enough to report fears of pager tampering to higher ups within the organization, and that that had triggered (so to speak) Israeli use of the preprepared tool. This may have been a case of use it or lose it.
It's possible that Israel will NOW see that one of their battlefield advantages is disappearing unless they go into southern Lebanon immediately, while communications are disrupted. If they do, we'll have the usual problem of determining causality. Did they blow the pagers in order to attack, or did they attack only because the pagers had to be blown for other reasons.
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Oh, geez, the NYT is reporting that the Hungarian "company" that produced the pagers was actually an Israeli-formed shell corporation that took on regular clients, as well as supplying Iranian-backed groups like Hezbollah. Perfect cover. Israeli didn't "tamper" with the pagers. Israel manufactured them! This is John le Carré level stuff.
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I’m reading that walkie-talkies and fingerprint scanners have been exploding as well.
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@Steve-Miller said in Exploding pagers:
I’m reading that walkie-talkies and fingerprint scanners have been exploding as well.
And maybe home solar energy systems.
The solar panel explosions were not linked to the suspected Mossad-orchestrated blasts in Beirut. There were no confirmation whether they caught fire from one of the devices and exploded or went off on their own. "A girl from the town of Al-Marwaniyah was injured as a result of the explosion of the solar energy system in her family's home, the NNA report from Lebabon's Zahrani read.
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IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari says top Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil and the top leadership of the terror group’s operations array and elite Radwan Force were gathered underground when they were targeted and killed in an Israeli airstrike a short while ago.
“They gathered underground, under a residential building, in the heart of the Dahiyeh, while using civilians as a human shield. They met to coordinate terror activities against Israeli civilians,” Hagari says in a press conference.
Hagari says that at least 10 Hezbollah commanders were killed in the airstrike in Beirut, alongside Aqil.
Elaborating on an IDF statement issued a few minutes earlier, Hagari says, “Aqil and the Radwan Force commanders who we attacked are the commanders who drew up and led the Hezbollah terror group’s plan, to be carried out on the day the order was given, to attack into the northern territory of the State of Israel — what they called ‘The plan to conquer the Galilee’.”
In this planned invasion, says Hagari, “Hezbollah intended to raid Israeli territory, occupy the communities of the Galilee, and murder and kidnap Israeli citizens — similar to what Hamas did on October 7.”
He says that “the commanders who we eliminated today” had been overseeing attacks on Israeli citizens since October 8, and planned to carry out more such attacks.
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More information coming out regarding the "how".
Israel had a hand in the manufacturing of pagers that exploded on Hezbollah operatives this week, with this type of "supply chain interdiction" operation having been planned for at least 15 years, a U.S. intelligence source confirmed to ABC News.
The CIA has long been reluctant to employ this tactic because the risk to innocents was too high, the source said.
Planning for the attack involved shell companies, with multiple layers of Israeli intelligence officers and their assets fronting a legitimate company that produced the pagers, the source confirmed to ABC News, with at least some of those doing the work unaware of who they were actually working for.
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That's kind of non-news. Is there anyone anywhere who would believe Israel was NOT behind this?
In any event, what a master stroke. Seriously minimal collateral damage, maiming or killing the majority of Hezbollah operatives, the ability to identify them through their medical treatment and the decimation of their communication network. Other than destroying possible weapons caches, I'm not sure what could be gained by a further incursion.
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My takeaway was not that it was news that Israel was generally behind the attack, but the details of how it was carried out. And probably surprising to me (but I don't get out much), that planning was going on for 15 years.
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Over 30 dead, almost 20 missing.
An explicit violation of international law.
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I thought it interesting that NPR went to activists rather than the law itself to define ‘booby trap’. So I asked ChatGPT4.0 if booby trap is defined in international law. (Bold in the original)
Yes, "booby trap" is defined in international law, specifically in relation to armed conflict. The definition is found in Protocol II of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), formally known as the Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices. This protocol was adopted in 1980 and aims to limit the use of these kinds of devices to protect civilians and combatants from unnecessary harm.
According to the protocol, a booby trap is defined as:
- Any device or material designed to kill, injure, or incapacitate and which is triggered unexpectedly by someone’s presence, proximity, or contact with it.
Examples include objects that appear harmless, like everyday items (e.g., toys, tools, or household objects), but are rigged to detonate or cause harm when handled or approached. The use of booby traps is subject to certain restrictions under international humanitarian law, particularly with regard to protecting civilians and non-combatants.
As these were triggered remotely it doesn’t seem to fit.
In the event, it was pretty well targeted. Most of the people killed or maimed were legit targets. Really well played.
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Link to videoThe U.N. says these attacks did violate international law.
Israel never complies with international law, anyway, so I suppose it makes no difference.
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I suspect indiscriminately lobbing rockets into another country is also a violation.
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@Daniel That guy called this a booby-trap but it doesn’t fit the definition provided in the law.
It’s hard to even conceive of a more targeted attack with less collateral damage directed at a terrorist group that embeds itself among civilians. I mean that literally, I actually can’t imagine one.
Can you?
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No. Seems fair to me. Brilliant, actually.
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Another thing about international law is it doesn’t reward groups that break it. Just because a military force such as Hamas or Hezbollah uses human shields doesn’t mean it can’t be attacked. Just that care must be taken to balance risk of civilian casualties against legitimate war aims. This seems to pass that test handily.
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The thing people don't get about Gaza and the West Bank is that the civilians ARE the targets.
They're not collateral damage.
But I've said this 100 times and included citations. I could say it 900 more times and people who don't, don't want to, or won't acknowledge it won't change their position.
The fact we are on the brink of nuclear war because of this conflagration is icing on the cake.
Oh, well.
