All: before commenting here, please verify that you're feeling something different—quite different—from anger and a desire to fight this war. That is not what HN is for, and destroys what it is for.
This site is for curious, thoughtful, respectful, and kind interaction—most of all with those you may disagree with, regardless of how bad they are or you feel they are.
If that's not possible, it's ok not to post. We'd rather have a thread with no comments than a thread with aggressive comments, let alone nationalistic or religious flamewar. There is far too much aggression in the thread below, which is is understandable, but please don't add more. It provides a fleeting sensation of relief, but then it just makes everything worse.
So, what exactly did Palantir provide? I'm staying out of commenting whether or not this was legal/justified and asking strictly what service this was that was sold.
Is this like, live location information provided from social media/carriers/etc? Is it AI guessing who might be a target based on collected data?
EDIT: I ask because this sort of claim could just be marketing on Panantir's end and the quotes and this post never actually explained what it was other than saying their software was used.
dundarious 7 hours ago [-]
I believe 972mag.com have reported on Palentir tech involved in the "AI target selection" programs that the Israeli military has used in Gaza. My recollection is they use a logic similar to the subprime ratings agency scandal: collate info on individuals (cell tower proximity, movement patterns, social media leanings), and find the top 5% of target candidates, call those "high quality" regardless of any absolute metric of quality, and then rubber-stamp approve air strikes on their homes by the human lawyers "in the loop" -- then repeat with the next top 5% and call those "high quality" again. The implication was that Palentir worked on the ranking system itself. (The 5% is arbitrary here, a stand-in for whatever top slice they do use)
There are a couple such systems, and I am speaking without the ability to take the time right now to find those articles to confirm/counter my recollections, so consider this a prompt for a proper review -- ironic.
The human in the loop gets a few seconds to decide if it's a target or not, do not know the exact number.
krona 5 hours ago [-]
Having being working as a direct competitor to Palantir on and off for the past decade, I'd guess one of their embedded engineers wrote a few custom SQL queries.
alephnerd 7 hours ago [-]
Most likely as a data lakehouse, but the Palantir angle is most likely overstated - Palantir has a tiny presence in Israel, and has had a history of overstating it's intel and defense credentials (eg. A three letter agency that churned Palantir was named for years after before they stopped calling them out).
That said, I have heard some positive feedback about Palantir's data integration capabilities - most other vendors don't provide bespoke professional services to build niche integrations for even low ACV customers.
missingcolours 6 hours ago [-]
The era of microservices and micro teams gives all "company X uses us" claims a different vibe. Maybe it used to actually mean "this is the thing Facebook uses to power its website on millions of servers" but now it's usually like "the team of 6 that runs the analytics platform for Apple Fitness+ uses this on 5 servers"
zipy124 6 hours ago [-]
Their association with defense comes from the fact they got their start in industry thanks to in-q-tel which literally has the purpose of funding technology for the CIA and intelligence agencies. So it would not be surprising if they were heavily intertwined in that world.
alephnerd 6 hours ago [-]
> thanks to in-q-tel
IQT has invested in hundreds of rounds, and in the cases I have dealt with personally, has been very hands-off. Most other IQT funded companies I know of never showcased it to the degree that Palantir has - for example, OpenText was a peer of Palantir in the early 2000s and never showcased it's IQT ties.
joecool1029 6 hours ago [-]
Thanks for attempting to answer what I was asking about. I have had difficulty finding out more about it, the alleged ex-Palantir commenter said this would be part of their Gotham product, but most of what I could find on that was buzzword data visualization stuff. If their old post history and what you're saying is accurate, then it's really just a database integration tool with a nice interface?
altairprime 5 hours ago [-]
“A nice interface” disguises the truth here. Palantir is so successful because they build minimum viable prototypes on the fly for clients, deliver rather than balk when custom code has to be written, and leave working solutions alone. (See also other replies about FDEs here.) It’s the kind of behavior I used to take for granted as normal as a small-town ISP, and were it not for their ‘ethics are the customer’s problem’ approach I’d have signed on as a database / dashboard engineer for them years ago.
alephnerd 6 hours ago [-]
> it's really just a database integration tool with a nice interface
In a way, though I think it understates how difficult of a problem unified data integration is - especially in organizations with disparate schemas and internal data that may often not be well documented and with dev teams that are often personnel strapped.
Most other vendors in the data integration space don't provide the same degree of support and hand-holding that Palantir does with their FDEs. The FDE model is their secret weapon tbh - it makes it easy for organizations to gain temporary staff augmentation without having to expend their hiring budget.
myth_drannon 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
impossiblefork 11 hours ago [-]
I actually consider the pager attack to be legal. There's obviously criticism of it, but I'm fairly sure you're allowed to do this kind of thing by laws of war.
Obviously this creates a huge problem for pretty much everyone though, since we can imagine that our ordinary consumer products from all sorts countries could similarly explode if we ended up at war with the manufacturers.
zug_zug 8 hours ago [-]
I don't know if it's "legal" or not and by who's laws, but it certainly seems like terrorism to me (i.e. intentionally creating a state of terror).
I think if Lebanon found a clever way to assassinate the top 45 military commanders in Israel the same people who are defending this wouldn't be calling it a "Legal act of war".
dralley 8 hours ago [-]
Targeted attacks against military/militia leadership is not terrorism - almost by definition.
If it was just random devices exploding, then sure, that could be considered terrorism. But it wasn't random devices, it was communication devices procured by Hezbollah and directly given by Hezbollah to their own members for their own purposes.
zug_zug 8 hours ago [-]
Two things
Firstly, generals, like anybody else can be terrorized.
Secondly, even if you only kill generals, that doesn't mean you didn't cause terror for everybody else. Imagine for example that Hezbollah found a way to poison the food for Israel's top X military personnel. It would cause a state of emotional terror for many people in Israel about their food safety for decades most likely, even if they weren't in the military themselves.
dralley 8 hours ago [-]
When Ukraine assassinates a Russian general with a car bomb, is that "terrorism" or is that just a targeted killing of a military leader during a war? Do you think this is somehow morally problematic beyond the typical standards of war?
Do you think that "normal" means of military action, like dropping a 500lb bomb, is less "terroristic" than essentially setting off a firecracker in their face/hands/pocket? Because, like, that's the alternative. If your position is that all forms of war are illegal, then you have the right to that opinion, but it's not a realistic position.
mamonster 6 hours ago [-]
>When Ukraine assassinates a Russian general with a car bomb, is that "terrorism" or is that just a targeted killing of a military leader during a war?
That depends on when the car detonates. If the car detonates when he and his guard enter it at 6 am near the defense ministry sure. If the car detonates when it is parked in the middle of Moscow at noon and 100 people are around then by pre-2022 standards it would be terrorism.
I think instead of these fake whataboutisms we should just admit that there is no universal bar and if it's "our team" then we are willing to change the standard.
In this case, we know that when Israel set off these pagers some innocent bystanders got hurt. No need to "whatabout".
HappyPanacea 6 hours ago [-]
No it wouldn't, as long as the target is military and you didn't have opportunity to killed him in base it is fine. At most you could complain it is violates proportionality however no car bomb would kill 100 people. Not to mention your analogy is flawed - hezobllah doesn't have any marked bases.
mamonster 5 hours ago [-]
>No it wouldn't, as long as the target is military and you didn't have opportunity to killed him in base it is fine.
"Opportunity to kill in base" is completely vague and varies depending on the military tribunal that will try you. Israel has, AFAIK, never said that there was no other way to kill those people.
>At most you could complain it is violates proportionality however no car bomb would kill 100 people.
>Not to mention your analogy is flawed - hezobllah doesn't have any marked bases.
This line of thinking justifies bombing (with massive collateral damage) any partisan /resistance movement that is constantly on the move. Which I guess makes sense since that is what Israel did a lot in Gaza.
tptacek 5 hours ago [-]
No, generals in an operational military force are definitionally combatants, and cannot in fact be "terrorized".
impossiblefork 7 hours ago [-]
No. Generals are always legitimate military targets.
zug_zug 7 hours ago [-]
So let me just understand your position here. Suppose the US declares war on Venezuela. Suppose a venezuelan living in America just looks up a bunch of US generals addresses online, and then sets all their houses on fire killing them in their sleep in their McMansions in suburbia.
Are you saying that's a valid military strike, and therefore can't possibly be terrorism? Suppose this person is so successful he kills 1,000 and generals and numerous quit their jobs and move in fear for their life, just to really clarify what you're arguing here.
bjelkeman-again 6 hours ago [-]
I think it is a valid military strike if a Venezuelan soldier does it on an order. Military targets where a strike are in danger of killing civilians are a hard judgment call. Generally one should never risk targeting civilians. Military law is a complex subject and officers spend quite a lot of time being educated in it. Here is a Swedish defence college course on it. https://www.fhs.se/en/swedish-defence-university/courses/int...
impossiblefork 6 hours ago [-]
I'm pretty sure even that is allowed, yes.
Obviously he must wear a uniform while actually conducting the attack though.
MrMorden 14 minutes ago [-]
If he wants to be treated as a POW rather than a spy should he be captured.
simmerup 6 hours ago [-]
That would be fine, it's war, and Venzeula would have to deal with the consequences also
adolph 6 hours ago [-]
> Suppose a venezuelan living in America just looks up a bunch of US generals addresses online, and then sets all their houses on fire killing them in their sleep in their McMansions in suburbia.
I don't think the analogy is apt. Members of Hezbollah do not occupy a positions of similar relationship to Lebanon as US generals does to the US. As far as I've heard, flag officers and others are escorted by personal security for an attack of any sort, such as the 2009 Ft Hood shooting. [0]
Moving past that, a civilian citizen of Venezuela in the US who performed actions against US military targets would not be a valid military strike since that person would not be an identifiable member or Venezuela's military. It would more akin to a spy or assassin. Below is an excerpt from an article representing a US-centric view of history [1].
But the right to kill one’s enemy during war was not considered wholly
unregulated. During the 16th century, Balthazar Ayala agreed with Saint
Augustine’s contention that it “is indifferent from the standpoint of justice
whether trickery be used” in killing the enemy, but then distinguished
trickery from “fraud and snares” (The Law and Duties of War and Military
Discipline). Similarly, Alberico Gentili, writing in the next century, found
treachery “so contrary to the law of God and of Nature, that although I may
kill a man, I may not do so by treachery.” He warned that treacherous killing
would invite reprisal (Three Books on the Law of War). And Hugo Grotius
likewise explained that “a distinction must be made between assassins who
violate an express or tacit obligation of good faith, as subjects resorting
to violence against a king, vassals against a lord, soldiers against him whom
they serve, those also who have been received as suppliants or strangers or
deserters, against those who have received them; and such as are held by no
bond of good faith” (On the Law of War and Peace).
The Geneva Convention ought to have something to say about how a general may and may not be attacked.
If I remember correctly, the assailant must be dressed in some sort of military uniform to be considered a prisoner of war if captured. Lacking the uniform, it would be espionage and no Geneva Convention rights.
Obviously, neither side in the conflict is adhering to these rules.
>The Geneva Convention ought to have something to say about how a general may and may not be attacked.
Except nobody in power actually gives a damn about the Geneva convention or the "laws of war" being thrown around in this topic.
Those laws were made up so that victorious powers can bully smaller countries when they lose a war, but superpower nations themselves don't have to abide by them because there's nobody more powerful than them to hold them accountable when they break those rules. Because laws aren't real, it's only the enforcement that is real.
Like the US also doesn't care about the Geneva Convention with all its warmongering and crimes against humanity in the middle east, and the torturing in Guantanamo Bay, and the likes of George Bush and Tony Blair will never see a day at the ICJ. Hell, not even US marines accused of using civilians for target practices in Afghanistan got to see a day at the Hague because the US said they'd invade the Hague if that happened. Russia also doesn't care about the Geneva convention and Putin won't see a day at the Hague. Israel doesn't give a crap about the geneva convention when bombing Palestinian hospitals, and Netanyahu won't see a day at the Hague. And if China invaded Taiwan, they won't care about the Geneva convention and Xi Jinping will never see the Hague. Trump can invade Venezuela tomorrow, and same, nothing will happen to him or the US.
THAT IS THE REALITY, that is how the world really works, dominance by the strong, subservience of the weak, everything else about laws, fairness, morality, etc only works in Tolkien tales and internet arguments, not in major international conflicts.
Edit: to the downvoters, could you also explain what part of what I said was wrong?
fireflash38 4 hours ago [-]
There are indeed actors who only respect might. That is not universal. Preaching might is right is also not universal.
It is still important to have might even if you aren't in that camp because inevitably you will run into people with that worldview and they cannot be reasoned with without might.
jack_tripper 4 hours ago [-]
Military might is the thing keeping the USD the world reserve currency instead of the GBP, EUR or Yuan. It's literally the core keeping the US economy and prosperity.
And things don't have to be universal to be true, but just one leader/nation bombing or abusing the shit out of you is all you need to teach you this lesson, and waving the Geneva convention in their face won't help you.
The real world is harsh, unfair and unjust and pieces of paper named after European cities don't change that. A barrel in your hand pointed at them does. The ability to use force is the only thing in history that was guaranteed to change things in your favor.
reissbaker 8 hours ago [-]
Terrorism doesn't mean "anything that makes someone scared," or else all wars would be acts of terrorism.
For example, when the Allies tried to assassinate Hitler with a smuggled briefcase bomb during WW2, that wasn't terrorism: that was just regular warfare. Hitler was the leader of Germany and directed its military.
Similarly, smuggling pager bombs to members of Hezbollah generally wouldn't qualify as terrorism, since Hezbollah a) is a militia (famously it's the largest non-state militia in the world), and b) was actively fighting a war against Israel — a war that Hezbollah themselves initiated.
juntoalaluna 7 hours ago [-]
I can’t reply to zugzug underneath (is there a maximum comment depth), but it feels pretty obvious that the US President is a very legitimate target in any war with the US. Maybe the most legitimate target.
Good luck trying to get them though.
zug_zug 7 hours ago [-]
So you're arguing if the US declared war on Venezuela, that Venezuela could just use a drone to blow up the US president and that's just how war should work from now on?
Because it's only a matter of years until drones get small and stealthy enough that nobody is safe; exploding pagers are a clear first step in this direction.
reissbaker 6 hours ago [-]
While I'm only adding to the choir of people telling you "of course," since I'm directly the person you're responding to it still feels worth saying: yes, of course, if America and Venezuela went to war, it's completely legal for Venezuela to attempt to kill the U.S. President.
As an American, I certainly hope they would fail. But do I think it's legal? Yes: it's a targeted strike on the leader of an enemy country they'd theoretically be at war with. Do I think it's wise? Well — no, Venezuela has a much smaller military, and assassinating the U.S. President would trigger a massive war that would devastate Venezuela for decades while modestly inconveniencing American taxpayers. But legal? Yes.
phantasmish 6 hours ago [-]
They could do that now and it might be legal under international laws of war.
We've massed forces for an attack, attacked their ships, violated their airspace with combat aircraft (that's today), and extensively and publicly threatened them. They'd be in their legal rights to strike preemptively, including possibly a decapitation strike (this is why the Dubya administration kept repeating the term "preemptive strike", even though it was obviously nowhere near applying in the case of Iraq—it was a way of asserting its legal basis)
[edit] As thereisnospork points out in a sibling comment, however, this doesn't mean it'd be a good idea.
pbalau 7 hours ago [-]
If US and Venezuela are in a state of war, then the head of the US Armed Forces is a legitimate target.
Not sure why you have doubts about this.
zoklet-enjoyer 6 hours ago [-]
The US and Israel do the equivalent of that and have been for years. An assassination is an assassination. The weapon makes little difference.
thereisnospork 7 hours ago [-]
I mean of course they could, and should[0] how is that a question?
[0] Shouldn't - classic example of a tactical win being a strategic blunder. Killing the American president and would solidify American public support for the war - which would probably be undesirable in the balance.
hersko 7 hours ago [-]
> Firstly, generals, like anybody else can be terrorized.
You know terrorism doesn't mean people were terrorized, right? Surely you understand that.
sirfz 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
TiredOfLife 5 hours ago [-]
How is communication devices procured by Hezbollah and directly given by Hezbollah to their own members not a directed attack?
sirfz 4 hours ago [-]
Hezbollah is an organization consisting of civilian infrastructure besides its military wing (political party, media, hospitals/medical centers, schools, banking, etc) . These devices were distributed amongst different personnel of whom nobody knows their military activity and can safely be assumed it's highly likely they're civilians (hence the randomness of this, not targetted at all). Besides the fact that these targets weren't in active duty but rather targeted in their homes, workplaces, and other random whereabouts (supermarkets, playgrounds, etc) again emphasising how random and not targetted any of it is and the danger it imposes on others (physical or psychological) around them. It's just insane.
tptacek 4 hours ago [-]
The pagers had strictly military use.
neoromantique 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ignoramous 6 hours ago [-]
> Targeted attacks against military/militia leadership is not terrorism - almost by definition.
I mean, you're not wrong: the State seeks monopoly on violence; the kind of damages it can inflict, where, when and however it wants. Everyone else is ... a terrorist, and whatever they do is ... terrorism.
> communication devices procured by Hezbollah and directly given by Hezbollah
Replace "Hezbollah" with "the US Govt" and you'll arrive at some answer.
Btw, off-duty / non-combat personnel aren't deemed to be "at war".
tptacek 4 hours ago [-]
The reason foreign military organizations don't routinely target active duty US military generals isn't that they're worried about being dragged into some mostly-fictitious courtroom to answer for their misdeeds. It's that the United States armed forces will very quickly reduce their entire organization, and much of the surrounding area, to its combustion products.
There aren't a lot of opportunities in life you get to use the word "annihilatory"; this is one of them. And in the immortal words of William Munny out of Missouri: "deserve's" got nothing to do with it.
ignoramous 2 hours ago [-]
> US military ... worried about being dragged into some mostly-fictitious courtroom to answer for their misdeeds...
Acutely aware of this fact, yeah.
> There aren't a lot of opportunities in life you get to use the word "annihilatory"; this is one of them.
Not wrong. None of the former great empires that fell were as military capable as the super powers of the modern era.
> And in the immortal words of William Munny out of Missouri: "deserve's" got nothing to do with it.
True. Some on the Left have extreme take on "Nation States" for this reason:
One was to challenge the thesis that nationalism and colonialism are two separate things — that nationalism is the good side, colonialism the bad side; that nationalism came first, colonialism later, or vice versa. I wanted to show that they were twins joined at the hip. And I also wanted to show that from the outset, the nation-state project could not be achieved without ethnic cleansing and extreme violence. This could be seen in the expulsion of Jews and Muslims [from the Iberian Peninsula], and that soon led to a conflict between states, because each state had an official majority — the nation it claimed to represent — and its minority, or minorities.
The human rights paradigm focuses on the perpetrators of violence. It wants to identify them individually so that we can hold them individually accountable. It does not look for the beneficiaries of that violence. Beneficiaries are not necessarily perpetrators. To address beneficiaries, you need to identify the issues around which violence is mobilized ...
Israel had in fact very clear intelligence that the specific pagers they were detonating were overwhelmingly going to be in the custody of combatants. This was very probably the most precisely targeted large-scale military strike of the last 100 years. That's not a value judgement; it's a descriptive claim.
oa335 9 minutes ago [-]
Do you have any sources at all for your assertion “This was very probably the most precisely targeted large-scale military strike of the last 100 years”? It is hard to engage with your statement in any reasonable fashion without knowing where you are getting your information.
tptacek 1 minutes ago [-]
Just start from the premise that Israel targeted exclusively handheld military comms devices that would in ordinary practice only be in the custody of Hezbollah combatants, and from the additional premise that the explosions in the strikes were relatively small, so small that the overwhelming majority of the Hezbollah casualties were wounded and not KIA. Then try to make another story make sense.
We have significant evidence for both these premises!
jackling 2 hours ago [-]
Twelve civilians killed and 4,000 injured does not indicate a precise attack.
