You know, as creepy as it is that such a tactic exists, I can't think of a more targeted way to hit the people you want to hit with minimal collateral damage.
You know, as creepy as it is that such a tactic exists, I can't think of a more targeted way to hit the people you want to hit with minimal collateral damage.
It's all a matter of degree, yeah? Is it as targeted as individually capturing, sentencing, and punishing each one of them after a trial? No. Is is more targeted than any missile or most military...
It's all a matter of degree, yeah? Is it as targeted as individually capturing, sentencing, and punishing each one of them after a trial? No. Is is more targeted than any missile or most military raids? Absolutely. That you're bringing up a singular girl is proof of its efficacy, not its failure.
For what it's worth, I went looking for casualty videos everywhere I could find them, and I couldn't find more than one where the injured weren't men, almost all young adults. I saw one video with...
For what it's worth, I went looking for casualty videos everywhere I could find them, and I couldn't find more than one where the injured weren't men, almost all young adults. I saw one video with a few frames of a small child being carried by a woman, and there was some blood on the child. I couldn't tell how severe his injuries were.
If what I saw was reasonably representative, then that would imply this attack was effective in inflicting maximum damage to Hezbollah while minimizing civilian harm.
I can think of a couple ways. When the Russians poison one of their enemies or they have an “accident,” that’s even cleaner, in terms of collateral damage. It’s more controlled. On the one hand,...
I can think of a couple ways. When the Russians poison one of their enemies or they have an “accident,” that’s even cleaner, in terms of collateral damage. It’s more controlled.
On the one hand, yes, it’s good when innocent people die less often. By the low standards we use for war, targeted attacks are much better than untargeted ones.
But that doesn’t make it any less unsettling. These people are sharks. Sometimes, it’s sharks against sharks. But still, you don’t want to be in the water when they’re around.
This reminds me of my mixed feelings about the war in Ukraine. Yes, we want the Ukrainians to win, but the logical consequence of that is rooting for more Russian deaths. If you want them to win, give them more weapons so they can kill Russians more effectively. War is what happens when the importance of winning overrides nearly all normal morality.
One consequence of the war is that the drones become more technologically advanced and more usable for assassinations. Expect them to be used for targeted attacks in the future.
What happens when states adopt, professionalize, and scale up terrorist tactics to use against their enemies? If it becomes more widespread, we get buildings built more like bunkers, metal detectors and other searches everywhere, increased electronic surveillance, more border restrictions, more walls, more guards, more locks, more cameras, less privacy. Airport security is a preview.
We live our lives assuming terrorist attacks are rare. Hope it doesn’t change.
Is it? I can’t think of many Russian poisonings, and out of a small sample I can immediately think of three unintended casualties of Novichok nerve agents. I’m doubtful that spreading polonium has...
I can think of a couple ways. When the Russians poison one of their enemies or they have an “accident,” that’s even cleaner, in terms of collateral damage. It’s more controlled.
Is it? I can’t think of many Russian poisonings, and out of a small sample I can immediately think of three unintended casualties of Novichok nerve agents. I’m doubtful that spreading polonium has had no negative effects on outside parties either.
The paranoia might be a significant part of the purpose. Degrading their communications from being able to use electronic devices to only being able to send out their tea boys to run paper notes...
The paranoia might be a significant part of the purpose. Degrading their communications from being able to use electronic devices to only being able to send out their tea boys to run paper notes would be a pretty significant reduction in their ability to rapidly coordinate.
I think you underestimate recovery from a significant wound. If things were exploding on their belts, even a minor wound compromises mobility, limits energy for things other than recovery,...
I think you underestimate recovery from a significant wound. If things were exploding on their belts, even a minor wound compromises mobility, limits energy for things other than recovery, stresses medical supply chains, etc. It's not a knockout blow, but to hit a thousand or more of the support staff in one blow with make everything harder and slower.
Hand-held radios used by Hezbollah detonated late on Wednesday afternoon across Lebanon's south and in Beirut's southern suburbs, a security source and a witness said, further hiking tensions with Israel a day after similar explosions launched via the group's pagers.At least one of the blasts took place near a funeral organized by Iran-backed Hezbollah for those killed the previous day when thousands of pagers used by the group exploded across the country and wounded many of the group's fighters.
The hand-held radios were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, around the same time that the pagers were bought, said a security source.
This detail is particularly shocking. I don't know how these were produced compared to the pagers, since if it is a model from 2014 and got explosives inserted during production, that would...
Images of the exploded walkie-talkies showed labels with "ICOM" and "made in Japan." According to its website, ICOM, which did not immediately reply to a request for comment, is a Japan-based radio communications and telephone company.
The company has said that production of model IC-V82, which appeared to be the model in the images, was phased out in 2014.
This detail is particularly shocking. I don't know how these were produced compared to the pagers, since if it is a model from 2014 and got explosives inserted during production, that would potentially mean this has been planned for a decade somehow. Alternatively (and more likely in my opinion), the explosives may have been added later.
Either way though, they were made by a different company than the pagers, so they would be compromised at different points. Hezbollah now has incentive to abandon all devices purchased in the last few months, which seriously hampers their communication abilities right now. It will likely take a good chunk of their funds to replace them, but they'll also be MUCH more paranoid of any new devices. The fact it happened to two separate devices from two companies is alarming.
