Israel has vowed to retaliate after Iran launched a barrage of ballistic missiles at targets across Israel in a dramatic intensification of a conflict that appeared to be escalating out of control.
“Iran made a big mistake tonight – and it will pay for it,” Benjamin Netanyahu told a meeting of his security cabinet late on Tuesday. “The regime in Iran does not understand our determination to defend ourselves and our determination to retaliate against our enemies.”
The unprecedented Iranian salvo of more than 180 ballistic missiles came less than 24 hours after the Israeli prime minister ordered the largest ground incursion into southern Lebanon in a generation.
The thing with “pager terrorism” is that it was genius in targeting just the terrorists. The supply chain of the terrorist organization was hijacked, and even then no one normal uses pagers today.
There were literally children who were injured/killed in that attack. That was not a targeted attack.
It was and it wasn’t. It was a brilliant move, but Israel also obviously knew there would be innocent bystanders. Overall though, given the amount of damage it did to Hezbollah, I’d say you’d be hard pressed to give Israel a better attack option.
I’m not arguing about its effectiveness. I’m saying it was not a targeted attack and innocents were hurt because of it. Then again we really shouldn’t be surprised given Israel’s history of war crimes.
It was targeted, but not precise enough to keep innocents safe.
Then it wasn’t targeted. Blowing up a bunch of IEDs with no way to verify who they’re hurting is not a targeted attack. It’s an act of terror on a civilian population.
My understanding is that it was selectively pagers used by Hezbollah that blew up, which is a far cry from the indiscriminate planting of IEDs you’re describing. These weren’t dispersed at random throughout a civilian population. They were …targeting Hezbollah members by being planted on them.
Israel had no way of knowing who was holding or beside the pager when they blew them up. Hence, the civilian casualties and why it wasn’t actually targeted. I know Israel has a pretty low enemy combatant to civilian kill ratio but just because this was slightly more targeted than their usual selves doesn’t mean it was actually targeted.
How many accounts have there been of non-hezbollah folks holding the pager when it blew up?
I carry one for work, and that shit is on me unless I’m sleeping, because the entire point of a pager is it can reach me no matter what, I’d be surprised if that deviated significantly for Hezbollah folks.