There is no credible figure for the number of combatants killed or injured. The Times of Israel reported that 1,500 fighters were injured. Taking these two data points together, a majority of those injured were civilians rather than combatants.
Where are you getting the claim that this was “probably the most precisely targeted large-scale military strike of the last 100 years”? That is a far-reaching assertion, especially given the lack of sources.
You say this is not a value judgment but a descriptive claim, yet the claim does not appear to be backed by facts.
Right, if in fact 1500 Hezbollah fighters were injured, any claim that over 1500 noncombatants were injured is suspicious. We have video footage of the explosions (along with a directional sense of the wounded vs. KIA count of the strike). It is not plausible that more noncombatants were injured than combatants, given the pagers were strictly military comms devices.
jackling 22 minutes ago [-]
Both the 1500 and 4000 number were confirmed by Lebanon, and no reputable watch organization has credibly disputed them, you're not citing evidence just conjecture on how you believe everything went down due to a relative small bits of information.
> along with a directional sense of the wounded vs. KIA count of the strike
I am not sure what this means.
To add, you're making it impossible to argue anything against your claim. We're discussing how the pagers hurt civilians and if they were properly targetting combatants. You're saying no matter what, since you know the pager was targetting combatants, the evidence that civilians were hurt must be false. Your logic circular.
hersko 6 hours ago [-]
You think you are not allowed to do a military strike if civilians may be hurt?
jackling 5 hours ago [-]
Your comment is nonsense. What do you mean by “allowed”? Who is enforcing the rules of what is “allowed” and what isn’t? The fact is that Israel carried out an attack that severely harmed civilians. The question is whether it was targeted or whether it constitutes terrorism.
My claim is that since Israel could not have possibly known who was in possession of the pagers at the time of the attack, and since the attack occurred regardless of who was nearby—detonating all pagers in civilian-occupied areas—Israel did, in effect, target civilians.
If you attack a military target that is surrounded by civilians, and that attack injures or kills those civilians, then those civilians were also targeted. Do you think all that matters is who the primary target was, and that as long as Israel decides the civilian casualties were “worth it,” the decision is moral?
marcosdumay 4 hours ago [-]
The Irish terrorists that were mostly the responsible to put word "terrorism" into political discourse targeted almost exclusively politicians and military. And targeted way better than that Israel attack.
impossiblefork 6 hours ago [-]
I don't whether something is terrorism as something that's relevant for whether it's allowed by the laws of war.
Instead what we have is IHL, i.e. the Geneva and Hague conventions etc., and if you are targeting military personnel or other targets of military importance, without any extra cruelty or attacks on civilians, what does it matter if it looks like terror-bombing?
If it's allowed by IHL but is terrorism by British or French of German law or whatever, it's allowed. IHL is the actual binding thing.
jack_tripper 5 hours ago [-]
>IHL is the actual binding thing.
And who enforces that?
When Netanyahu or Putin break that and bomb children and civilian hospitals, can you stop them by waving the IHL in their face?
morshu9001 5 hours ago [-]
Both of these sound like non-terror, internationally legal methods. Commanders are military.
uhhhd 5 hours ago [-]
Terrorism targets civilians. So no, this isn't terrorism.
kyo_gisors 4 hours ago [-]
[dead]
kyboren 8 hours ago [-]
I think this was a brilliant operation and perfectly lawful. I also think that if Lebanon (not Hezbollah) were in a state of war with Israel, yes, that would (depending on proportionality and target discrimination) be perfectly legal, too.
8 hours ago [-]
ignoramous 6 hours ago [-]
> perfectly lawful
Are you a lawyer / expert in conflicts? If not, curious how you arrived at this conclusion.
kyboren 6 hours ago [-]
No, I am not a lawyer. Does that preclude my having an opinion on the value and legality of a military strike? Anyway it seems to me that it was:
- highly discriminatory
- only Hezbollah commanders received these devices
- it's an essential piece of military C2 gear so you'd expect they would keep possession of them at all times
- the explosive was small enough to mitigate any risk to bystanders
- targeted at combatants
- likely to achieve (and in fact did achieve) military effects at least proportional to any collateral damage
Passes the smell test to me.
Would you still have a bone to pick with my credentials if I said that I thought the Dresden firebombings were not brilliant and not perfectly legal? Or the same about US military strikes on suspected drug trafficking vessels?
ignoramous 4 hours ago [-]
> Passes the smell test to me
Gotcha. Thanks.
> Does that preclude my having an opinion on the value and legality of a military strike?
Words mean things. "Perfectly lawful" means just that? And so, I was curious.
> Would you still have a bone to pick with my credentials if I said that I thought the Dresden firebombings
Felt the need to know whether I was mistaking an arm-chair opinion for an expert opinion, is all.
Zetaphor 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
kyboren 8 hours ago [-]
The most brilliant part about the civilian casualties from this operation is how many fewer of them there were than there would have been with any alternative means available to Israel.
rat87 7 hours ago [-]
I don't see how. It was intended to paralyze and undermine a militia which it did. A lot of war actions create terror that doesn't make most war terrorism
kjkjadksj 8 hours ago [-]
How are all acts of war not “intentionally creating a state of terror?”
memonkey 5 hours ago [-]
i think there are internationally recognized lawful terminology that several institutions and countries recognize that permit the use of "act of war" and "terrorism". but at any given time a country _does_ act of war/terrorism, they likely would deny claims of terrorism if it was recognized as terrorism by said institutions.
cramsession 11 hours ago [-]
Attacking a civilian population is a war crime.
bunji 8 hours ago [-]
The intended targets of the exploding papers weren't civilians. Very few actual civilians ended up hurt by the detonations, much fewer than attacks by conventional weapons. It's about as targeted an attack as one can achieve from a distance.
As an act of warfare, Israel did a splendid job on this. Thoroughly impressive work.
tw04 8 hours ago [-]
> Very few actual civilians ended up hurt by the detonations, much fewer than attacks by conventional weapons.
The reports are 4,000 wounded and 12 killed unintended targets in order to kill 42 targets.
On what planet is that “very few actual civilians”? I think you knew full well before posting that’s a ridiculous claim which is why you did it anonymously.
worldsavior 6 hours ago [-]
> in order to kill 42 targets.
This is not correct. Each one that had this pager was connected to Hezbollah, i.e. a soldier of Hezbollah. This attack was meant to "disable" a very big portion of Hezbollah, which it did (4000 of them).
This is one of the most sophisticated attacks to avoid civilian casualty.
j_maffe 5 hours ago [-]
> This is one of the most sophisticated attacks to avoid civilian casualty.
127 civilians Lebanese civilians killed since the ceasefire by the party you claim is avoiding civilian casualties, btw. very careful bunch
dralley 8 hours ago [-]
"The reports" are that 12 were killed total, not that 12 civilians were killed. Only 2 of the killed were civilians as far as I can tell. Several of those who people on Twitter tried to claim were civilians, including a doctor, were admitted by Hezbollah to be Hezbollah members and given Hezbollah funerals.
I've never heard of "42 targets", and given 12 people died total, obviously 42 targets were not killed.
You should provide some sourcing for your numbers.
ada1981 7 hours ago [-]
Incorrect. The reports are 42 total killed, 12 civilians including 2 children.
"Operation Grim Beeper" (seriously) on Wikipedia cites these numbers from Lebanese government.
The figure of merit in a military strike is casualties, not KIA; it's the "wounded" part you actually care about (in fact, in some tactical situations, wounding is preferable to killing, as it ties up adversary logistical resources).
Since the pagers that were targeted were exclusively used by Hezbollah (which fought an actual civil war with the Lebanese security forces specifically in order to establish its own telecom network), I would be extraordinarily wary of any source that has claimed more injuries to noncombatants than to combatants.
You can still tell a story where the pager attack was unacceptable owing to civilian casualties: there could be so many civilian casualties that any number of combatant casualties wouldn't justify it. But if you're claiming that there were more casualties to noncombatants over small explosions from devices carried principally in the pockets of combatants, it is rational to draw the conclusion that your reasoning (and sourcing) is motivated.
oa335 5 minutes ago [-]
> it is rational to draw the conclusion that your reasoning (and sourcing) is motivated.
Have you provided any sources at all for you numerous claims throughout this thread? Would it also me rational to draw a the conclusion that someone who has provided no sources at all is also engaging in “motivated reasoning”? At least be consistent.
dralley 7 hours ago [-]
Fair enough, 12 total only includes the original pager attack, not the subsequent radio one. However, you seem to have made the same mistake. 42 people were killed total, but that does not mean that there were 42 targets.
In any case, if Hezbollah themselves admit that 1500 of their fighters were injured by the attack (according to your own source), it seems extremely dishonest to claim that all 4000 were civilians or that there were only 42 targets.
ada1981 7 hours ago [-]
I didn't say 42 targets.
Per the report: 42 dead, 12 of which were civilians.
It follows that 30 were considered Hezbollah.
dralley 7 hours ago [-]
Several of those initially claimed to be civilians were later acknowledged by Hezbollah, so that number is still a bit fuzzy.
j_maffe 5 hours ago [-]
Source? Can't find anything stating this
ada1981 7 hours ago [-]
I'm not claiming absolute knowledge of numbers, just going off the public reports which are all we can go on.
neoromantique 4 hours ago [-]
>I didn't say 42 targets.
You quite literally did.
ada1981 7 hours ago [-]
The report is 4,000 civilians injured (which means they just didn't die -- people lost fingers, limbs, eyes, etc.)
Presumably if you have thousands of Hezbola people walking around within their homes, businesses, hopistals, shops, etc. it makes sense you'd have many civilian injuries when these went off. There wasn't a geo fence around them and if someone was in an NICU or preschool the explosions were indiscriminate.
So while there was some element of precision in placement of who had these pagers, there was zero awareness (by design) to where they actually were when they all exploded.
mlyle 7 hours ago [-]
I haven't seen a report of 4000 civilians injured. I have seen a report of 4000 people injured across the two attacks, but presumably some fraction of these are targets.
42 killed, of whom Hezbollah said 12 were civilians (later admitting some of the 12 were fighters).
Historical average is about half of the wounded or killed in conflicts to be civilians. < 12/42 would be a relatively "good" ratio.
tw04 6 hours ago [-]
You didn’t see 4,000 because you didn’t look for it. It’s literally in the wikipedia article linked in the thread you’re responding to with multiple associated citations.
neoromantique 4 hours ago [-]
The distinction is /civilians/.
You make an assumption that of the 4000 people wounded /all/ were civilians, which is odd, considering that explosive was in a device given out to Hezbollah members.
breppp 7 hours ago [-]
but we have the benefit of seeing live videos from actual shops where these hezbollah members were, and you can see the explosion was small enough to not hurt anyone in the vicinity
even if very close, one of the videos shows a supermarket line, and no one around is hurt
tw04 6 hours ago [-]
>42 people were killed total, but that does not mean that there were 42 targets.
So they only managed to hit 30 targets with 12 misfires… that makes it even worse.
> In any case, if Hezbollah themselves admit that 1500 of their fighters were injured by the attack (according to your own source)
That’s 1500 in addition to the 4,000 civilians. The fact they managed to wound 2.5x+ as many civilians as targets isn’t exactly making them look better…
kyboren 8 hours ago [-]
> The reports are 4,000 wounded and 12 killed unintended targets
Which reports? According to whom? Hezbollah?
shykes 5 hours ago [-]
I vouched for your post because your question is legitimate and asked in an appropriate manner; there is no good reason to flag it.
The answer to your question is yes: the "4,000 civilians wounded" figure is attributed to Mustafa Bairam, a high-ranking Hezbollah member. I have not seem any corroborating sources. As far as I can tell every mention of that number, including Wikipedia, traces back to him. Obviously this is a highly biased source that should not be trusted blindly.
sixstringninja 5 hours ago [-]
source?
ada1981 8 hours ago [-]
For the IDF, a 28.6% civilian death rate is actually quite good. Their own classified data reveals an 83% civilian casualty rate in Gaza—nearly three times worse.
The Lebanon pager attack: 12 civilians (including 2 children) killed out of 42 total deaths (28.6% civilian casualty rate).
Gaza genocide: Leaked IDF intelligence documents show 8,900 militants killed out of 53,000 total deaths as of May 2025 (83% civilian casualty rate).
xvedejas 5 hours ago [-]
You understate your point: the 83% rate is much, much more than 3x worse. To kill 100 intended targets, a 28.6% civilian death rate means you'll need to kill `N / (100 + N) = 0.286` (N = 40.06) civilians. With an 83% civilian death rate, to kill 100 intended targets, you need to kill `N / (100 + N) = 0.83` (N = 488) civilians. It is about 12x worse to have an 83% civilian death rate compared to a 28.6% rate.
tguvot 7 hours ago [-]
there is no classified idf data of 83% civilian casualty rate. there is data that idf can identify by name 17% of casualties as hamas/etc member. if there are 10 people with machine guns and rpg and you blow them up with a bomb, they don't become civilians just because you don't know their names
GopherState 7 hours ago [-]
[dead]
breppp 7 hours ago [-]
According to Hezbollah sources 1500 of their terrorists were taken out of commission due to this attack. Making the death ratio 42/1500 or 3% while if only taking the civilian ratio that's even lower.
Even the 12 civilian count is probably higher than reality because it is doubtful that 12 civilians had access to a military clandestine communication device
Regarding the leaked IDF document this was leaked to a minor blog yet cannot be seen anywhere.
But let's entertain it as real, these are 8000 named Hamas terrorists known for certain by one intelligence unit in the IDF to be dead. This only means the minimum amount of Hamas terrorists, this doesn't take into account the other armed groups in Gaza that had a prewar strength of 10,000s of terrorists or the Hamas members who are only known by uncertain intelligence to have been killed.
Taking that number and reducing it from the Hamas published death count (an organization that kidnapped babies for political goals, but is incapable of lying, and was caught faking death counts before) to get the civilian death count is very unscientific to be extremely mild
ignoramous 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
guelo 6 hours ago [-]
> 1500 of their terrorists ...
I stopped reading there knowing you're biased.
breppp 5 hours ago [-]
The article linked here calls Israel's attack "terrorist", so I only thought this might balance things a bit
busterarm 2 hours ago [-]
Hezbollah is designated as a terrorist organization by:
Argentina
Australia
Austria
Bahrain
Canada
Colombia
Czech Republic
Ecuador
Estonia
European Union
France
Germany
Gulf Cooperation Council
Guatemala
Honduras
Israel
Kosovo
Lithuania
Netherlands
New Zealand
Paraguay
Serbia
Slovakia
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States
but calling them terrorists is biased?
fabian2k 7 hours ago [-]
The numbers you state are from the Lebanese government and Hizbollah. So I don't think we can assume they are accurate. I don't have any better numbers, though.
You specific argument though misuses even those numbers. 42 is the number of people actually killed. I couldn't figure out how many were targeted (how many pagers did explode), but I'd assume the number could be much higher than the number of deaths. Without that number we cannot determine how well targeted this was. I also don't think it is plausible that for every target you injure 100 bystanders. So I would assume the number of targets was at least an order of magnitude higher.
There's also another number from Hizbollah, that 1500 of their people were injured. But no idea it those would be included in the 4000 wounded number.
LarsDu88 8 hours ago [-]
People tend to easily forget that the civilian casualty ratio for conventional warfare is around 50%
These attacks killed and maimed children, but firing JDAMs kills and maims even more children.
Not excusing the Israeli military here... they definitely dropped a lot of JDAMs, unguided artillery, and indiscriminate autocannon munitions on Gaza.
But the specific point on the pager attacks being against civilians is not a great argument.
Another thing I will note is that a lot of Palestinian groups also use similar reasoning towards targeting the Israeli population on the basis of the fact there is mass conscription in place.
tw04 8 hours ago [-]
> People tend to easily forget that the civilian casualty ratio for conventional warfare is around 50%
Causality in war includes people that were only injured. This was far, far more than a 50% casualty rate. More like a 9552% casualty rate.
sp4cec0wb0y 8 hours ago [-]
You're telling me that the 2,800 injured were mostly Hezbollah operatives? Was this sourced and verified anywhere? What is the rate of combatant to non-combatant casualties is this instance compared to "conventional weapons"?
kyboren 8 hours ago [-]
These pagers weren't purchased in stores by civilians. You see, Hezbollah had a problem: Their phone network was totally compromised. Israel was using operatives' phones as tracking beacons. So Hezbollah purchased a few thousand pagers through specialty channels (which we now know had been compromised by Israel) to distribute to their commanders. They believed this would improve their security, because unlike the two-way radios in cell phones, pagers use a one-way broadcast radio, and there is no need to know or report the pager radio's location.
Given this context: A limited number of specialty electronics, acquired and distributed by Hezbollah as a means of military command and control, and subsequent to this operation Hezbollah's C2 was demonstrably neutered--you believe that the majority of injuries were innocent civilians?
Basic logic indicates that the vast majority of those killed and injured were, in fact, nodes in Hezbollah's command and control structure.
Here is Hezbollah boasting to Reuters before the pagers attack, about how it moved to using pagers and couriers to counter Israeli intelligence.
As you can guess, with the advent of mobile phones in the 2000s, pagers became obsolete in Lebanon
Cyph0n 6 hours ago [-]
Unless you’re a Lebanese doctor?
Not to you specifically, but it is astounding how indiscriminate terrorism is lauded as “brilliant”. Is it because the victims were not of the white Judeo-Christian variety? Seriously trying to understand the mental gymnastics here.
breppp 6 hours ago [-]
Doctors don't use pagers anymore, just like tech on calls used to and don't anymore. Mobile phones are far superior for that, and are very available anywhere in the world, and especially to doctors
Regarding whether that's brilliant, that is not my wording, but generally it was quite mild compared to the methods of Hezbollah and was highly successful in ending a war with very little bloodshed. The other alternative was tried in 2006 and in Gaza, and fighting a terror organization entrenched in an urban setting means bombings and killing civilians in the process. This was not the end result as Hezbollah fell apart relatively quickly afterwards, so I think it was good compared to any alternative for Lebanese and Israelis
blitzar 5 hours ago [-]
> Doctors don't use pagers anymore,
The UK's National Health Service (NHS) is widely considered the single largest user of pagers in the world, with over 130,000 devices in use as of recent years. This figure represented an estimated 10% of the total number of pagers remaining globally.
Cyph0n 6 hours ago [-]
Doctors still use pagers. I don’t know about Lebanon in particular, but I would wager they still use them there too.
The rest is a bunch of hypotheticals. I am also unsure where the conclusion that Hezbollah is dead is coming from. Was their operational capability degraded? Of course. Is the group dead? Absolutely not.
breppp 6 hours ago [-]
Regarding the pagers in any case these were specially imported by hezbollah, so these were not used by doctors, even if we assume they only use pagers in Lebanon.
Regarding the group, it has signed a cease fire agreement with very unfavorable terms which essentially let Israel bomb any of its members or locations that violate the terms of the cease fire agreement and the lebanese army did not work to resolve, this happens on a weekly basis since the end of the war
If you compare this state to the state just prior to October 2023 where Hezbollah had setup a tent in Israeli territory which Israel was too afraid to do something about for months over fear of starting a war, then this is essentially a complete break up in my opinion.
Is it dead? no. it's alive enough to keep lebanon in its permanent failed state status due to fear of all other sects of civil war. But together with what happened to its patron, and the local popularity it lost it might break up completely
Cyph0n 5 hours ago [-]
Hezbollah has a political/civilian arm.
This is my last reply in this thread.
breppp 5 hours ago [-]
I am aware of that, and hopefully they will become a Lebanese political party without an armed wing, similar to all other political parties, which are most essentially led by former warlords involved in mass killings
sudosysgen 3 minutes ago [-]
Hezbollah operates hospitals and medical services. It's not just a political party.
fabian2k 6 hours ago [-]
They didn't put bombs in pagers that were freely sold. They put them into shipments for Hizbollah specifically.
Cyph0n 6 hours ago [-]
1. I was responding to the incorrect point that pagers are not used by civilians.
2. You are aware that Hezbollah has a civilian/political arm, right?
3. Surely Israel - the most moral country on the planet - painstakingly vetted pager possession before detonating them en masse?
TiredOfLife 5 hours ago [-]
> Unless you’re a Lebanese doctor?
Where would a Lebanese doctor get an encrypted pager bought by Hezbollah and given to Hezbollah members with the explicit use for communicating with other Hezbollah members?
Cyph0n 5 hours ago [-]
Growing tired of repeating the same response to the same points. Please see on of my other replies to sibling comments.
ada1981 7 hours ago [-]
The IDF is only able to kill 17 people they classify as "Hamas" for every 100 people they kill in Gaza (per their own internal reports). They have a self assessed 83% civilian kill rate.
GopherState 7 hours ago [-]
Not true. The "classification" is combatants killed and identified by the IDF with first & last name. There's a larger un-identified group of combatants due to Hamas fighting in civilian clothes, and falsely claiming all deaths are civilian
breppp 7 hours ago [-]
It would probably be easier to classify them if they hadn't committed the war crime of not wearing uniforms
Cyph0n 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
breppp 6 hours ago [-]
Not all Israelis (or most) are reservists and most of the civilians were murdered by Hamas death squads execution style, not by the fabled Hannibal directive
While Hamas does not wear uniform in combat and publishes its dead as civilians, so no, my logic holds
rat87 7 hours ago [-]
Most sides in most wars aren't expected to classify every person they killed. Identifying certain people as Hamas(and they could be wrong about some of them) doesn't mean that every single other person is not a member of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or other millitant
zeofig 6 hours ago [-]
Yes, since conveniently the attacker also gets to define who is a civilian.
baskin31 4 hours ago [-]
When one quotes Health Ministry for numbers of casualties and deaths, that is relying on HAMAS for information. To knowingly use sources that have demonstratbly be shown to be false, inaccurate, or misleading makes one also unreliable.
zeofig 3 hours ago [-]
HAMAS? We're talking about an attack in Lebanon my friend, not Palestine.
viccis 5 hours ago [-]
Did it only focus on Hezbollah military officials? Hezbollah is a political party. This is like package bombing US congressmen, Presidential cabinet members, etc. Which would be considered a terrorist attack obviously (and was when Israel sent our politicians, including our President, mailbombs shortly after WW2)
tptacek 4 hours ago [-]
It's technically and sort of a political party. It's also an occupying military force in Lebanon; it is foremost an instrument of the IRGC. It's useful to understand that Hezbollah is Shia-supremacist organization, and Shia muslims constitute a minority of the Lebanese population.
viccis 3 hours ago [-]
That doesn't really distinguish it from Israel's government. s/Lebanon/Palestine/g, s/IRGC/USA/g, and s/Shia/Jewish/g
tptacek 3 hours ago [-]
I don't agree, but we don't have to agree on this point to recognize the illegitimacy and coerciveness of Hezbollah and the IRGC. Even factoring Israel's most recent strikes in, the largest military losses Hezbollah has incurred in the last 10 years weren't with Israel, but rather in Syria, on behalf of the Assad regime, a client of the IRGC's, where Hezbollah (and the Lebanese security forces Hezbollah dragooned into the conflict) gleefully targeted civilian populations.
baskin31 5 hours ago [-]
Does a political party shoot missiles over international borders and stockpile arms?
orwin 8 hours ago [-]
The issue is using civil infrastructure as weapon, that could arguably be an act of terror. As pagers are rarely used in non-criminal settings, i guess this is somewhat okay in my opinion, but the callousness and overall reactions (proudness, smugness) of israelis and most of the west on this near-terror attack is in my opinion another proof of a lack of empathy that is starting to be pervasive in our societies.
I know people talk about the "entitlement epidemic", but entitlement is just another name from narcissism, in essence a lack of empathy. Which seems to be more and more socially acceptable and even rewarded (with internet points mostly), like your comment show (i'm not jumping on you, you are tamer than many, so i think it's a better exemple for my point than more violent ones).
And since that's the example we show our kids today, i'm now officially more worried about our society ability to handle social media than climate change.
rat87 7 hours ago [-]
Pagers are used by more then just criminals(see doctors) and targeting random criminals as opposed to millitants wouldn't be justifiable. But these particular pager that were wired up were specifically intended only for Hezbollah internal use and were sold to Hezbollah by Israel through a third party front.
bilekas 11 hours ago [-]
"It's not a war crime the first time!"
Anyway sadly even if they did start attacking civilians, say Palestinian civilians as a random example, who is going to enforce the penalty for war crimes. These days its seems they're more of a suggestion than a rule of engaging in war.
sekh60 10 hours ago [-]
War crime laws only apply to poorer nations sadly
spwa4 8 hours ago [-]
Huh? Lebanon is not being held to war crime laws, and is the poorer nation. They bombed Northern Israel for over 2 years, including a soccer field full of children that weren't their targets but are very much dead.
If anything, it's the opposite.
KptMarchewa 10 hours ago [-]
Targeting here goes beyond reasonable expectation from a military at war. Compare that to the russian terror of lobbing 500kg bombs at random housing blocks.
muvlon 7 hours ago [-]
Or the Israeli terror of lobbing 2000lb bombs at random housing blocks for that matter.
KptMarchewa 7 hours ago [-]
Yes, agreed.
LightBug1 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
moi2388 8 hours ago [-]
Does it? Do you have any data on how many of these devices ended up in civilian hands?
Afaik they intercepted a shipment for Hamas members only. Do you have more information?
How many civilians there even use these pagers instead of mobile phones? Are there any?
cramsession 7 hours ago [-]
Hamas is in Gaza, this attack was against Hezbollah and civilians in Lebanon.
viccis 5 hours ago [-]
>Afaik they intercepted a shipment for Hamas members only
Ignoring that it was Hezbollah, not Hamas, I would point out that many of Hezbollah members are civilians.
baskin31 4 hours ago [-]
Members of an organization that shoots missiles over international borders and stockpiles arms cannot be called civilians.
viccis 3 hours ago [-]
That would apply to Americans and Israelis too.
hersko 7 hours ago [-]
> Afaik they intercepted a shipment for Hamas members only.
What? Hamas didn't have any of the pagers, Hezbollah did.
3,400 bystanders? Or 3,400 mostly-Hezbollah but some bystanders?
impossiblefork 11 hours ago [-]
* * *
cmavvv 11 hours ago [-]
That's like planting a bomb in front of a military camp. You might have a target, but in the end you just kill whoever was nearby at that time. In the case of the pager attack, that includes children aged 11 and 12, as well as a nurse.
That's much closer to a terrorist attack than to legal warfare.
simonsarris 10 hours ago [-]
"planting a bomb in front of a military camp" is like the textbook goal for bomb-planting devices (airplanes, artillery, MRLs), its one of the most normal scenarios out of all of normal war scenarios.
Planting a bomb on each soldier would be even better.
impossiblefork 11 hours ago [-]
Yes, but planting a bomb in front of a military camp is absolutely legal.
lucideer 11 hours ago [-]
There might be some potential legal defense in terms of proportionality of collateral damage but it's so thin here as to be absurd.
Regardless, given the number of war crimes this army has been found guilty of, this is somewhat moot. What's another war crime in the grand scheme of things.
tguvot 8 hours ago [-]
there is 0 war crimes that IDF has been found guilty of by any legal authority.
lucideer 8 hours ago [-]
There's no central enforcement of international war crime law, so this thread on legal technicalities isn't particularly relevant in real terms, but there is at least an arrest warrant out for the (former) Minister for Defence & Prime Minister in 124 countries, so there's not a lot of room for ambiguity here.
tguvot 7 hours ago [-]
so you agree that nobody in IDF was found guilty of war crimes ?
been accused it's not same as been found guilty. at least last time I checked.
kamikazeturtles 11 hours ago [-]
Many of the people who had the pagers were doctors, lawyers, bureaucrats...
Maybe I'm wrong, but, I think Hezb0-lla-h is pretty much the "government", especially in southern Lebanon
oldandboring 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
nicce 11 hours ago [-]
You cannot quarantee who is holding the pager at the moment of explosion.
UltraSane 8 hours ago [-]
You can have a reasonable expectation secure military pagers are only going to be used by soldiers. Given how few collateral deaths there were this was a reasonable assumption.
cramsession 11 hours ago [-]
“Expected” is not enough. These bombs didn’t go off in active war zone. They went off in public in Lebanon, and maimed and killed civilians.
and I interpret his analysis as that it was targeted enough to be legal.
dlubarov 9 hours ago [-]
The principle of proportionality is explicitly about expectations, i.e. expected military advantage vs expected collateral damage.
You seem to be holding Israel to an impossible standard of guaranteeing zero collateral damage, which IHL does not require because no military is capable of that.
LightBug1 8 hours ago [-]
The latitude you wankers expect is absolutely incredible ... talking of impossible standards around "zero collateral damage" after what Israel has done in Gaza et al ...
dlubarov 5 hours ago [-]
The topic at hand is a military operation in Lebanon, not Gaza.
LightBug1 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
UltraSane 8 hours ago [-]
Hezbollah was actively launching thousands of missiles at Israel when these pagers blew up. They stopped launching missiles at Israel en masse soon after these pagers blew up. What a odd coincidence.
That's a relatively new concept, certainly not true historically.
aprentic 7 hours ago [-]
Legal or not it makes me afraid of Israeli technology.
I don't want to be part of their collateral damage.
TiredOfLife 5 hours ago [-]
Don't kill their citizens, don't launch rockets at them. Don't socialize with people that do.
HappyPanacea 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ThrowawayTestr 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
giraffe_lady 11 hours ago [-]
All of the arguments I've seen supporting this attack focus on the idea that it's fine to kill and maim civilians including children as long as you will probably get some combatants. It's a little bit open to interpretation, I guess, and I'm not a legal expert so fine, ok.
But booby trapping mundane daily objects accessible to non-combatants is a clear violation of international law. No real room for leeway or interpretation on that one either.
FridayoLeary 4 hours ago [-]
What would you prefer? Israeli tanks blowing their way through families and bombing beirut to rubble to get at the Hezbolla terrorists? War was inevitable,
the amazing actions of the mossad mitigated hundreds if not thousands of civilian casualties. What is your complaint, that they booby trapped the communications devices used exclusively by Hezbolla and not, i don't know, their kalashnikovs?
Don't hide behind technicalities of international law, tell me literally what else they could possibly have done with a better outcome. (please note in my world view, unlike many other people here, Israel rolling over and dying is not an acceptable solution)
apical_dendrite 11 hours ago [-]
It's not really a "mundane daily object" though. It's a communications device that's issued to people on the Hezbollah private communications network. It's only accessible to non-combatants if they are (1) in the Hezbollah hierarchy in a non-combatant role, or (2) the person with the pager was exercising poor operational security and letting someone else handle their pager.
giraffe_lady 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
wasabi991011 7 hours ago [-]
> So? You aren't off the hook because someone did something unexpected or "was exercising poor operational security."
You might be. If it was Hezbollah's guns that exploded and not their pagers, I would expect most people to agree that you would be "off the hook" if someone else was handling that gun.
Not saying pagers = guns, but it's a spectrum surely.
apical_dendrite 10 hours ago [-]
The laws of war don't expect a military to attack a target only if there was no risk to civilians. That would be so unrealistic that nobody would even attempt to follow the laws of war. There has to be some consideration of relative risk and proportionality.
Where you draw the line is complicated. If you look at what the allies did in WWII for instance, there are some decisions that are highly problematic (firebombing wooden Japanese cities or the RAF deliberately bombing German civilian populations) but there are also some decisions that I think were reasonable even with a very high civilian death toll (e.g. the US Eight Air Force conducting bombing raids on German industry with limited precision, leading to high civilian casualties).
I think this specific incident was lawful. Hezbollah was the aggressor here, and it spent the war launching attacks that were far less justifiable than this one (much more limited targeting). I think this was a reasonable act of self-defense. That doesn't mean that I think that everything Israel did in the war was lawful.
scarecrowbob 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ok_dad 8 hours ago [-]
> letting someone else handle their pager
I guess you've never given your phone to your toddler for 2 minutes to watch a video while you pooped in a public bathroom, huh?
dralley 8 hours ago [-]
A pager is not a phone. Pagers and portable radios are not multi-purpose devices. You can't watch Frozen on a pager.
ok_dad 7 hours ago [-]
Kids love to grab anything that is interesting to them.
breppp 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ok_dad 6 hours ago [-]
Well, I guess we disagree on this, but I think it's a shit move to blow up a bunch of any object that is normally benign and which could logically be sitting next to or in the hands of an innocent. I'll die on that hill. I know it goes against most people's opinions on HN but I don't mind that. As you can see, I have some points to spare so feel free to downvote me to oblivion, even though that downvote button is meant for people who go against the rules; I don't believe I have in any of my posts in this thread, but I am willing to apologize if so.
Also, I have a thought for you: what would you call it if a foreign nation which your country had poor relations with, possibly open hostility, had blown up the work laptops (which they might take home) of a bunch of high ranking military members in your country? Would that be terrorism or a legal attack to you? What would you think of the innocent lives lost to such an attack?
apical_dendrite 5 hours ago [-]
This incident did not occur in a vacuum. If this had been a surprise attack during peacetime, the calculus would be different, but it wasn't.
Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israeli civilian populations more or less indiscriminately very soon after the October 7th terrorist attack. Just a few months before the pager incident, a Hezbollah rocket killed 12 children in a Druze town in the Golan Heights.
Israel was justified in defending itself against an aggressor. Not to do so would mean continuing to let their civilians be killed. Once you start from that premise, then blowing up pagers that only belong to Hezbollah members is a much better option than any alternative.
The standard can't just be "you aren't allowed to take any action that could kill innocent people". To have that as the standard is the same as to have no standard at all, because it's so unrealistic that nobody would follow it. The standard has to take into account whether the action is offensive or defensive, what the relative risk of killing innocent people is, and what the alternatives are.
That's why I talked about the allied bombings during WWII, which killed enormous numbers of German and Japanese civilians. To suggest that the allies should not have used bombers in, say, 1941 because they would inevitably kill many civilians is unreasonable. But you can distinguish between, say, the RAFs nighttime bombing campaigns, which were intended to strike civilian targets for the purposes of demoralizing and starving the population, and the USAAFs daytime bombing campaigns, which were intended to destroy factories. Both killed many, many innocent people, but there are clear moral differences.
cholantesh 6 hours ago [-]
I too, wouldn't join the IDF.
BobaFloutist 8 hours ago [-]
The prohibitions on booby-traps are that they're indiscriminant, not that they involve mundane objects.
I totally get the instinct to condemn the attack, since it's truly, deeply viscerally horrifying (not to mention terrifying!), but most of the rules about how you're supposed to conduct war basically boil down to
1. Make a reasonable effort to avoid disproportionately harming civilians
2. Don't go out of your way to inflict pain and suffering on your enemy beyond what's a necessary part of trying to kill or neutralize them
3. If your enemy is completely at your mercy, you have an extra duty to uphold 1 and 2.
Again, the pager attack is new, unusual, and just very upsetting. But it harmed civilians at a remarkably low rate, and the method of harm wasn't meaningfully more painful than just shooting someone. It compares very favorably with just bombing people on every metric other than maybe how scary it is if you're a combatant.
phantasmish 6 hours ago [-]
Given the apparently-terrible injury-to-death ratio, another angle to attack the legality of the action might be that the weapons were first and foremost effective at maiming, not killing, which is generally frowned upon by the laws of war (if they were intended as lethal, their success on that front was so bad it might fall into "guilty through incompetence" sort of territory)
(I agree the targeting per se seems to have been remarkably good for the world of asynchronous warfare—or even conventional warfare)
BobaFloutist 2 hours ago [-]
>the weapons were first and foremost effective at maiming, not killing, which is generally frowned upon by the laws of war
Can you cite something for this? Most people would rather be (even permanently) injured than killed, so I'm not sure why using the minimum necessary force would be frowned upon, other than it typically being incredibly difficult and impractical.
7 hours ago [-]
lo_zamoyski 11 hours ago [-]
> "laws of war"
What you want to appeal to are just war principles.
thrance 2 hours ago [-]
If this attack had been carried on US soil it would have been grounds enough to justify another pointless war in the Middle East. But since it was committed by Israel unto a random Arabic country most Americans would fail to place on the map, it's "probably legal".
This is obviously terrorism. The methods are the same as terrorists, the intent is the same, the results are the same. 3000 wounded, this is extremely far from the "surgical precision" claimed by the fascist apartheid state of Israel.
cess11 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
hersko 6 hours ago [-]
Do you know what the word "Indiscriminate" means?
SauntSolaire 6 hours ago [-]
It wasn't indiscriminate, is the main point. Almost exactly the opposite.
fortran77 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
amarcheschi 6 hours ago [-]
Monitoring people for... Supporting opinions that don't agree with you?
mdni007 5 hours ago [-]
There's a specific group of people that have this notion of thinking and I don't even need to explain further because most people will know who I am talking about
jmyeet 7 hours ago [-]
It's quite clearly a war crime. You're putting booby trapped devices into supply chains where civilians will foreseeably get them and be injured or killed by them. This includes medical professionals and their families, who were both victims [1].
It's the equivalent of blowing up a commercial plane or bus because there's a military commander on it. Or, you know, levelling a residential apartment building [2].
If anyone else had done this we'd (correctly) be calling it a terrorist attack.
Would you be here pushing the war crime narrative if Hamas had pulled off this operation on the IDF?
viccis 5 hours ago [-]
Of course not. The IDF aren't civilians. Hezbollah officials, unless they are part of its military sub-organization, are civilians.
A better comparison would be if Hamas pulled off this operation against the members of the Knesset (or, even more comparable, against a specific party like Likud) while they were at home.
rat87 7 hours ago [-]
The idea that it's a war crime is ridiculous. They specifically inserted it into the Hezbollah supply chain specifically Hezbollah internal use. They didn't just sell them at Lebanons markets they specifically sold the entire special order to Hezbollah directly. I think if any one other then Israel pulled it off a lot fewer people would be baselessly claiming it was a war crime
ThrowawayTestr 7 hours ago [-]
It's quite clearly not. Only Hezbollah agents had the pagers.
hearsathought 8 hours ago [-]
> I actually consider the pager attack to be legal.
If it was done to "israelis", I bet you'd be singing a different tune. Imagine if iran or saudi arabia or anyone else did this to "israelis", some whiny people would be calling it terrorism.
SauntSolaire 6 hours ago [-]
If Hezbollah executed this same attack against the IDF it would also not be terrorism.
Qiu_Zhanxuan 4 hours ago [-]
It's not legal, the consensus among human rights organizations and UN experts is that it's a violation of international humanitarian law. But I guess the American urge to see middle eastern people suffer is alive and well.
abdelhousni 4 hours ago [-]
Using civilian infrastructure as a means to launch warfare on political and military opponent...
Please remind us what were called the people using civilian planes against civilian buildings on New York on 9/11/2001 ?
Yes terrorists.
Same here although in a different scale but same goal : terrorizing the enemy.
wunderland 5 hours ago [-]
The scale of these terrorist attacks seems to be lost by some in the comments here.
Here’s a documentary showing the extent, including all of the undeniable civilians that were injured or killed: https://youtu.be/2mqqDTIs4vE
baskin31 5 hours ago [-]
These pagers did not bring down buildings as shown in here. This 'documentary' is all over the place factually with sources from many of the most anti-Israel (not pro-Palestinian) organizations.
Qiu_Zhanxuan 3 hours ago [-]
I guess the children and civilians maimed by these pagers are biased against Israel just like a rape victime is biaised against a rapist. And in your view, their words mean nothing. Talk about a twisted mentality
jseip 7 hours ago [-]
Why is it inappropriate to be outraged that international humanitarian laws are actively being violated by Israel, in Gaza? Can someone help me understand?
ebbi 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
hersko 6 hours ago [-]
I can't imagine why Israel was carrying out strikes in Lebanon after October 8th. It's a total mystery.
ebbi 5 hours ago [-]
I can't imagine why the attacks on October 7th happened. It's a complete mystery given life started on October 7th.
rasz 7 minutes ago [-]
Isnt this just a very effective ad for Palantir? Anyone considering Palantir is of the opinion Pager operation was super successful.
TriangleEdge 7 hours ago [-]
For those curious, you can find videos of what Palantir Gotham is on YouTube. It might help you be more informed before you post here.
joecool1029 7 hours ago [-]
So rather than point us at more Palantir marketing and YouTuber conspiracy theories, why not be a little more specific (if you can) and just tell us a bit more about that since you are allegedly an ex-Palantir?
> Palantir ended up having to rent a second-floor building that housed its Tel Aviv office, to accommodate the intelligence analysts who needed tutorials
Has anyone here tried using their software? It's salesforce-level fucked. They did a great job spewing lofty concepts, with their ontologies and their kinetic layers, but in the end it all ends up being a giant wormy ERP. There might be one good idea in there (articulating the schemas and transformations in separate layers) but overall it's a perfect vibe match for orwellian bureaucracies.
robertkoss 11 hours ago [-]
I think Foundry is insanely impressive tbh. If you set it up correctly, its insanely powerful
lolive 7 hours ago [-]
I second that. My company is really changing its point of view on data at scale thanks to their tools.
[note: SAP announces DataSphere for 2026, and their stack is surprisingly similar :)]
therobots927 8 hours ago [-]
Maybe they aren’t optimizing for user experience and are instead optimizing for how much data they can suck into their central db?
_DeadFred_ 9 hours ago [-]
An ERP where instead of investing in building up your in-house domain experts, your pay consulting fees to train another company's staff on the knowledge, then pay to access it.
Crazy how modern companies want to be McFranchise level of capable. What are you adding as a company if you outsource everything that can make your company a differentiator and your company is just plug and play cogs?
spwa4 8 hours ago [-]
You forget that the whole idea that public companies sell on the stock market is that any management, any idiot with an MBA, could just come in and take it over, making roughly the same profit as the people that sold.
If you don't believe that, you shouldn't be investing.
If you're going to make this argument, it'll only apply to private companies in founders' hands, maybe to family businesses, but certainly not to public companies.
UltraSane 8 hours ago [-]
Like most very complex and powerful software it takes a long time to learn and configure it correctly.
caycep 8 hours ago [-]
you have to wonder, if they weren't the only tech firm willing to engage w/ DOD, would they survive in a more competitive atmosphere?
kjkjadksj 8 hours ago [-]
Funny you think they are the only tech firm willing to engage with the DOD.
stevenalowe 6 hours ago [-]
“The tech was used” but how, specifically, in regards to Operation Grim Reaper? The implication is that it was used to select targets but if that it true then does that mean there are still unexploded pagers in use?
breedmesmn 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
hereme888 1 hours ago [-]
I thought this was old news. I remember commenting on this almost a year ago?
Anyways, it's war against a known terrorist group.
orochimaaru 7 hours ago [-]
I’ve said this before and cannot be said enough. Palantir is a data platform. I think they optimize for knowledge graphs (ontology). It has several uses. It’s seems to be fashionable to blame Palantir these days. But then wouldn’t you also blame other things - Java and database open source, Python, Linux foundation, etc. for all this.
I think people just want to blame without analyzing what else could be blamed to. Really it’s most of the free software community too.
Disclaimer: I don’t consider what Israel did unlawful. They were under attack by hezb and Hamas. They were within rights to retaliate. And no, hezb and Hamas don’t care about civilian casualties.
underdeserver 4 hours ago [-]
I am in awe of the opinions in this thread. Really.
If Israel, unprovoked, randomly carried out this attack it would be one thing. But:
1. Hezbollah had been continuously, deliberately firing rockets at civilians since October 8th, 2023 displacing tens of thousands and killing multiple civilians including 12 children in a playground in Majdal Shams.
2. Hezbollah embeds itself and fires from within civilian population in Lebanon
3. Hezbollah leadership had stated that they intend to escalate their attacks including a ground invasion of Israel
I think everyone in this thread criticizing this operation needs to first explain what they would have Israel do in this situation.
Because if you think Israel should retaliate against Hezbollah at all, please explain how you, in Israel's shoes, would achieve a comparable result with fewer civilian casualties.
sporkxrocket 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
sreejithr 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
tkel 3 hours ago [-]
If I were Israel, I would have not invaded Gaza, which would have resulted in far fewer civilian casualties, and also would have ended the strikes by Hezbollah.
Also, if you look at the data on attacks by Israel against Lebanon, they are disproportionate, Israel launching 10x more airstrikes, even going so far as to level entire city blocks of apartment buildings in Beirut. I remember just on the first day of attacks by Israel against Lebanon, over 1000 civilians were killed. Also Israel refuses to vacate southern Lebanon after a ceasefire agreement, and continues to violate the ceasefire. Just in the last 24h, Israel has bombarded 4 different locations in Central Lebanon with airstrikes. If I were Israel, I would simply stop acting as a fanatic aggressor with no regard for human life.
tptacek 3 hours ago [-]
The military dynamics of the Israel and Hezbollah conflict are an indictment of Israeli's Gaza campaign. When Israel is clear-eyed, strategic, and effective at confronting a serious military adversary, it looks like the Hezbollah conflict: ultra-targeted rapidly disabling strikes. That Israel instead systematically leveled an entire civilian metropolitan area to combat Hamas makes the the claims about the Hezbollah strike more damning, not less.
sporkxrocket 3 hours ago [-]
Actually it's Hezbollah that has been practicing very targeted, military only strikes against Israel. Israel on the other hand has killed thousands of Lebanese people and displaced over a million. That's just since the Oct 7th attacks. Prior to that Israel carpet bombed Lebanon on multiple occasions.
This is obviously false. Hezbollah was indiscriminately firing artillery into Israel and managed to kill, among other people, 12 Druze soccer players in the Golan Heights.
I don't know how far off we are on our assessment of current Israeli governance, but I'd bet it's not as far as you think we are. But I'd also guess we're wildly far apart on Hezbollah, which, along with Ansar Allah in Yemen, are some of the most amoral and illegitimate military forces on the planet.
Unfortunately, Hezbollah was, up until 2024, waging a largely PR-based war on Israel (their "puppet" adversary; their true adversary was Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham in Syria, where they spilled more blood and lost more men and materiel than in every conflict they've had with Israel over the last 20 years), and people have --- for understandable reasons --- antipathy towards Israeli leadership. So Hezbollah, like the Houthis, have a western cheering section, made up almost entirely of people who have chosen not to understand anything about what makes either organization tick.
You can come up with lots of military atrocities committed by Israel, because Israel has in the Gaza conflict committed many atrocities. None of it will legitimize the IRGC's Shia-supremacist totalitarian occupation of Lebanon or their genocidal occupation of Yemen. The civil wars in Syria and Yemen (the real military fronts in the last 2 decades) claimed an order of magnitude more lives than anything Israel did, which is truly saying something given the horrifying costs of Israel's botched, reckless, amoral handling of Gaza.
sporkxrocket 3 hours ago [-]
I've been following this very closely from the start. Hezbollah was targeting radio towers and IDF personnel. Hezbollah denied that it was their rocket that hit the Druze and they certainly didn't have any other attacks that matched that type of target. Again, it's well documented that Israel has caused orders of magnitude more civilian damage and casualties than Hezbollah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Hezbollah_confl...
> On 4 December 2024, the Lebanese Health Ministry reported that since 7 October 2023, Israeli attacks killed 4,047 people, including 316 children and 790 women, and injured 16,638 others
tptacek 2 hours ago [-]
You haven't responded to any claim I've made other than to advance a claim that Hezbollah, which fired tens of thousands of mostly unguided rockets into Israel, did not in fact kill 12 Druze children in the Golan Heights.
Our premises may be too far apart to usefully discuss this. The core of my argument (the comparative military and civilian body counts in Syria and Yemen) aren't going to be easy to refute by appeals to Hezbollah's PR. (You may also have responded to a by-2-minutes-or-so earlier version of my comment; we may be responding to each other in too-close succession and talking past each other.)
Edit: I'm now throttled from posting but I was able to go back and find more video of Hezbollah's attacks on Israel military facilities. I think people should watch these and judge for themselves:
You don't want to miss a step holding Israel to account. I'm not interested in pushing back on you about that. But to accomplish that, you're defending Hezbollah. Hezbollah is indefensible. If you want to keep hashing out why, I'm willing to keep talking about it, but I suspect this isn't a productive conversation.
sleepybrett 5 hours ago [-]
Palantir is just 'CIA as a service'.
_DeadFred_ 9 hours ago [-]
This conversation already has comments on one side flagged to invisibility. If you are going to allow these conversations, but only allow one side, then Hacker News is not about discussion but about what?
dang 8 hours ago [-]
If there are flagged comments which are not breaking the site guidelines, I'd like links to take a look at.
The moderation intention is for comments which break the site guidelines to be flagged, regardless of which side they are or aren't on. It's not possible to reach this state perfectly, of course.
That one doesn't seem to violate the rules, and there is a lot of discussion below it.
dang 6 hours ago [-]
Agreed, and I unflagged that one a while before you posted your comment here - most probably you had a non-refreshed version of the page.
6 hours ago [-]
krautburglar 8 hours ago [-]
Dude, your flag function is abused to no end, and you don't really do anything about it. One of the earliest comments I've made was one on semi-recent X11 history, and got flagged for it, because apparently everything is political now.
The post isn't the point. The point is that you have people abusing the flag mechanism. Maybe you should start ignoring their flags when they abuse it?
philipkglass 3 hours ago [-]
That's already implemented. I overused flagging at one point in my account history and my flags stopped having any effect. I eventually emailed the moderators and pledged to be more judicious with my flagging if they'd give me the power back, and they gave it back.
krautburglar 2 hours ago [-]
They need to use it more then.
tguvot 8 hours ago [-]
95% of flagged comments don't break guidelines in any given discussion. flagging been used forever to silence "inconvenient facts" and "dissenting opinions"
as example, just below there is reply to you saying that flagging been abused, been flagged
dang 8 hours ago [-]
> 95% of flagged comments don't break guidelines in any given discussion
That number is much too high IMO, so I assume we interpret the site guidelines very differently.
> as example, just below there is reply to you saying that flagging been abused, been flagged
I assume you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221396? No, you'd see "[flagged]" if that were the case. The comment is [dead], but it was killed by software, not flagged by users. I'll restore it.
arminiusreturns 8 hours ago [-]
Can expound on what software did this on its own?
dang 6 hours ago [-]
There are various software filters based on past abuses by related accounts.
tguvot 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
dang 6 hours ago [-]
I don't agree, and there are many counterexamples in this thread alone.
People who are passionate about a divisive topic often feel like the site/moderators/community are hopelessly biased against their view. The people with opposing views feel exactly the same way—which, ironically, becomes the one thing they can agree about, although they disagree about the direction.
This is ultimately a function of how the passions work, so I don't believe there's much we can do about it.
you are avoiding the actual topic in question and try to divert discussion into different direction.
flags are been abused and you don't do anything about it, short of "show me wrongly flagged comment and i'll unflag it if i think it was flagged wrong"
can you openly admit that flags are been abused and misused to silence opinions that people disagree with ?
if you can't agree with such a trivial statement, I don't think there is anything to discuss here.
ps. obviously after i made 3 comments i am throttled and cant post this comment
sporkxrocket 7 hours ago [-]
A lot of my comments calling out Israel for this terrorist attack are flagged.
That last sentence is arguably on the wrong side of the line, but ok, I've unflagged it.
sporkxrocket 6 hours ago [-]
Thank you (even though it's not my comment). I feel like if people are free to say the pager attack was "brilliant", then saying it was an act of terrorism (which obviously I agree with) is the equivalent on the other side.
Hi @dang. Here is a factual comment of mine that does not break the rules which, along with many other comments on one side of the Israel/Palestine issue, was unnecessarily and unjustifiably flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45832233
dang 6 hours ago [-]
I think that one is borderline but, in the context of a topic this divisive, borderline is not so bad, so I've unflagged it.
richardfeynman 6 minutes ago [-]
@dang Here is another comment of mine on this thread that is substantive, responding directly to the issue, and not a personal attack, but was still flagged. I'm an HN user for 15 years, have reviewed the rules, and don't think this violates any (except that I used the word "balls"?). I agree with the other commenters that flagging is being abused here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46223274
The point isn't so much to litigate each flagged comment, just to highlight how pervasive the flag abuse problem is. And of course, when the flag abusers 'defect' and gain some utility, it is only rational for the 'victims' to themselves defect from the civil conversation and start to abuse flags.
In threads that are, unfortunately, adversarial, abusing the flag button is a stable Nash equilibrium. I think it's a shitty equilibrium, though, and makes real, substantive conversations--ostensibly the goal on this forum--harder to achieve.
I think it's high time to reconsider the current 'flag' mechanics. At the very least I think we would all be better off if flags were simply disabled on highly controversial topics.
dang 5 hours ago [-]
I don't assess it that way. In any case, I am certain that turning off flags on controversial topics would have a devastating effect. To me that's like saying "let's turn off the immune system for the most fatal viruses".
richardfeynman 3 minutes ago [-]
Perhaps it's worth considering an algorithmic review of flagging abuse. You can feed a table of flagged comments with the user, the comment the user flagged, and the context, as well as HN's rules, into GPT or a similar AI to get a first approximation of which users are abusing flagging, and on which topics flagging is most abused. I bet you'd find some interesting data!
kyboren 4 hours ago [-]
To be clear, I am not suggesting to eliminate any form of moderation whatsoever. I think threads like these require intensive manual moderation.
I recognize that's a big ask for an already-overburdened mod. I just don't see any good alternative.
Separately, I want to express that while I don't always agree with you, I think you generally do an excellent job moderating and I appreciate your efforts to keep this community free and healthy.
There are no useful discussion to be had on such topics as war in Isreal, Donald Trump (be it "stolen elections", or foreign politics), or Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Nobody will ever think "That was a well-reasoned argument I now believe war crimes were, or were not, committed".
The best thing to do on posts like this is avoid reading them, or flag them.
It feels like there's an obviously correct side to most of these issues, the problem is half the audience here believes their side is correct and yours is wrong.
beedeebeedee 7 hours ago [-]
> There are no useful discussion to be had on such topics
I think there are useful discussions to be had on these topics, and in fact, we must have those discussions. The issue is that, if we want to do so productively and a comment section is the only venue for us to speak to each other, then we must be extremely patient with others and ourselves and reflect on what they say and what we say (i.e., discuss in good faith).
That burden may be too high for most people, but collectively, we don't have a better forum anymore, and we need to have these discussions and come to consensus before the world is engulfed in authoritarianism or war (which is not hyperbole).
TimorousBestie 7 hours ago [-]
You might believe there are useful discussions to be had, but when a faction of readers like the GP flag or downvote every thread they don’t like, then it’s impossible to have any conversation, no matter how much good faith is brought to bear.
Manually appealing to dang for unflagging is not a workable solution either.
This really is an entirely unsuitable forum for this discussion.
beedeebeedee 7 hours ago [-]
It shouldn't be the case that people acting in bad faith can disrupt meaningful discussion between people acting in good faith. I am at a loss to suggest a better forum. Town halls, protests, talking to people on the street, Congress, etc, are not able to have these discussions either.
Maybe this is not the forum, but then what is? A philosophy class you took ten years ago?
TimorousBestie 7 hours ago [-]
> Maybe this is not the forum, but then what is? A philosophy class you took ten years ago?
Funny that you mention it, but Israel/Palestine was also a banned topic in the “Ethics and International Law” course I took circa twenty years ago.
I advocate concerning yourself with the things you can control, which does not include this forum’s idiosyncratic moderation style.
beedeebeedee 6 hours ago [-]
> I advocate concerning yourself with the things you can control, which do not include this forum’s idiosyncratic moderation style.
I can control my comments, which are a part of this forum's moderation style, and I can advocate in those comments for people to act in good faith, and appeal for help in figuring out how to make it more common.
If we can't discuss important topics in good faith on a nerd website, what hope do we have of discussing them elsewhere? It's not hyperbole anymore to say that if we don't come to some consensus we are going to end up in authoritarianism or war.
hearsathought 5 hours ago [-]
> It feels like there's an obviously correct side to most of these issues, the problem is half the audience here believes their side is correct and yours is wrong.
You think half the audience here or anywhere is on the side of israel and genocide? The only reason no discussion can be had is because of the influence of israel in tech, media, government and the bot farms they are allowed to employ all over social media.
dang 4 hours ago [-]
I don't know what the numbers are, nor is it possible to determine this from the data we have, but I am reasonably sure that most of the commenters who post about this to HN are doing so in good faith. That doesn't make it any less tough to discuss (or to moderate the discussion). If anything, it makes it tougher.
submeta 6 hours ago [-]
Based on the rules of international humanitarian law and the predictable harm to civilians, Israel’s pager attack was a highly unlawful and unacceptable method of warfare: it used booby-trapped everyday civilian objects, made civilian injury and widespread fear foreseeable (literal definition of terrorism), violated the principles of distinction and precautions, and was described by UN experts as constituting war crimes. Even if the intended targets were Hezbollah members, the method chosen inherently endangered civilians, undermined civilian safety, and produced terror among the populationc, making the operation indefensible under humanitarian law.
Everyone defending it are out of their mind. They‘d be crying foul immediately when Israel‘s opponents did the same.
When Israel kills thousands of civilians to free three soldiers (hostages), then for them it’s ok. If Palestinians did the same, to free one of many thousand illegally detained civilians they‘d call it terrorism.
jmyeet 7 hours ago [-]
There are a few different angles to this.
1. If any other state had done this, we'd be correctly calling this a terrorist attack and there wouldn't be any question about it; and
2. Palantir was a partner in developing several AI systems used for targeting missile strikes in Gaza. Collectively these tend to be called Lavender [1][2]. Another of these systems is called "Where's Daddy". What does it do? It targets alleged militants at home so their families with be collateral damage [3]; and
3. These systems could not exist without the labor of the humans who create them so it raises questions about the ethics of everything we do as software engineers and tech people. This is not a new debate. For example, there were debates about who should be culpable for the German death machine in WW2. Guards at the camp? Absolutely. Civilians at IG Farben who are making Zyklon-B? Do they know what it's being used for? Do they have any choice in the matter?
My personal opinion is that anyone continuing to work for Palantir can no longer plead ignorance. You're actively contributing to profiting from killing, starving and torturing civilians. Do with that what you will. In a just world, you'd have to answer for your actions at The Hague or Nuremberg 2.0, ultimately.
We have the ICC. It was set up by lawyers with subject matter expertise. The liberal democratic nations of the world could decide to start using and empowering that.
FridayoLeary 4 hours ago [-]
What for? To issue arrest warrants against dead terrorists and prime ministers who kill terrorists?
They should stick to african warlords, maybe they can make a difference there.
Seattle3503 3 hours ago [-]
If fully realized it would mean we actually have international law, including fair trials.
Imagine slapping Putin in handcuffs when he touches down in any Western country, rather than the glad-handing and photo ops he gets now.
Dictators play democracies off each other. International law is in part about solving a coordination problem.
FridayoLeary 3 hours ago [-]
That's just wishful thinking.
I would argue that by going after Israel in such a blatantly biased way the ICC and the UN have fallen to precisely the sort of groups you want to use them against.
Not saying the ICC can't be useful, you would just have to massively limit the scope of their "authority" to realistic targets. I.e. South American dictators and various warlords. And of course islamic terrorists.
Plenty of international law works because it actually serves a useful purpose for states like shipping. Countries don't like domestic terrorists and crime organisations. They would also prefer africa to be developed so they can trade.
sporkxrocket 2 hours ago [-]
How is holding Israel accountable for it's very well documented war crimes "blatantly biased"?
FridayoLeary 2 hours ago [-]
There you go.
There is no state organised war crimes going on, just normal war. If you can't understand the distinction that's your problem not mine. In my opinion Israels actions in Gaza fall well within the actions of a legitimate war, to the extent warfare can be legitimised. I'm not commenting on individual cases, and anyway those are not relevant to my argument.
Seattle3503 46 minutes ago [-]
> In my opinion Israels actions in Gaza fall well within the actions of a legitimate wa
The point of the ICC is to resolve this sort of question via a thorough legal process, just like we have in so many democracies around the world. Israel wouldn't be on trial, Netanyahu would. I presume you are talking about him at least. And if he is innocent then he should have his day in court.
And yes, fully embracing the ICC would be a radical shift for the entire world. We would be bringing in a lot of people other than just Netanyahu. The idea is that no one is above the law, no matter how important they may be.
richardfeynman 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Cyph0n 6 hours ago [-]
So the indiscriminate mass detonation of explosive devices is not terrorism? Are you aware of how many civilian casualties there were as a result of this attack? Would this be acceptable if Hezbollah did this to Israeli military officers?
richardfeynman 6 hours ago [-]
The attack was by definition discriminate. I don't think there's an attack in modern history that was more targeted and had less collateral damage. The attack targeted hundreds Hezbollah leaders, who bought and used those pagers. There was minimal collateral damage among civilians amounting to unverified allegations that a child of a Hezbollah member was maimed, and some minor other damage. The explosives in the pagers were measured in grams, and the explosions were relatively small, specifically to minimize collateral damage.
Cyph0n 6 hours ago [-]
It was indiscriminate in timing, location, and device possession.
Unless you’re saying that the country behind a self-evaluated >80% civilian to combatant kill ratio in Gaza went through rigorous protocols to minimize harm in this attack?
richardfeynman 5 hours ago [-]
The timing was during a war, the location was in a belligerent country, and the pagers were only and exclusively given to hezbollah leadership. The very definition of discriminate.
Also, Israel has not "self-evaluated" a >80% civilian to combatant kill ratio. There was a Haaretz report that said the IDF was able to ID about 20% of those killed as militants against known databases, which is remarkably high compared to any other war. That doesn't mean the remaining 80% are civilians, it just means they weren't ID'd against a databse. So this includes anyone with a gun at a distance. Do you think Ukraine has a database of Russian soldiers and are able to ID 20% of the russian soldiers they kill against that database? Of course not. Israel's self evaluation of the ratio varies between 1.4:1 and 2:1 depending on the government official you quote.
Cyph0n 5 hours ago [-]
Re: timing - They were triggered to explode en masse, which implies that there was zero consideration to minimizing civilian harm.
Re: location - They exploded everywhere you can think of, while these targets were doing civilian activities near other civilians, and not in a combat setting.
Re: possession - Given the above, and Israel’s horrendous kill ratio, there was definitely no consideration for possession of these pagers at the time of the attack. For example, who is to say that some pagers weren’t in use by members of the political bureau, or unofficially resold to a hospital for use by oncall doctors?
viccis 5 hours ago [-]
Would you call it terrorism when Israel sent mailbombs to US top brass, including our president?
flyinglizard 6 hours ago [-]
… and it’s not just that Israel woke up one morning and decided to take Hezbollah to the cleaners, either. Hezbollah started a military campaign against Israel on October 8th, 2023, one day after the most horrific attack Jews have experienced since the holocaust.
I don’t think this attack could have been more moral or justified than it was. It didn’t even kill on large numbers, instead it was just enough to neutralize Hezbollahs command and control structures.
ComputerGuru 11 hours ago [-]
Back when Google's motto was "Do no evil" we used to joke about Palantir embracing the opposite ethos.
jjk166 11 hours ago [-]
Would that be "Do all evil" or "Do exclusively evil" or "Do no good"?
gs17 8 hours ago [-]
There's also the option of "Do Some Evil".
7 hours ago [-]
usgroup 7 hours ago [-]
evil(x) -> not(do(x)) which equates to not(evil(x)) or not(do(x)).
The negation would be evil(x) and do(x) by DeMorgan's law.
If what you mean is all(x), evil(x) -> not(do(x))
then the negation would be exists(x), evil(x) and do(x).
asadm 8 hours ago [-]
Do Evil, Yes!
toomanyrichies 7 hours ago [-]
Was this by chance a "No, money down!" Simpsons reference?
Yeah sure. Seems like a big leap from "they use Palintir's software" to implying that it was somehow important for this attack.
Also did they really call it Operation Grim Beeper? Hilarious if true (but I suspect not given how codenames are meant to work).
alexashka 5 hours ago [-]
This seems fitting:
> Yet what is the result, the gain to humanity, of this wonderfully regulated society which has been built solely to make life richer? Millions are on the verge of starvation, hundreds of thousands are spending their lives in producing instruments for the destruction of human life, and millions again are wasting their existence in a dull tragedy of monotony. In every great industrial centre where wealth is most plentifully produced, there is poverty and want. In the rich town where no production is carried on, there is plenty and enjoyment. He who labours hard or produces wealth is in poverty, he who lives in idleness is rich. When the warehouses are full, there is want and hunger. Those without food are forbidden to produce because the demand is already supplied. [0]
I highlighted the part that relates to Palantir and most everyone on here reading HN (except you, of course, you're special :))
Which is to say this is nothing new and discussing the minutia of did this specific company do this specific thing when the system that makes this inevitable remains unaddressed is missing the point.
Oh well, politics for 99% of people seems to amount to gossip. Did you hear what X said/did? Oh my god, I can't believe it, etc, etc.
This reads like an ad for the geriatrics in power. They don't even mention what the hell they contributed but did mention that whatever it was was "AI powered" rofl.
therobots927 6 hours ago [-]
HN let this one fall through the cracks I guess. Usually this article would get flagged in under 10 minutes of being up.
nextstep 6 hours ago [-]
It was flagged and enough people complained about censorship that is was resurrected with a pinned post from dang about how we should be civil
therobots927 6 hours ago [-]
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dang 4 hours ago [-]
We stopped using the word 'civil' years ago.
Commenters here need to follow the rules, and the rules don't go away when the topic is a tough one. On the contrary, they apply more, as https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html makes clear.
therobots927 38 minutes ago [-]
Happy to follow the rules when free discussion is allowed. Watching this topic get censored aggressively on here during some of the darkest months for Palestinians eroded my respect for your “rules”.
nextstep 5 hours ago [-]
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proshno 5 hours ago [-]
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horaceradish 7 hours ago [-]
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ThrowawayTestr 7 hours ago [-]
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UltraSane 8 hours ago [-]
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andrewcamel 8 hours ago [-]
Yeah... requires serious mental gymnastics to argue otherwise.
Military/terrorist group procures communication devices to coordinate military operations. Explosive is sized to injure the holder, not bystanders - per CCTV videos, eg:
Not mental gymnastics, just hezbolla supporters who will lie because they want to see Israel destroyed.
Before you flag me for saying the quiet part out loud i would just like to confirm that this doesn't apply to all the people here. There are probably 3 users here who are just badly misinformed.
chokominto 8 hours ago [-]
Yep
pbiggar 8 hours ago [-]
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hersko 7 hours ago [-]
This is why Grim Beeper was so enlightening for me. It proved that Israel could go above and beyond to limit collateral damage with some brilliant attack no one has even contemplated before and there would still be people online saying it was a war crime.
> Gabriel said Mossad had learned that Hezbollah was buying pagers from Gold Apollo, a company in Taiwan.
> "When they are buying from us, they have zero clue that they are buying from the Mossad. We make like the 'Truman Show,' everything is controlled by us behind the scene," Gabriel said. "In their experience, everything is normal. Everything was 100% kosher."
> To further the plot, Mossad hired the Gold Apollo saleswoman Hezbollah was used to working with, who was unaware she was working with Mossad. According to Gabriel, she offered Hezbollah the first batch of pagers as an upgrade, free of charge. By September 2024, Hezbollah had about 5,000 pagers in their pockets.
> Going analog has been a signature move for terror groups ever since the September 11th attacks as a way to successfully mask communications from Western militaries and government defense agencies.
> A source cited by the Wall Street Journal said many of the affected devices were from a new shipment delivered to Hezbollah militants in recent days.
> Apparently, the encrypted pagers currently in use by Hezbollah were brand new models and bought in bulk for the members just a few months ago, several sources told Reuters.
I'm sure you can find more if you look; there's a lot of articles about it.
hersko 5 hours ago [-]
They literally sold the beepers to Hezbollah. This is common knowledge.
The pager bombs injured and maimed many civilians including children.
Seattle3503 5 hours ago [-]
It's a shared property of bombs.
moomoo11 5 hours ago [-]
Yes that’s why I said minimal AOE and also why I said in a war (keyword - we live in real world and war is a very real thing whether we like it or not) minimizing harm to innocents is key.
The alternative is 10s of thousands of civilians suffering because their leaders drag them into hell with them. We already see how bad that is..
4 hours ago [-]
7 hours ago [-]
meidanor 6 hours ago [-]
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peanuty1 5 hours ago [-]
The pager bombs injured and maimed many civilians including children.
tradertef 11 hours ago [-]
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apical_dendrite 11 hours ago [-]
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tradertef 11 hours ago [-]
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kyboren 10 hours ago [-]
It's a war, you know. People die. Sometimes in perfectly legal and justified strikes, sometimes in attacks that contravene the laws of war. And given that Hamas uses the civilians under their control as both a sword and a shield, and that Egypt simply refuses their obligation under IHL to allow refugees to flee, collateral damage is an unfortunate inevitability.
Lumping together all civilians killed by Israel in the course of war is overly reductive: Some were killed in unlawful intentional acts, some were unfortunate collateral damage of lawful acts, and some were intentional victims of Hamas brutality, sacrificed at the altar of making Israel look bad.
8 hours ago [-]
cholantesh 6 hours ago [-]
>It's a war, you know.
It's an occupation that has been ongoing for almost 80 years, not a 'war' that began unprovoked, along with recorded history and the universe itself, on October 7th.
>Sometimes in perfectly legal and justified strikes, sometimes in attacks that contravene the laws of war.
More than half the time, these 'perfect justifications' don't hold water and in fact rest on the hope of total impunity from IHL.
>Hamas uses the civilians under their control as both a sword and a shield
Not according to any sane definition that is internationally agreed upon. Conversely, the IDF's use of human shields - as defined in IHL and in their own propaganda - is abundantly documented.
>Egypt simply refuses their obligation under IHL to allow refugees to flee, collateral damage is an unfortunate inevitability.
Rather odd that rendering Palestinians stateless is just a law of nature in your books, and that Israel's obligations as an occupying power and the agent that created a refugee crisis - ie, prosecuted a campaign of human cleansing - is not part of your calculus at all.
aaomidi 10 hours ago [-]
There’s more evidence of Israel using Palestinians as human shields than hamas using them as human shields just fyi
hbogert 10 hours ago [-]
It's okay to dislike both parties
kyboren 11 hours ago [-]
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tradertef 11 hours ago [-]
False equivalency.
Dig1t 7 hours ago [-]
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ebbi 7 hours ago [-]
According to many US politicians, it's a thing to celebrate (Fetterman stands out as one, having received a golden pager from an Israeli official).
And the mildly veiled threats on social media to people speaking out about Palestine referencing the pager attacks that goes unpunished by social media platforms.
hersko 7 hours ago [-]
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ebbi 7 hours ago [-]
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nalnq 11 hours ago [-]
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oldandboring 10 hours ago [-]
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648373628229 11 hours ago [-]
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knickerbockeroo 8 hours ago [-]
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sjsjxbx 7 hours ago [-]
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richardfeynman 8 hours ago [-]
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FireBeyond 7 hours ago [-]
And here you are regurgitating some dissent, blissfully ignorant that Hamas has precisely zero to do with this event.
richardfeynman 7 hours ago [-]
I am simply pointing out OP's double standard: when it comes to Israel, everything is to be distrusted; when it comes to Israel's enemies, everything is to be believed. I am well-aware of the differences between Hamas and Hezbollah and have studied this conflict for well over two decades.
C6JEsQeQa5fCjE 4 hours ago [-]
> when it comes to Israel, everything is to be distrusted
Correct, with a good reason for it. Israelis have been caught lying so many times that now when they make a claim, it is on them to prove that the claim is correct, rather than on others to prove that it is not. Just a few examples off the top of my head include:
- The killing of medical workers in a convoy of ambulances and burying them in shallow graves, then lying about doing it until someone dug the bodies up and found footage confirming that they lied on the phone of one of the buried aid workers. [1]
- The hunting down and killing of World Central Kitchen aid workers via multiple air strikes [2]. This was repeatedly denied by Israelis until too much evidence was stacked up and they settled for "it was a grave mistake".
- The high profile case of killing of Hind Rajab [3] who for a brief period of time was the sole survivor of a tank attack in a shelled vehicle filled with her dead family members. Aid workers were dispatched to rescue here, coordinated with Israelis. Neither the girl nor the aid workers were ever seen alive after that. Israelis repeatedly insisted that there were no troops in the area, until too much evidence was stacked again.
Hi there, I see you too trust Hamas sources (the origin of the Hind Rajab sotry) and not Israeli sources, so you too are in the camp of "believe hamas" and "doubt israel".
1. Hamas used World Central Kitchen vehicles, according even to the head of World Central Kitchen, who initially condemned the attack and then later admitted Hamas used WCK vehicles. You didn't know this, did you?
2. A few questions on the Hind Rajab incident:
Was the car stationary or moving? was it travelling north to a combat zone or south away from one? According to the original Arabic reports, did the family get out of the car or were they trapped inside? In the audio of this attack, was there any crossfire? When was Hind Rajab killed? Was it at 8:10am or at 2:30pm? What happened in those 6 hours? How can you be sure this was not a "fog of war" incident as opposed to a deliberate targeting of a civilian?
hearsathought 7 hours ago [-]
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richardfeynman 7 hours ago [-]
Everything you say here is false.
1. Israel's stated goal is to neuter Hamas and return the hostages, not kill civilians.
2. Arabs speak a semitic language; the "semites" in "anti-semite" has always referred to Jews.
3. Jews, including white Ashkenazi European Jews, are levantine in origin. Their lineage traces to Judea.
4. "Antisemitic" means anti-Jew. You are using it to mean anti-Arab, but arabs are not semites
5. You did make all that up!
cholantesh 6 hours ago [-]
>Israel's stated goal is to neuter Hamas and return the hostages, not kill civilians
Sure, yeah, just like it was in any number of previous operations, which at the time they declared successful, even though they did quite a bit more of the latter. Per Occam's razor, either they are prodigious bunglers, or you are overly credulous.
hearsathought 7 hours ago [-]
> 1. Israel's stated goal is to neuter Hamas and return the hostages, not kill civilians.
And yet so many dead civilians. It's almost like a genocial terrorist country like israel always lie. Also, I was referring to israel's genocide of the semites in palestine to found "israel" up to present day. You conveniently forgot about it.
> 2. Arabs speak a semitic language; the "semites" in "anti-semite" has always referred to Jews.
Arabs are ethnic semites who speak a semitic language. "Israelis" are non-semitic europeans pretending to be "jews". Ethnic europeans are not semites and can never be semites because they come from an entire separate branch of the human family tree.
> 3. Jews, including white Ashkenazi European Jews, are levantine in origin. Their lineage traces to Judea.
No they do not. Maybe a handful.
> 4. "Antisemitic" means anti-Jew.
No it does not because semite doesn't mean "jew". A semite and a jew are two different things.
> You are using it to mean anti-Arab, but arabs are not semites
No. I'm using semite to mean semite. Arabs surely are semites. Europeans are not though.
> 5. You did make all that up!
If arabs are not semites, then what are they? You say arabs are not semites and I'm the liar? I'm making shit up?
richardfeynman 6 hours ago [-]
1. There aren't a lot of dead civilians given that this was a 2 year war fought in a built-up urban environment fought against a plainclothes terrorist enemy that violated every law of war, including using hospitals and schools as military bases.
2. Semites is not an ethnicity, it's a language family, sorry. When used colloquially it has always referred to Jews.
3. “Semitic” is a language group, not a racial caste. Jews—including Ashkenazi—have documented Middle Eastern ancestry, and about half of Israelis are Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. The idea that Israelis are “non-Semitic Europeans pretending to be Jews” is just antisemitic nonsense, not a serious factual claim.
4. See above. Semitic is a language family, not a people. "Anti-semite" as a term has always meant "anti-Jew."
5. Correct, Arabs are Arabian. You're not "making shit up" you're repeating evidence-free nonsense you want to be true without examining its validity.
hearsathought 6 hours ago [-]
> 1. There aren't a lot of dead civilians given that...
It's amazing how similarly zionists/israelis and nazis rationalize.
> 2. Semites is not an ethnicity, it's a language family, sorry. When used colloquially it has always referred to Jews.
"Semitic people or Semites is a term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group[2][3][4][5] associated with people of the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, including Akkadians (Assyrians and Babylonians), Arabs, Arameans, Canaanites (Ammonites, Edomites, Israelites, Moabites, Phoenicians, and Philistines) and Habesha peoples." --wiki
> 3. “Semitic” is a language group, not a racial caste.
Germanic is a language group and an ethnic group. Using your logic, germans are not germanic peoples because germanic is a language group.
They have less documented middle eastern ancestry (none) than elizabeth warren has of native ancestry.
> The idea that Israelis are “non-Semitic Europeans pretending to be Jews” is just antisemitic nonsense, not a serious factual claim.
Considering that most "israelis" are ATHEISTS and most "israelis" are non-semitic and most "israelis" do not adhere to or respect the torah, it is a factual claim.
> 5. Correct, Arabs are Arabian. You're not "making shit up" you're repeating evidence-free nonsense you want to be true without examining its validity.
Why do you lie? People can literally google "semites" or "semitic peoples". If you lie about something like this, what are the odds you are lying about israel killing civilian semites in palestine?
richardfeynman 6 hours ago [-]
1. What's the similarity in your view between "zionist rationalization" and "nazi rationalization"? To me this sounds like more antisemitic nonsense, you comparing zionists to Nazis.
2. The Wikipedia quote doesn’t support your claim. “Semitic” refers to a set of ancient peoples linked by language and shared Near Eastern origins, not a modern racial caste. Modern Jews, including Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi, all trace ancestry back to those same Levantine populations. Genetic studies are unambiguous on this point.
So using “Semitic” to argue that Israelis are “fake” or “non-Semites” is simply incorrect. It’s a distortion of both the historical record and the science.
3. The germanic language group is a family of languages that includes dutch, english, yiddish, afrikkans, etc. The germanic people includes germany, not brits and americans. Do you see the difference?
4. On your claim that Jews have less documented middle eastern ancestry than Warren has native american ancestry, that’s simply false. Every major population-genetics study shows that Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi Jews all share substantial Middle Eastern ancestry and cluster genetically with other Levantine groups. This has been replicated for decades. Comparing that to Elizabeth Warren’s claimed ancestry isn’t remotely serious — it’s just rhetoric disconnected from the data.
5. I'm not lying. You are either willfully ignorant of the truths I am saying (because they are inconvenient for you), or you know you are wrong but continue this charade as a troll.
hearsathought 6 hours ago [-]
> 1. What's the similarity in your view between "zionist rationalization" and "nazi rationalization"?
Penchant for rationalizing away acts of genocide and dehumanize peoples. The only difference is zionists dehumanize actual semites ( palestinians) while nazis dehumanized european "jews". Zionists/"Israelis" are actual anti-semites. While nazis were anti-european "jews". Heady stuff.
> To me this sounds like more antisemitic nonsense, you comparing zionists to Nazis.
I'm comparing apples to apples.
> So using “Semitic” to argue that Israelis are “fake” or “non-Semites” is simply incorrect.
"Israelis" are europeans. Europeans are not semites.
> 3. The germanic language group is a family of languages that includes dutch, english, yiddish, afrikkans, etc. The germanic people includes germany, not brits and americans.
But germanic people includes ENGLISH though. It's pathetic what you are trying to do here.
> 5. I'm not lying.
That's all you have done. "Arabs are not semites". Lie. "Israel wasn't trying to kill civilians". Lie.
richardfeynman 1 hours ago [-]
You seem to think that asserting something makes it true. I particularly love that you call yiddish speakers, americans and dutch "germanic people" - a novel claim, haha.
rat87 7 hours ago [-]
You literally do not understand antisemitism or semitic people or genetics or ethnic and national identity.
Israel's goal since the beginning was to exist, to be able to live. Antisemitism has literally never meant hatred against various semitic people such as Ethiopian semites or Assyrians it has always been a term to describe Jew hatred, coined by a German Jew hater. Also semitic is not a genetic thing, its a language thing and various identities tied to various semitic languages largely do not see it as a useful grouping. I have never heard of pan-semitic movement similar to pan Germanic or pan Slavic ones(those were not universally popular when they existed but they did exist and had some popularity). About half of Israeli Jews ancestors didn't recently live in Europe (and most of those had ancestors who lived elsewhere in MENA). Finally when it comes to genetics both Jews and Palestinians have substantial overlapping ancestry to the ancient Levant region as well as ancestry from outside of it, but that doesn't really change people's minds on ethnic identity and nationalism
richardfeynman 7 hours ago [-]
You are exactly correct, and this is all 101 level stuff. I wonder where they get their confidence from.
computerex 8 hours ago [-]
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jameshilliard 8 hours ago [-]
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judah 7 hours ago [-]
The Lebanese Ministry of Health stated that the attack had killed a confirmed 12 civilians, while killing 30 Hezbollah members. 1 civilian death for every 2.5 combatant deaths.
For comparison, in World War II, there were an estimated 2 million civilian deaths and 5.3 million combatant deaths. 1 civilian death for every 2.6 combatant deaths.
Those are remarkably similar ratios. Take that as you will.
> Fatima was in the kitchen on Tuesday when a pager on the table began to beep, her aunt said. She picked up the device to bring it to her father and was holding it when it exploded, mangling her face and leaving the room covered in blood, she said.
11 hours ago [-]
deadbolt 11 hours ago [-]
They don't mind maiming children.
asveikau 10 hours ago [-]
She died.
I think there are also rules against attacking combatants in civilian contexts, like their homes.
cramsession 11 hours ago [-]
Israel made the entire world a less safe place by using consumer electronics as bombs shipped out into the public in one of the worst acts of terrorism ever recorded.
myth_drannon 11 hours ago [-]
One of the most sucessful integelligence operations ever, absolutely brilliant.
And the brilliance in my opinion is that the targeting was not your regular Hizbollah terrorists but only higher ranking members the one who were given the beepers. So basically cutting the head of the snake.
I doubt Palantir had any involvement, just trying to get some credit. The operation to attack the supply chain was started long before Palantir had grown and could offer something.
giraffe_lady 11 hours ago [-]
The brilliance in the targeting was in doing pagers, which are disproportionately carried by doctors and other medical workers. One of the most effective acts of terrorism in history.
apical_dendrite 11 hours ago [-]
You seem to be under the impression that they targeted pagers that were distributed through civilian channels. These were pagers that were purchased BY Hezbollah to be used on Hezbollah's private, secure network, not on a public network. These were not pagers used by a hospital for normal healthcare work. Healthcare workers were carrying these pagers because Hezbollah effectively serves as a shadow state in Lebanon. So if a healthcare worker had one of these pagers, it was because they were part of that hierarchy.
giraffe_lady 11 hours ago [-]
Again, so what? You aren't off the hook because of the actions of your enemies. It was obvious these would be going off around civilians, in homes and public spaces, including hospitals, and they chose to go through with the attack knowing this. That the civilians who would be around them would have no particular reason to fear or suspect this attack, because the vector was a common daily object.
It was an attack on civilians in pursuit of a non-military political goal. Terrorism. I think it was pretty successful on the terms of the people who carried it out but call it what it is.
dralley 8 hours ago [-]
We literally have videos of these going off in public spaces. The explosions were weak enough that people literally inches away were unharmed. The only way to be seriously injured is to be holding it in your hands or against your body.
You cannot seriously call it an attack "on civilians" - you especially cannot say that it's in pursuit of a non-military goal when it kicked off a literal military operation by crippling Hezbollah communications and (literally crippling) hundreds/thousands of their fighters before a land invasion of the southern border areas of Lebanon. And in any case, all war is politics.
That doesn't necessarily mean the blast radius was large. The 9 year old was killed while holding the pager.
> Fatima was in the kitchen on Tuesday when a pager on the table began to beep, her aunt said. She picked up the device to bring it to her father and was holding it when it exploded, mangling her face and leaving the room covered in blood, she said.
Oh, I didn't know this. Innocent people were still killed and maimed by shrapnel. The other children aged 11 was killed when his father's pager detonated
FireBeyond 7 hours ago [-]
Such amazingly precise bombs that they can kill Hezbollah leadership with effectiveness while "people literally inches away were unharmed". Maybe tone down the rhetoric some.
dralley 7 hours ago [-]
You're strawmanning.
I didn't claim that they were particularly lethal. In fact, they were not particularly lethal. Thousands of pagers exploded and only 12 people were killed despite these devices being held directly up to the face or against the skin (pockets).
They were as close to non-lethal incapacitation, even against targets, as it is possible to get in war. When even the targets are rarely killed by the explosion, obviously that results in fewer unintended victims being hurt/killed.
busterarm 5 hours ago [-]
They go off around civilians, in homes and public spaces, including hospitals because guerrillas and terrorists are not regular soldiers and imbed themselves in homes and public spaces, including hospitals.
They masquerade as civilians and use civilians as shields. This is why we have regular uniformed soldiers and separate places for them to do their military shit.
apical_dendrite 10 hours ago [-]
It wasn't a non-military political goal. It had a military purpose of taking out the communications network and personnel of a group that was actively engaged in combat.
computerex 8 hours ago [-]
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myth_drannon 11 hours ago [-]
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batrat 8 hours ago [-]
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hearsathought 8 hours ago [-]
> One of the most effective acts of terrorism in history.
It's what "israel" specializes in. When you read the history of "israel", it's literally a series of acts of terrorism.
Cyph0n 6 hours ago [-]
Yep. Mossad is a terrorist group roleplaying as an intelligence agency.
jseip 7 hours ago [-]
"please verify that you're feeling something different—quite different—from anger and a desire to fight this war."
Um, why is it inappropriate to be outraged that international humanitarian lwas are actively being violated by Israel, in Gaza?
dang 4 hours ago [-]
It's not inappropriate to be outraged. What's inappropriate is to post comments to Hacker News that vent aggression at other commenters and/or those on the other side of the conflict. Doing that is against both HN's rules and, more importantly, the intended spirit of this community (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). A certain amount of processing or, if you like, metabolization needs to happen between those two steps.
Here's an analogy which may (or not) be helpful. Even in the middle of a war, it sometimes happens that enemies meet and discuss things. Such discussions won't help anything or anyone if they just consist of yelling at each other.
p.s. I appreciate your question and apologize that you had to reply here instead of to my comment itself (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221528). We have to turn off replies on pinned comments, but I hate giving the impression that we don't want to hear responses or objections.
SpitSalute 7 hours ago [-]
I don't think they're saying it's inappropriate. It seems like they're saying this isn't the place to share your outrage.
TimorousBestie 7 hours ago [-]
Inappropriate and “this isn’t the place” are synonyms.
tomhow 4 hours ago [-]
That's not really true. The point is that there's a difference between how you feel about a topic and how you express it. People will have different feelings and different intensities of feelings about a topic like this. That's normal, understandable and valid.
As dang has said elsewhere in this thread and in other comparable threads, before you comment about a topic like this, there needs to be some processing or metabolizing of those feelings. HN is a place for learning, not venting or battling. And there is much to learn about these topics by discussing them curiously. I certainly do, and I see others doing that too. That's a significant reason why I think it's important for us to make space for these discussions here. But if the threads are overwhelmed by people expressing extreme emotions, there's less to learn, other than that people on both sides are angry about this issue, which we already knew.
AdmiralAsshat 11 hours ago [-]
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_DeadFred_ 9 hours ago [-]
Ironic that it's already full of flag bombed comments (just from the opposite side of what you are complaining about).
8 hours ago [-]
s5300 10 hours ago [-]
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oldandboring 10 hours ago [-]
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Rendered at 02:43:05 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
This site is for curious, thoughtful, respectful, and kind interaction—most of all with those you may disagree with, regardless of how bad they are or you feel they are.
If that's not possible, it's ok not to post. We'd rather have a thread with no comments than a thread with aggressive comments, let alone nationalistic or religious flamewar. There is far too much aggression in the thread below, which is is understandable, but please don't add more. It provides a fleeting sensation of relief, but then it just makes everything worse.
Note this, from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Is this like, live location information provided from social media/carriers/etc? Is it AI guessing who might be a target based on collected data?
EDIT: I ask because this sort of claim could just be marketing on Panantir's end and the quotes and this post never actually explained what it was other than saying their software was used.
There are a couple such systems, and I am speaking without the ability to take the time right now to find those articles to confirm/counter my recollections, so consider this a prompt for a proper review -- ironic.
This comment may be a good stepping stone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46222724
That said, I have heard some positive feedback about Palantir's data integration capabilities - most other vendors don't provide bespoke professional services to build niche integrations for even low ACV customers.
IQT has invested in hundreds of rounds, and in the cases I have dealt with personally, has been very hands-off. Most other IQT funded companies I know of never showcased it to the degree that Palantir has - for example, OpenText was a peer of Palantir in the early 2000s and never showcased it's IQT ties.
In a way, though I think it understates how difficult of a problem unified data integration is - especially in organizations with disparate schemas and internal data that may often not be well documented and with dev teams that are often personnel strapped.
Most other vendors in the data integration space don't provide the same degree of support and hand-holding that Palantir does with their FDEs. The FDE model is their secret weapon tbh - it makes it easy for organizations to gain temporary staff augmentation without having to expend their hiring budget.
Obviously this creates a huge problem for pretty much everyone though, since we can imagine that our ordinary consumer products from all sorts countries could similarly explode if we ended up at war with the manufacturers.
I think if Lebanon found a clever way to assassinate the top 45 military commanders in Israel the same people who are defending this wouldn't be calling it a "Legal act of war".
If it was just random devices exploding, then sure, that could be considered terrorism. But it wasn't random devices, it was communication devices procured by Hezbollah and directly given by Hezbollah to their own members for their own purposes.
Firstly, generals, like anybody else can be terrorized.
Secondly, even if you only kill generals, that doesn't mean you didn't cause terror for everybody else. Imagine for example that Hezbollah found a way to poison the food for Israel's top X military personnel. It would cause a state of emotional terror for many people in Israel about their food safety for decades most likely, even if they weren't in the military themselves.
Do you think that "normal" means of military action, like dropping a 500lb bomb, is less "terroristic" than essentially setting off a firecracker in their face/hands/pocket? Because, like, that's the alternative. If your position is that all forms of war are illegal, then you have the right to that opinion, but it's not a realistic position.
That depends on when the car detonates. If the car detonates when he and his guard enter it at 6 am near the defense ministry sure. If the car detonates when it is parked in the middle of Moscow at noon and 100 people are around then by pre-2022 standards it would be terrorism.
I think instead of these fake whataboutisms we should just admit that there is no universal bar and if it's "our team" then we are willing to change the standard.
In this case, we know that when Israel set off these pagers some innocent bystanders got hurt. No need to "whatabout".
"Opportunity to kill in base" is completely vague and varies depending on the military tribunal that will try you. Israel has, AFAIK, never said that there was no other way to kill those people.
>At most you could complain it is violates proportionality however no car bomb would kill 100 people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_car_bombings
Plain disinformation
>Not to mention your analogy is flawed - hezobllah doesn't have any marked bases.
This line of thinking justifies bombing (with massive collateral damage) any partisan /resistance movement that is constantly on the move. Which I guess makes sense since that is what Israel did a lot in Gaza.
Are you saying that's a valid military strike, and therefore can't possibly be terrorism? Suppose this person is so successful he kills 1,000 and generals and numerous quit their jobs and move in fear for their life, just to really clarify what you're arguing here.
Obviously he must wear a uniform while actually conducting the attack though.
I don't think the analogy is apt. Members of Hezbollah do not occupy a positions of similar relationship to Lebanon as US generals does to the US. As far as I've heard, flag officers and others are escorted by personal security for an attack of any sort, such as the 2009 Ft Hood shooting. [0]
Moving past that, a civilian citizen of Venezuela in the US who performed actions against US military targets would not be a valid military strike since that person would not be an identifiable member or Venezuela's military. It would more akin to a spy or assassin. Below is an excerpt from an article representing a US-centric view of history [1].
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Fort_Hood_shooting1. https://lieber.westpoint.edu/assassination-law-of-war/
Edit: /Hamas/Hezbollah/
If I remember correctly, the assailant must be dressed in some sort of military uniform to be considered a prisoner of war if captured. Lacking the uniform, it would be espionage and no Geneva Convention rights.
Obviously, neither side in the conflict is adhering to these rules.
I should give this a read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions
Except nobody in power actually gives a damn about the Geneva convention or the "laws of war" being thrown around in this topic.
Those laws were made up so that victorious powers can bully smaller countries when they lose a war, but superpower nations themselves don't have to abide by them because there's nobody more powerful than them to hold them accountable when they break those rules. Because laws aren't real, it's only the enforcement that is real.
Like the US also doesn't care about the Geneva Convention with all its warmongering and crimes against humanity in the middle east, and the torturing in Guantanamo Bay, and the likes of George Bush and Tony Blair will never see a day at the ICJ. Hell, not even US marines accused of using civilians for target practices in Afghanistan got to see a day at the Hague because the US said they'd invade the Hague if that happened. Russia also doesn't care about the Geneva convention and Putin won't see a day at the Hague. Israel doesn't give a crap about the geneva convention when bombing Palestinian hospitals, and Netanyahu won't see a day at the Hague. And if China invaded Taiwan, they won't care about the Geneva convention and Xi Jinping will never see the Hague. Trump can invade Venezuela tomorrow, and same, nothing will happen to him or the US.
THAT IS THE REALITY, that is how the world really works, dominance by the strong, subservience of the weak, everything else about laws, fairness, morality, etc only works in Tolkien tales and internet arguments, not in major international conflicts.
Edit: to the downvoters, could you also explain what part of what I said was wrong?
It is still important to have might even if you aren't in that camp because inevitably you will run into people with that worldview and they cannot be reasoned with without might.
And things don't have to be universal to be true, but just one leader/nation bombing or abusing the shit out of you is all you need to teach you this lesson, and waving the Geneva convention in their face won't help you.
The real world is harsh, unfair and unjust and pieces of paper named after European cities don't change that. A barrel in your hand pointed at them does. The ability to use force is the only thing in history that was guaranteed to change things in your favor.
There isn't a universally agreed upon definition, but generally it refers to targeting non-combatants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism
For example, when the Allies tried to assassinate Hitler with a smuggled briefcase bomb during WW2, that wasn't terrorism: that was just regular warfare. Hitler was the leader of Germany and directed its military.
Similarly, smuggling pager bombs to members of Hezbollah generally wouldn't qualify as terrorism, since Hezbollah a) is a militia (famously it's the largest non-state militia in the world), and b) was actively fighting a war against Israel — a war that Hezbollah themselves initiated.
Good luck trying to get them though.
Because it's only a matter of years until drones get small and stealthy enough that nobody is safe; exploding pagers are a clear first step in this direction.
As an American, I certainly hope they would fail. But do I think it's legal? Yes: it's a targeted strike on the leader of an enemy country they'd theoretically be at war with. Do I think it's wise? Well — no, Venezuela has a much smaller military, and assassinating the U.S. President would trigger a massive war that would devastate Venezuela for decades while modestly inconveniencing American taxpayers. But legal? Yes.
We've massed forces for an attack, attacked their ships, violated their airspace with combat aircraft (that's today), and extensively and publicly threatened them. They'd be in their legal rights to strike preemptively, including possibly a decapitation strike (this is why the Dubya administration kept repeating the term "preemptive strike", even though it was obviously nowhere near applying in the case of Iraq—it was a way of asserting its legal basis)
[edit] As thereisnospork points out in a sibling comment, however, this doesn't mean it'd be a good idea.
Not sure why you have doubts about this.
[0] Shouldn't - classic example of a tactical win being a strategic blunder. Killing the American president and would solidify American public support for the war - which would probably be undesirable in the balance.
You know terrorism doesn't mean people were terrorized, right? Surely you understand that.
I mean, you're not wrong: the State seeks monopoly on violence; the kind of damages it can inflict, where, when and however it wants. Everyone else is ... a terrorist, and whatever they do is ... terrorism.
> communication devices procured by Hezbollah and directly given by Hezbollah
Replace "Hezbollah" with "the US Govt" and you'll arrive at some answer.
Btw, off-duty / non-combat personnel aren't deemed to be "at war".
There aren't a lot of opportunities in life you get to use the word "annihilatory"; this is one of them. And in the immortal words of William Munny out of Missouri: "deserve's" got nothing to do with it.
Acutely aware of this fact, yeah.
> There aren't a lot of opportunities in life you get to use the word "annihilatory"; this is one of them.
Not wrong. None of the former great empires that fell were as military capable as the super powers of the modern era.
> And in the immortal words of William Munny out of Missouri: "deserve's" got nothing to do with it.
True. Some on the Left have extreme take on "Nation States" for this reason:
The Idea of the Nation-State Is Synonymous With Genocide: A conversation with political theorist Mahmood Mamdani (2024), https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/mahmood-mamdani-na...We have significant evidence for both these premises!
There is no credible figure for the number of combatants killed or injured. The Times of Israel reported that 1,500 fighters were injured. Taking these two data points together, a majority of those injured were civilians rather than combatants.
Where are you getting the claim that this was “probably the most precisely targeted large-scale military strike of the last 100 years”? That is a far-reaching assertion, especially given the lack of sources.
You say this is not a value judgment but a descriptive claim, yet the claim does not appear to be backed by facts.
(The 4000 figure) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device... (The 1500 figure) https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-year-on-some-lebanese-bystan... (General HRW source) https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/18/lebanon-exploding-pagers...
> along with a directional sense of the wounded vs. KIA count of the strike
I am not sure what this means.
To add, you're making it impossible to argue anything against your claim. We're discussing how the pagers hurt civilians and if they were properly targetting combatants. You're saying no matter what, since you know the pager was targetting combatants, the evidence that civilians were hurt must be false. Your logic circular.
My claim is that since Israel could not have possibly known who was in possession of the pagers at the time of the attack, and since the attack occurred regardless of who was nearby—detonating all pagers in civilian-occupied areas—Israel did, in effect, target civilians.
If you attack a military target that is surrounded by civilians, and that attack injures or kills those civilians, then those civilians were also targeted. Do you think all that matters is who the primary target was, and that as long as Israel decides the civilian casualties were “worth it,” the decision is moral?
Instead what we have is IHL, i.e. the Geneva and Hague conventions etc., and if you are targeting military personnel or other targets of military importance, without any extra cruelty or attacks on civilians, what does it matter if it looks like terror-bombing?
If it's allowed by IHL but is terrorism by British or French of German law or whatever, it's allowed. IHL is the actual binding thing.
And who enforces that?
When Netanyahu or Putin break that and bomb children and civilian hospitals, can you stop them by waving the IHL in their face?
Are you a lawyer / expert in conflicts? If not, curious how you arrived at this conclusion.
Would you still have a bone to pick with my credentials if I said that I thought the Dresden firebombings were not brilliant and not perfectly legal? Or the same about US military strikes on suspected drug trafficking vessels?
Gotcha. Thanks.
> Does that preclude my having an opinion on the value and legality of a military strike?
Words mean things. "Perfectly lawful" means just that? And so, I was curious.
> Would you still have a bone to pick with my credentials if I said that I thought the Dresden firebombings
Felt the need to know whether I was mistaking an arm-chair opinion for an expert opinion, is all.
As an act of warfare, Israel did a splendid job on this. Thoroughly impressive work.
The reports are 4,000 wounded and 12 killed unintended targets in order to kill 42 targets.
On what planet is that “very few actual civilians”? I think you knew full well before posting that’s a ridiculous claim which is why you did it anonymously.
This is not correct. Each one that had this pager was connected to Hezbollah, i.e. a soldier of Hezbollah. This attack was meant to "disable" a very big portion of Hezbollah, which it did (4000 of them).
This is one of the most sophisticated attacks to avoid civilian casualty.
I've never heard of "42 targets", and given 12 people died total, obviously 42 targets were not killed.
You should provide some sourcing for your numbers.
"Operation Grim Beeper" (seriously) on Wikipedia cites these numbers from Lebanese government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device...
Since the pagers that were targeted were exclusively used by Hezbollah (which fought an actual civil war with the Lebanese security forces specifically in order to establish its own telecom network), I would be extraordinarily wary of any source that has claimed more injuries to noncombatants than to combatants.
You can still tell a story where the pager attack was unacceptable owing to civilian casualties: there could be so many civilian casualties that any number of combatant casualties wouldn't justify it. But if you're claiming that there were more casualties to noncombatants over small explosions from devices carried principally in the pockets of combatants, it is rational to draw the conclusion that your reasoning (and sourcing) is motivated.
Have you provided any sources at all for you numerous claims throughout this thread? Would it also me rational to draw a the conclusion that someone who has provided no sources at all is also engaging in “motivated reasoning”? At least be consistent.
In any case, if Hezbollah themselves admit that 1500 of their fighters were injured by the attack (according to your own source), it seems extremely dishonest to claim that all 4000 were civilians or that there were only 42 targets.
Per the report: 42 dead, 12 of which were civilians. It follows that 30 were considered Hezbollah.
You quite literally did.
Presumably if you have thousands of Hezbola people walking around within their homes, businesses, hopistals, shops, etc. it makes sense you'd have many civilian injuries when these went off. There wasn't a geo fence around them and if someone was in an NICU or preschool the explosions were indiscriminate.
So while there was some element of precision in placement of who had these pagers, there was zero awareness (by design) to where they actually were when they all exploded.
42 killed, of whom Hezbollah said 12 were civilians (later admitting some of the 12 were fighters).
Historical average is about half of the wounded or killed in conflicts to be civilians. < 12/42 would be a relatively "good" ratio.
You make an assumption that of the 4000 people wounded /all/ were civilians, which is odd, considering that explosive was in a device given out to Hezbollah members.
even if very close, one of the videos shows a supermarket line, and no one around is hurt
So they only managed to hit 30 targets with 12 misfires… that makes it even worse.
> In any case, if Hezbollah themselves admit that 1500 of their fighters were injured by the attack (according to your own source)
That’s 1500 in addition to the 4,000 civilians. The fact they managed to wound 2.5x+ as many civilians as targets isn’t exactly making them look better…
Which reports? According to whom? Hezbollah?
The answer to your question is yes: the "4,000 civilians wounded" figure is attributed to Mustafa Bairam, a high-ranking Hezbollah member. I have not seem any corroborating sources. As far as I can tell every mention of that number, including Wikipedia, traces back to him. Obviously this is a highly biased source that should not be trusted blindly.
The Lebanon pager attack: 12 civilians (including 2 children) killed out of 42 total deaths (28.6% civilian casualty rate).
Gaza genocide: Leaked IDF intelligence documents show 8,900 militants killed out of 53,000 total deaths as of May 2025 (83% civilian casualty rate).
Even the 12 civilian count is probably higher than reality because it is doubtful that 12 civilians had access to a military clandestine communication device
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hezbollahs-tunnels...
Regarding the leaked IDF document this was leaked to a minor blog yet cannot be seen anywhere.
But let's entertain it as real, these are 8000 named Hamas terrorists known for certain by one intelligence unit in the IDF to be dead. This only means the minimum amount of Hamas terrorists, this doesn't take into account the other armed groups in Gaza that had a prewar strength of 10,000s of terrorists or the Hamas members who are only known by uncertain intelligence to have been killed.
Taking that number and reducing it from the Hamas published death count (an organization that kidnapped babies for political goals, but is incapable of lying, and was caught faking death counts before) to get the civilian death count is very unscientific to be extremely mild
I stopped reading there knowing you're biased.
You specific argument though misuses even those numbers. 42 is the number of people actually killed. I couldn't figure out how many were targeted (how many pagers did explode), but I'd assume the number could be much higher than the number of deaths. Without that number we cannot determine how well targeted this was. I also don't think it is plausible that for every target you injure 100 bystanders. So I would assume the number of targets was at least an order of magnitude higher.
There's also another number from Hizbollah, that 1500 of their people were injured. But no idea it those would be included in the 4000 wounded number.
These attacks killed and maimed children, but firing JDAMs kills and maims even more children.
Not excusing the Israeli military here... they definitely dropped a lot of JDAMs, unguided artillery, and indiscriminate autocannon munitions on Gaza.
But the specific point on the pager attacks being against civilians is not a great argument.
Another thing I will note is that a lot of Palestinian groups also use similar reasoning towards targeting the Israeli population on the basis of the fact there is mass conscription in place.
Causality in war includes people that were only injured. This was far, far more than a 50% casualty rate. More like a 9552% casualty rate.
Given this context: A limited number of specialty electronics, acquired and distributed by Hezbollah as a means of military command and control, and subsequent to this operation Hezbollah's C2 was demonstrably neutered--you believe that the majority of injuries were innocent civilians?
Basic logic indicates that the vast majority of those killed and injured were, in fact, nodes in Hezbollah's command and control structure.
Here is Hezbollah boasting to Reuters before the pagers attack, about how it moved to using pagers and couriers to counter Israeli intelligence.
As you can guess, with the advent of mobile phones in the 2000s, pagers became obsolete in Lebanon
Not to you specifically, but it is astounding how indiscriminate terrorism is lauded as “brilliant”. Is it because the victims were not of the white Judeo-Christian variety? Seriously trying to understand the mental gymnastics here.
Regarding whether that's brilliant, that is not my wording, but generally it was quite mild compared to the methods of Hezbollah and was highly successful in ending a war with very little bloodshed. The other alternative was tried in 2006 and in Gaza, and fighting a terror organization entrenched in an urban setting means bombings and killing civilians in the process. This was not the end result as Hezbollah fell apart relatively quickly afterwards, so I think it was good compared to any alternative for Lebanese and Israelis
The UK's National Health Service (NHS) is widely considered the single largest user of pagers in the world, with over 130,000 devices in use as of recent years. This figure represented an estimated 10% of the total number of pagers remaining globally.
The rest is a bunch of hypotheticals. I am also unsure where the conclusion that Hezbollah is dead is coming from. Was their operational capability degraded? Of course. Is the group dead? Absolutely not.
Regarding the group, it has signed a cease fire agreement with very unfavorable terms which essentially let Israel bomb any of its members or locations that violate the terms of the cease fire agreement and the lebanese army did not work to resolve, this happens on a weekly basis since the end of the war
If you compare this state to the state just prior to October 2023 where Hezbollah had setup a tent in Israeli territory which Israel was too afraid to do something about for months over fear of starting a war, then this is essentially a complete break up in my opinion.
Is it dead? no. it's alive enough to keep lebanon in its permanent failed state status due to fear of all other sects of civil war. But together with what happened to its patron, and the local popularity it lost it might break up completely
This is my last reply in this thread.
2. You are aware that Hezbollah has a civilian/political arm, right?
3. Surely Israel - the most moral country on the planet - painstakingly vetted pager possession before detonating them en masse?
Where would a Lebanese doctor get an encrypted pager bought by Hezbollah and given to Hezbollah members with the explicit use for communicating with other Hezbollah members?
While Hamas does not wear uniform in combat and publishes its dead as civilians, so no, my logic holds
I know people talk about the "entitlement epidemic", but entitlement is just another name from narcissism, in essence a lack of empathy. Which seems to be more and more socially acceptable and even rewarded (with internet points mostly), like your comment show (i'm not jumping on you, you are tamer than many, so i think it's a better exemple for my point than more violent ones).
And since that's the example we show our kids today, i'm now officially more worried about our society ability to handle social media than climate change.
Anyway sadly even if they did start attacking civilians, say Palestinian civilians as a random example, who is going to enforce the penalty for war crimes. These days its seems they're more of a suggestion than a rule of engaging in war.
If anything, it's the opposite.
Afaik they intercepted a shipment for Hamas members only. Do you have more information?
How many civilians there even use these pagers instead of mobile phones? Are there any?
Ignoring that it was Hezbollah, not Hamas, I would point out that many of Hezbollah members are civilians.
What? Hamas didn't have any of the pagers, Hezbollah did.
That's much closer to a terrorist attack than to legal warfare.
Planting a bomb on each soldier would be even better.
Regardless, given the number of war crimes this army has been found guilty of, this is somewhat moot. What's another war crime in the grand scheme of things.
been accused it's not same as been found guilty. at least last time I checked.
Maybe I'm wrong, but, I think Hezb0-lla-h is pretty much the "government", especially in southern Lebanon
and I interpret his analysis as that it was targeted enough to be legal.
You seem to be holding Israel to an impossible standard of guaranteeing zero collateral damage, which IHL does not require because no military is capable of that.
I don't want to be part of their collateral damage.
But booby trapping mundane daily objects accessible to non-combatants is a clear violation of international law. No real room for leeway or interpretation on that one either.
Don't hide behind technicalities of international law, tell me literally what else they could possibly have done with a better outcome. (please note in my world view, unlike many other people here, Israel rolling over and dying is not an acceptable solution)
You might be. If it was Hezbollah's guns that exploded and not their pagers, I would expect most people to agree that you would be "off the hook" if someone else was handling that gun.
Not saying pagers = guns, but it's a spectrum surely.
Where you draw the line is complicated. If you look at what the allies did in WWII for instance, there are some decisions that are highly problematic (firebombing wooden Japanese cities or the RAF deliberately bombing German civilian populations) but there are also some decisions that I think were reasonable even with a very high civilian death toll (e.g. the US Eight Air Force conducting bombing raids on German industry with limited precision, leading to high civilian casualties).
I think this specific incident was lawful. Hezbollah was the aggressor here, and it spent the war launching attacks that were far less justifiable than this one (much more limited targeting). I think this was a reasonable act of self-defense. That doesn't mean that I think that everything Israel did in the war was lawful.
I guess you've never given your phone to your toddler for 2 minutes to watch a video while you pooped in a public bathroom, huh?
Also, I have a thought for you: what would you call it if a foreign nation which your country had poor relations with, possibly open hostility, had blown up the work laptops (which they might take home) of a bunch of high ranking military members in your country? Would that be terrorism or a legal attack to you? What would you think of the innocent lives lost to such an attack?
Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israeli civilian populations more or less indiscriminately very soon after the October 7th terrorist attack. Just a few months before the pager incident, a Hezbollah rocket killed 12 children in a Druze town in the Golan Heights.
Israel was justified in defending itself against an aggressor. Not to do so would mean continuing to let their civilians be killed. Once you start from that premise, then blowing up pagers that only belong to Hezbollah members is a much better option than any alternative.
The standard can't just be "you aren't allowed to take any action that could kill innocent people". To have that as the standard is the same as to have no standard at all, because it's so unrealistic that nobody would follow it. The standard has to take into account whether the action is offensive or defensive, what the relative risk of killing innocent people is, and what the alternatives are.
That's why I talked about the allied bombings during WWII, which killed enormous numbers of German and Japanese civilians. To suggest that the allies should not have used bombers in, say, 1941 because they would inevitably kill many civilians is unreasonable. But you can distinguish between, say, the RAFs nighttime bombing campaigns, which were intended to strike civilian targets for the purposes of demoralizing and starving the population, and the USAAFs daytime bombing campaigns, which were intended to destroy factories. Both killed many, many innocent people, but there are clear moral differences.
I totally get the instinct to condemn the attack, since it's truly, deeply viscerally horrifying (not to mention terrifying!), but most of the rules about how you're supposed to conduct war basically boil down to 1. Make a reasonable effort to avoid disproportionately harming civilians 2. Don't go out of your way to inflict pain and suffering on your enemy beyond what's a necessary part of trying to kill or neutralize them 3. If your enemy is completely at your mercy, you have an extra duty to uphold 1 and 2.
Again, the pager attack is new, unusual, and just very upsetting. But it harmed civilians at a remarkably low rate, and the method of harm wasn't meaningfully more painful than just shooting someone. It compares very favorably with just bombing people on every metric other than maybe how scary it is if you're a combatant.
(I agree the targeting per se seems to have been remarkably good for the world of asynchronous warfare—or even conventional warfare)
Can you cite something for this? Most people would rather be (even permanently) injured than killed, so I'm not sure why using the minimum necessary force would be frowned upon, other than it typically being incredibly difficult and impractical.
What you want to appeal to are just war principles.
This is obviously terrorism. The methods are the same as terrorists, the intent is the same, the results are the same. 3000 wounded, this is extremely far from the "surgical precision" claimed by the fascist apartheid state of Israel.
It's the equivalent of blowing up a commercial plane or bus because there's a military commander on it. Or, you know, levelling a residential apartment building [2].
If anyone else had done this we'd (correctly) be calling it a terrorist attack.
[1]: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/9/17/lebanons-terrib...
[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/israel-says-it-struck-hez...
A better comparison would be if Hamas pulled off this operation against the members of the Knesset (or, even more comparable, against a specific party like Likud) while they were at home.
If it was done to "israelis", I bet you'd be singing a different tune. Imagine if iran or saudi arabia or anyone else did this to "israelis", some whiny people would be calling it terrorism.
Here’s a documentary showing the extent, including all of the undeniable civilians that were injured or killed: https://youtu.be/2mqqDTIs4vE
EDIT: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42882440
Has anyone here tried using their software? It's salesforce-level fucked. They did a great job spewing lofty concepts, with their ontologies and their kinetic layers, but in the end it all ends up being a giant wormy ERP. There might be one good idea in there (articulating the schemas and transformations in separate layers) but overall it's a perfect vibe match for orwellian bureaucracies.
Crazy how modern companies want to be McFranchise level of capable. What are you adding as a company if you outsource everything that can make your company a differentiator and your company is just plug and play cogs?
If you don't believe that, you shouldn't be investing.
If you're going to make this argument, it'll only apply to private companies in founders' hands, maybe to family businesses, but certainly not to public companies.
Anyways, it's war against a known terrorist group.
I think people just want to blame without analyzing what else could be blamed to. Really it’s most of the free software community too.
Disclaimer: I don’t consider what Israel did unlawful. They were under attack by hezb and Hamas. They were within rights to retaliate. And no, hezb and Hamas don’t care about civilian casualties.
If Israel, unprovoked, randomly carried out this attack it would be one thing. But:
1. Hezbollah had been continuously, deliberately firing rockets at civilians since October 8th, 2023 displacing tens of thousands and killing multiple civilians including 12 children in a playground in Majdal Shams.
2. Hezbollah embeds itself and fires from within civilian population in Lebanon
3. Hezbollah leadership had stated that they intend to escalate their attacks including a ground invasion of Israel
I think everyone in this thread criticizing this operation needs to first explain what they would have Israel do in this situation.
Because if you think Israel should retaliate against Hezbollah at all, please explain how you, in Israel's shoes, would achieve a comparable result with fewer civilian casualties.
Also, if you look at the data on attacks by Israel against Lebanon, they are disproportionate, Israel launching 10x more airstrikes, even going so far as to level entire city blocks of apartment buildings in Beirut. I remember just on the first day of attacks by Israel against Lebanon, over 1000 civilians were killed. Also Israel refuses to vacate southern Lebanon after a ceasefire agreement, and continues to violate the ceasefire. Just in the last 24h, Israel has bombarded 4 different locations in Central Lebanon with airstrikes. If I were Israel, I would simply stop acting as a fanatic aggressor with no regard for human life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Hezbollah_confl...
I don't know how far off we are on our assessment of current Israeli governance, but I'd bet it's not as far as you think we are. But I'd also guess we're wildly far apart on Hezbollah, which, along with Ansar Allah in Yemen, are some of the most amoral and illegitimate military forces on the planet.
Unfortunately, Hezbollah was, up until 2024, waging a largely PR-based war on Israel (their "puppet" adversary; their true adversary was Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham in Syria, where they spilled more blood and lost more men and materiel than in every conflict they've had with Israel over the last 20 years), and people have --- for understandable reasons --- antipathy towards Israeli leadership. So Hezbollah, like the Houthis, have a western cheering section, made up almost entirely of people who have chosen not to understand anything about what makes either organization tick.
You can come up with lots of military atrocities committed by Israel, because Israel has in the Gaza conflict committed many atrocities. None of it will legitimize the IRGC's Shia-supremacist totalitarian occupation of Lebanon or their genocidal occupation of Yemen. The civil wars in Syria and Yemen (the real military fronts in the last 2 decades) claimed an order of magnitude more lives than anything Israel did, which is truly saying something given the horrifying costs of Israel's botched, reckless, amoral handling of Gaza.
> On 4 December 2024, the Lebanese Health Ministry reported that since 7 October 2023, Israeli attacks killed 4,047 people, including 316 children and 790 women, and injured 16,638 others
Our premises may be too far apart to usefully discuss this. The core of my argument (the comparative military and civilian body counts in Syria and Yemen) aren't going to be easy to refute by appeals to Hezbollah's PR. (You may also have responded to a by-2-minutes-or-so earlier version of my comment; we may be responding to each other in too-close succession and talking past each other.)
Edit: I'm now throttled from posting but I was able to go back and find more video of Hezbollah's attacks on Israel military facilities. I think people should watch these and judge for themselves:
* https://x.com/ME_Observer_/status/1752035071047926029
* https://x.com/ME_Observer_/status/1790471234867568905
* https://x.com/ME_Observer_/status/1756031325264318682
* https://x.com/ME_Observer_/status/1743565825771032895
* https://x.com/ME_Observer_/status/1810011590118305895
* https://x.com/ME_Observer_/status/1791216213785268522
The moderation intention is for comments which break the site guidelines to be flagged, regardless of which side they are or aren't on. It's not possible to reach this state perfectly, of course.
That one doesn't seem to violate the rules, and there is a lot of discussion below it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45796728
as example, just below there is reply to you saying that flagging been abused, been flagged
That number is much too high IMO, so I assume we interpret the site guidelines very differently.
> as example, just below there is reply to you saying that flagging been abused, been flagged
I assume you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221396? No, you'd see "[flagged]" if that were the case. The comment is [dead], but it was killed by software, not flagged by users. I'll restore it.
People who are passionate about a divisive topic often feel like the site/moderators/community are hopelessly biased against their view. The people with opposing views feel exactly the same way—which, ironically, becomes the one thing they can agree about, although they disagree about the direction.
This is ultimately a function of how the passions work, so I don't believe there's much we can do about it.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
flags are been abused and you don't do anything about it, short of "show me wrongly flagged comment and i'll unflag it if i think it was flagged wrong"
can you openly admit that flags are been abused and misused to silence opinions that people disagree with ?
if you can't agree with such a trivial statement, I don't think there is anything to discuss here.
ps. obviously after i made 3 comments i am throttled and cant post this comment
Also, this should certainly not be flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46219097
Or this one? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221631
Or this one? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221972
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221631 is not flagged. That might be because we'd already turned off flags on it (I can't remember).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221972 I agree should not be flagged and I've unflagged it.
In threads that are, unfortunately, adversarial, abusing the flag button is a stable Nash equilibrium. I think it's a shitty equilibrium, though, and makes real, substantive conversations--ostensibly the goal on this forum--harder to achieve.
I think it's high time to reconsider the current 'flag' mechanics. At the very least I think we would all be better off if flags were simply disabled on highly controversial topics.
I recognize that's a big ask for an already-overburdened mod. I just don't see any good alternative.
Separately, I want to express that while I don't always agree with you, I think you generally do an excellent job moderating and I appreciate your efforts to keep this community free and healthy.
Nobody will ever think "That was a well-reasoned argument I now believe war crimes were, or were not, committed".
The best thing to do on posts like this is avoid reading them, or flag them.
It feels like there's an obviously correct side to most of these issues, the problem is half the audience here believes their side is correct and yours is wrong.
I think there are useful discussions to be had on these topics, and in fact, we must have those discussions. The issue is that, if we want to do so productively and a comment section is the only venue for us to speak to each other, then we must be extremely patient with others and ourselves and reflect on what they say and what we say (i.e., discuss in good faith).
That burden may be too high for most people, but collectively, we don't have a better forum anymore, and we need to have these discussions and come to consensus before the world is engulfed in authoritarianism or war (which is not hyperbole).
Manually appealing to dang for unflagging is not a workable solution either.
This really is an entirely unsuitable forum for this discussion.
Maybe this is not the forum, but then what is? A philosophy class you took ten years ago?
Funny that you mention it, but Israel/Palestine was also a banned topic in the “Ethics and International Law” course I took circa twenty years ago.
I advocate concerning yourself with the things you can control, which does not include this forum’s idiosyncratic moderation style.
I can control my comments, which are a part of this forum's moderation style, and I can advocate in those comments for people to act in good faith, and appeal for help in figuring out how to make it more common.
If we can't discuss important topics in good faith on a nerd website, what hope do we have of discussing them elsewhere? It's not hyperbole anymore to say that if we don't come to some consensus we are going to end up in authoritarianism or war.
You think half the audience here or anywhere is on the side of israel and genocide? The only reason no discussion can be had is because of the influence of israel in tech, media, government and the bot farms they are allowed to employ all over social media.
Everyone defending it are out of their mind. They‘d be crying foul immediately when Israel‘s opponents did the same.
When Israel kills thousands of civilians to free three soldiers (hostages), then for them it’s ok. If Palestinians did the same, to free one of many thousand illegally detained civilians they‘d call it terrorism.
1. If any other state had done this, we'd be correctly calling this a terrorist attack and there wouldn't be any question about it; and
2. Palantir was a partner in developing several AI systems used for targeting missile strikes in Gaza. Collectively these tend to be called Lavender [1][2]. Another of these systems is called "Where's Daddy". What does it do? It targets alleged militants at home so their families with be collateral damage [3]; and
3. These systems could not exist without the labor of the humans who create them so it raises questions about the ethics of everything we do as software engineers and tech people. This is not a new debate. For example, there were debates about who should be culpable for the German death machine in WW2. Guards at the camp? Absolutely. Civilians at IG Farben who are making Zyklon-B? Do they know what it's being used for? Do they have any choice in the matter?
My personal opinion is that anyone continuing to work for Palantir can no longer plead ignorance. You're actively contributing to profiting from killing, starving and torturing civilians. Do with that what you will. In a just world, you'd have to answer for your actions at The Hague or Nuremberg 2.0, ultimately.
[1]: https://www.business-humanrights.org/es/%C3%BAltimas-noticia...
[2]: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
[3]: https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-ai-system-wheres-dadd...
They should stick to african warlords, maybe they can make a difference there.
Imagine slapping Putin in handcuffs when he touches down in any Western country, rather than the glad-handing and photo ops he gets now.
Dictators play democracies off each other. International law is in part about solving a coordination problem.
I would argue that by going after Israel in such a blatantly biased way the ICC and the UN have fallen to precisely the sort of groups you want to use them against.
Not saying the ICC can't be useful, you would just have to massively limit the scope of their "authority" to realistic targets. I.e. South American dictators and various warlords. And of course islamic terrorists.
Plenty of international law works because it actually serves a useful purpose for states like shipping. Countries don't like domestic terrorists and crime organisations. They would also prefer africa to be developed so they can trade.
There is no state organised war crimes going on, just normal war. If you can't understand the distinction that's your problem not mine. In my opinion Israels actions in Gaza fall well within the actions of a legitimate war, to the extent warfare can be legitimised. I'm not commenting on individual cases, and anyway those are not relevant to my argument.
The point of the ICC is to resolve this sort of question via a thorough legal process, just like we have in so many democracies around the world. Israel wouldn't be on trial, Netanyahu would. I presume you are talking about him at least. And if he is innocent then he should have his day in court.
And yes, fully embracing the ICC would be a radical shift for the entire world. We would be bringing in a lot of people other than just Netanyahu. The idea is that no one is above the law, no matter how important they may be.
Unless you’re saying that the country behind a self-evaluated >80% civilian to combatant kill ratio in Gaza went through rigorous protocols to minimize harm in this attack?
Also, Israel has not "self-evaluated" a >80% civilian to combatant kill ratio. There was a Haaretz report that said the IDF was able to ID about 20% of those killed as militants against known databases, which is remarkably high compared to any other war. That doesn't mean the remaining 80% are civilians, it just means they weren't ID'd against a databse. So this includes anyone with a gun at a distance. Do you think Ukraine has a database of Russian soldiers and are able to ID 20% of the russian soldiers they kill against that database? Of course not. Israel's self evaluation of the ratio varies between 1.4:1 and 2:1 depending on the government official you quote.
Re: location - They exploded everywhere you can think of, while these targets were doing civilian activities near other civilians, and not in a combat setting.
Re: possession - Given the above, and Israel’s horrendous kill ratio, there was definitely no consideration for possession of these pagers at the time of the attack. For example, who is to say that some pagers weren’t in use by members of the political bureau, or unofficially resold to a hospital for use by oncall doctors?
I don’t think this attack could have been more moral or justified than it was. It didn’t even kill on large numbers, instead it was just enough to neutralize Hezbollahs command and control structures.
The negation would be evil(x) and do(x) by DeMorgan's law.
If what you mean is all(x), evil(x) -> not(do(x))
then the negation would be exists(x), evil(x) and do(x).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yuL6PcgSgM
Also did they really call it Operation Grim Beeper? Hilarious if true (but I suspect not given how codenames are meant to work).
> Yet what is the result, the gain to humanity, of this wonderfully regulated society which has been built solely to make life richer? Millions are on the verge of starvation, hundreds of thousands are spending their lives in producing instruments for the destruction of human life, and millions again are wasting their existence in a dull tragedy of monotony. In every great industrial centre where wealth is most plentifully produced, there is poverty and want. In the rich town where no production is carried on, there is plenty and enjoyment. He who labours hard or produces wealth is in poverty, he who lives in idleness is rich. When the warehouses are full, there is want and hunger. Those without food are forbidden to produce because the demand is already supplied. [0]
I highlighted the part that relates to Palantir and most everyone on here reading HN (except you, of course, you're special :))
Which is to say this is nothing new and discussing the minutia of did this specific company do this specific thing when the system that makes this inevitable remains unaddressed is missing the point.
Oh well, politics for 99% of people seems to amount to gossip. Did you hear what X said/did? Oh my god, I can't believe it, etc, etc.
[0] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/george-barrett-the-a...
Commenters here need to follow the rules, and the rules don't go away when the topic is a tough one. On the contrary, they apply more, as https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html makes clear.
Military/terrorist group procures communication devices to coordinate military operations. Explosive is sized to injure the holder, not bystanders - per CCTV videos, eg:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2024/sep/18/cctv-cap...
Hard to get more precise/targeted than that!
In contrast to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEoK6oihqhs
Before you flag me for saying the quiet part out loud i would just like to confirm that this doesn't apply to all the people here. There are probably 3 users here who are just badly misinformed.
> Gabriel said Mossad had learned that Hezbollah was buying pagers from Gold Apollo, a company in Taiwan.
> "When they are buying from us, they have zero clue that they are buying from the Mossad. We make like the 'Truman Show,' everything is controlled by us behind the scene," Gabriel said. "In their experience, everything is normal. Everything was 100% kosher."
> To further the plot, Mossad hired the Gold Apollo saleswoman Hezbollah was used to working with, who was unaware she was working with Mossad. According to Gabriel, she offered Hezbollah the first batch of pagers as an upgrade, free of charge. By September 2024, Hezbollah had about 5,000 pagers in their pockets.
https://cybernews.com/cyber-war/how-did-israels-mossad-spy-a...
> Going analog has been a signature move for terror groups ever since the September 11th attacks as a way to successfully mask communications from Western militaries and government defense agencies.
> A source cited by the Wall Street Journal said many of the affected devices were from a new shipment delivered to Hezbollah militants in recent days.
> Apparently, the encrypted pagers currently in use by Hezbollah were brand new models and bought in bulk for the members just a few months ago, several sources told Reuters.
I'm sure you can find more if you look; there's a lot of articles about it.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-planted-exp...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-former-mossad-agents-det...
etc...
The alternative is 10s of thousands of civilians suffering because their leaders drag them into hell with them. We already see how bad that is..
Lumping together all civilians killed by Israel in the course of war is overly reductive: Some were killed in unlawful intentional acts, some were unfortunate collateral damage of lawful acts, and some were intentional victims of Hamas brutality, sacrificed at the altar of making Israel look bad.
It's an occupation that has been ongoing for almost 80 years, not a 'war' that began unprovoked, along with recorded history and the universe itself, on October 7th.
>Sometimes in perfectly legal and justified strikes, sometimes in attacks that contravene the laws of war.
More than half the time, these 'perfect justifications' don't hold water and in fact rest on the hope of total impunity from IHL.
>Hamas uses the civilians under their control as both a sword and a shield
Not according to any sane definition that is internationally agreed upon. Conversely, the IDF's use of human shields - as defined in IHL and in their own propaganda - is abundantly documented.
>Egypt simply refuses their obligation under IHL to allow refugees to flee, collateral damage is an unfortunate inevitability.
Rather odd that rendering Palestinians stateless is just a law of nature in your books, and that Israel's obligations as an occupying power and the agent that created a refugee crisis - ie, prosecuted a campaign of human cleansing - is not part of your calculus at all.
And the mildly veiled threats on social media to people speaking out about Palestine referencing the pager attacks that goes unpunished by social media platforms.
Correct, with a good reason for it. Israelis have been caught lying so many times that now when they make a claim, it is on them to prove that the claim is correct, rather than on others to prove that it is not. Just a few examples off the top of my head include:
- The killing of medical workers in a convoy of ambulances and burying them in shallow graves, then lying about doing it until someone dug the bodies up and found footage confirming that they lied on the phone of one of the buried aid workers. [1]
- The hunting down and killing of World Central Kitchen aid workers via multiple air strikes [2]. This was repeatedly denied by Israelis until too much evidence was stacked up and they settled for "it was a grave mistake".
- The high profile case of killing of Hind Rajab [3] who for a brief period of time was the sole survivor of a tank attack in a shelled vehicle filled with her dead family members. Aid workers were dispatched to rescue here, coordinated with Israelis. Neither the girl nor the aid workers were ever seen alive after that. Israelis repeatedly insisted that there were no troops in the area, until too much evidence was stacked again.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/world/middleeast/gaza-isr...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Central_Kitchen_aid_conv...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Hind_Rajab
1. Hamas used World Central Kitchen vehicles, according even to the head of World Central Kitchen, who initially condemned the attack and then later admitted Hamas used WCK vehicles. You didn't know this, did you?
2. A few questions on the Hind Rajab incident: Was the car stationary or moving? was it travelling north to a combat zone or south away from one? According to the original Arabic reports, did the family get out of the car or were they trapped inside? In the audio of this attack, was there any crossfire? When was Hind Rajab killed? Was it at 8:10am or at 2:30pm? What happened in those 6 hours? How can you be sure this was not a "fog of war" incident as opposed to a deliberate targeting of a civilian?
Sure, yeah, just like it was in any number of previous operations, which at the time they declared successful, even though they did quite a bit more of the latter. Per Occam's razor, either they are prodigious bunglers, or you are overly credulous.
And yet so many dead civilians. It's almost like a genocial terrorist country like israel always lie. Also, I was referring to israel's genocide of the semites in palestine to found "israel" up to present day. You conveniently forgot about it.
> 2. Arabs speak a semitic language; the "semites" in "anti-semite" has always referred to Jews.
Arabs are ethnic semites who speak a semitic language. "Israelis" are non-semitic europeans pretending to be "jews". Ethnic europeans are not semites and can never be semites because they come from an entire separate branch of the human family tree.
> 3. Jews, including white Ashkenazi European Jews, are levantine in origin. Their lineage traces to Judea.
No they do not. Maybe a handful.
> 4. "Antisemitic" means anti-Jew.
No it does not because semite doesn't mean "jew". A semite and a jew are two different things.
> You are using it to mean anti-Arab, but arabs are not semites
No. I'm using semite to mean semite. Arabs surely are semites. Europeans are not though.
> 5. You did make all that up!
If arabs are not semites, then what are they? You say arabs are not semites and I'm the liar? I'm making shit up?
2. Semites is not an ethnicity, it's a language family, sorry. When used colloquially it has always referred to Jews.
3. “Semitic” is a language group, not a racial caste. Jews—including Ashkenazi—have documented Middle Eastern ancestry, and about half of Israelis are Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. The idea that Israelis are “non-Semitic Europeans pretending to be Jews” is just antisemitic nonsense, not a serious factual claim.
4. See above. Semitic is a language family, not a people. "Anti-semite" as a term has always meant "anti-Jew."
5. Correct, Arabs are Arabian. You're not "making shit up" you're repeating evidence-free nonsense you want to be true without examining its validity.
It's amazing how similarly zionists/israelis and nazis rationalize.
> 2. Semites is not an ethnicity, it's a language family, sorry. When used colloquially it has always referred to Jews.
"Semitic people or Semites is a term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group[2][3][4][5] associated with people of the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, including Akkadians (Assyrians and Babylonians), Arabs, Arameans, Canaanites (Ammonites, Edomites, Israelites, Moabites, Phoenicians, and Philistines) and Habesha peoples." --wiki
> 3. “Semitic” is a language group, not a racial caste.
Germanic is a language group and an ethnic group. Using your logic, germans are not germanic peoples because germanic is a language group.
> Jews—including Ashkenazi—have documented Middle Eastern ancestry,
They have less documented middle eastern ancestry (none) than elizabeth warren has of native ancestry.
> The idea that Israelis are “non-Semitic Europeans pretending to be Jews” is just antisemitic nonsense, not a serious factual claim.
Considering that most "israelis" are ATHEISTS and most "israelis" are non-semitic and most "israelis" do not adhere to or respect the torah, it is a factual claim.
> 5. Correct, Arabs are Arabian. You're not "making shit up" you're repeating evidence-free nonsense you want to be true without examining its validity.
Why do you lie? People can literally google "semites" or "semitic peoples". If you lie about something like this, what are the odds you are lying about israel killing civilian semites in palestine?
2. The Wikipedia quote doesn’t support your claim. “Semitic” refers to a set of ancient peoples linked by language and shared Near Eastern origins, not a modern racial caste. Modern Jews, including Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi, all trace ancestry back to those same Levantine populations. Genetic studies are unambiguous on this point.
So using “Semitic” to argue that Israelis are “fake” or “non-Semites” is simply incorrect. It’s a distortion of both the historical record and the science.
3. The germanic language group is a family of languages that includes dutch, english, yiddish, afrikkans, etc. The germanic people includes germany, not brits and americans. Do you see the difference?
4. On your claim that Jews have less documented middle eastern ancestry than Warren has native american ancestry, that’s simply false. Every major population-genetics study shows that Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi Jews all share substantial Middle Eastern ancestry and cluster genetically with other Levantine groups. This has been replicated for decades. Comparing that to Elizabeth Warren’s claimed ancestry isn’t remotely serious — it’s just rhetoric disconnected from the data.
5. I'm not lying. You are either willfully ignorant of the truths I am saying (because they are inconvenient for you), or you know you are wrong but continue this charade as a troll.
Penchant for rationalizing away acts of genocide and dehumanize peoples. The only difference is zionists dehumanize actual semites ( palestinians) while nazis dehumanized european "jews". Zionists/"Israelis" are actual anti-semites. While nazis were anti-european "jews". Heady stuff.
> To me this sounds like more antisemitic nonsense, you comparing zionists to Nazis.
I'm comparing apples to apples.
> So using “Semitic” to argue that Israelis are “fake” or “non-Semites” is simply incorrect.
"Israelis" are europeans. Europeans are not semites.
> 3. The germanic language group is a family of languages that includes dutch, english, yiddish, afrikkans, etc. The germanic people includes germany, not brits and americans.
But germanic people includes ENGLISH though. It's pathetic what you are trying to do here.
> 5. I'm not lying.
That's all you have done. "Arabs are not semites". Lie. "Israel wasn't trying to kill civilians". Lie.
Israel's goal since the beginning was to exist, to be able to live. Antisemitism has literally never meant hatred against various semitic people such as Ethiopian semites or Assyrians it has always been a term to describe Jew hatred, coined by a German Jew hater. Also semitic is not a genetic thing, its a language thing and various identities tied to various semitic languages largely do not see it as a useful grouping. I have never heard of pan-semitic movement similar to pan Germanic or pan Slavic ones(those were not universally popular when they existed but they did exist and had some popularity). About half of Israeli Jews ancestors didn't recently live in Europe (and most of those had ancestors who lived elsewhere in MENA). Finally when it comes to genetics both Jews and Palestinians have substantial overlapping ancestry to the ancient Levant region as well as ancestry from outside of it, but that doesn't really change people's minds on ethnic identity and nationalism
For comparison, in World War II, there were an estimated 2 million civilian deaths and 5.3 million combatant deaths. 1 civilian death for every 2.6 combatant deaths.
Those are remarkably similar ratios. Take that as you will.
> Fatima was in the kitchen on Tuesday when a pager on the table began to beep, her aunt said. She picked up the device to bring it to her father and was holding it when it exploded, mangling her face and leaving the room covered in blood, she said.
I think there are also rules against attacking combatants in civilian contexts, like their homes.
I doubt Palantir had any involvement, just trying to get some credit. The operation to attack the supply chain was started long before Palantir had grown and could offer something.
It was an attack on civilians in pursuit of a non-military political goal. Terrorism. I think it was pretty successful on the terms of the people who carried it out but call it what it is.
You cannot seriously call it an attack "on civilians" - you especially cannot say that it's in pursuit of a non-military goal when it kicked off a literal military operation by crippling Hezbollah communications and (literally crippling) hundreds/thousands of their fighters before a land invasion of the southern border areas of Lebanon. And in any case, all war is politics.
> Fatima was in the kitchen on Tuesday when a pager on the table began to beep, her aunt said. She picked up the device to bring it to her father and was holding it when it exploded, mangling her face and leaving the room covered in blood, she said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/world/middleeast/lebanon-...
I didn't claim that they were particularly lethal. In fact, they were not particularly lethal. Thousands of pagers exploded and only 12 people were killed despite these devices being held directly up to the face or against the skin (pockets).
They were as close to non-lethal incapacitation, even against targets, as it is possible to get in war. When even the targets are rarely killed by the explosion, obviously that results in fewer unintended victims being hurt/killed.
They masquerade as civilians and use civilians as shields. This is why we have regular uniformed soldiers and separate places for them to do their military shit.
It's what "israel" specializes in. When you read the history of "israel", it's literally a series of acts of terrorism.
Um, why is it inappropriate to be outraged that international humanitarian lwas are actively being violated by Israel, in Gaza?
As I say in many contexts, you may not owe the other side better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).
Here's an analogy which may (or not) be helpful. Even in the middle of a war, it sometimes happens that enemies meet and discuss things. Such discussions won't help anything or anyone if they just consist of yelling at each other.
p.s. I appreciate your question and apologize that you had to reply here instead of to my comment itself (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221528). We have to turn off replies on pinned comments, but I hate giving the impression that we don't want to hear responses or objections.
As dang has said elsewhere in this thread and in other comparable threads, before you comment about a topic like this, there needs to be some processing or metabolizing of those feelings. HN is a place for learning, not venting or battling. And there is much to learn about these topics by discussing them curiously. I certainly do, and I see others doing that too. That's a significant reason why I think it's important for us to make space for these discussions here. But if the threads are overwhelmed by people expressing extreme emotions, there's less to learn, other than that people on both sides are angry about this issue, which we already knew.