This is tactically brilliant in some ways, but also feels like it has strong potential to escalate tensions in the Middle East even further. Any sort of attack would do that at this point, honestly. Israel isn't popular with its neighbors, and launching a large-scale attack on foreign soil—even one as precisely coordinated as this one, as opposed to just attacking areas/cities—won't help with that. The precision may create more incentive to take them out, as this attack was genuinely unpredictable and shows Israel has disturbing degrees of access to supply chains. It raises the question of what else they have in the works.
Some other possibilities: maybe they've been sitting in a warehouse all this time? Maybe it's a mislabelled counterfeit that was manufactured somewhere else?
Some other possibilities: maybe they've been sitting in a warehouse all this time? Maybe it's a mislabelled counterfeit that was manufactured somewhere else?
This article has a video of one of the explosions: https://nos.nl/artikel/2537529-doden-en-duizenden-gewonden-door-exploderende-hezbollah-piepers-in-libanon-en-syrie Relatively safe to watch as...
This article has a video of one of the explosions:
Judging by the video above, I don't see any way at all feasible to make a more precise attack than this against known terrorists. In the video, only the person with the pager is hurt. The people standing less than 1 meter next to him look to be completely unharmed. It's a lot less innocent casualties than 500 kg bombs, that's for sure.
Same video, but on Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/dozens-hezbollah-members-wounded-lebanon-when-pagers-exploded-sources-witnesses-2024-09-17/
I mean, I'm a little surprised that Hezbollah used pagers, but you are otherwise correct. I guess it's a way around Israel being able to precisely geolocate you by cell phone. But I guess it makes...
I mean, I'm a little surprised that Hezbollah used pagers, but you are otherwise correct. I guess it's a way around Israel being able to precisely geolocate you by cell phone. But I guess it makes it pretty easy to hit you when your organization is buying pagers and no one else is.
Different technology. Most phones these days have gps built in, and even if they don't, they're two way communications, whereas pagers just respond to a particular wave emitted from a transmitter....
Different technology. Most phones these days have gps built in, and even if they don't, they're two way communications, whereas pagers just respond to a particular wave emitted from a transmitter. Especially if they're one-way pagers, those literally don't have any outbound signature to be tracked.
Update 2: Eight people have been killed and 2,750 wounded - 200 of them critically - by exploding pagers across Lebanon, the country's health minister says.
Update 2: Eight people have been killed and 2,750 wounded - 200 of them critically - by exploding pagers across Lebanon, the country's health minister says.
Damn. And given the amount of surveillance Israel has, this is probably enough for them to identify many of the members they previously weren't aware of. If someone is injured, they either had one...
Damn. And given the amount of surveillance Israel has, this is probably enough for them to identify many of the members they previously weren't aware of. If someone is injured, they either had one of the pagers, or is very close to someone who did.
Or they happened to be standing next to the targeted person at a market stall, or in line for a coffee. I don’t think that being injured in this attack is strong evidence that you’re affiliated...
Or they happened to be standing next to the targeted person at a market stall, or in line for a coffee. I don’t think that being injured in this attack is strong evidence that you’re affiliated with Hezbollah in isolation.
Yeah, this is why I'm skeptical of all the people insisting that this is a great way to target members of Hezbollah with minimal collateral damage. That's only true if you accept the assumption...
Yeah, this is why I'm skeptical of all the people insisting that this is a great way to target members of Hezbollah with minimal collateral damage. That's only true if you accept the assumption that the victims of this attack are definitionally members of Hezbollah and not innocent bystanders. I'm sure some of the people targeted here were affiliated with Hezbollah, but given Israel's habit of justifying atrocities with assertions of association with terrorist groups, often with little to no evidence, I'm not exactly eager to accept the assumption that those hit by this attack must necessarily not be innocent civilians.
The assumptions are that anyone with a pager are members of hezbollah (which seems fair given it’s a supply chain attack - Mossad likely found the hezbollah shell company they were using to buy...
The assumptions are that anyone with a pager are members of hezbollah (which seems fair given it’s a supply chain attack - Mossad likely found the hezbollah shell company they were using to buy pagers) and that the explosions were comparatively small. That is, small relative to drone strikes or missile strikes or targeted assassinations by people. Which I think is reasonable, all of the latter 3 probably involve more indirect casualties of bystanders.
It came out that the 8 or 9 year old girl killed had picked up the beeping pager from the kitchen table to bring to her father at home. From video evidence, it appears that the micro explosive...
It came out that the 8 or 9 year old girl killed had picked up the beeping pager from the kitchen table to bring to her father at home.
From video evidence, it appears that the micro explosive only harms someone holding it directly. Bystanders only a few feet away are unharmed.
This is probably the most precisely targeted military operation in human history against an enemy that uses civilians as human shields, and Israel is already being condemned by UN officials.
You weren't kidding... I understand the fear of escalation, but this is one of the most targeted attacks I could possibly imagine. It reminds me of people telling off Israel on October 7th...
You weren't kidding... I understand the fear of escalation, but this is one of the most targeted attacks I could possibly imagine. It reminds me of people telling off Israel on October 7th...
I'm not sure it's necessarily reasonable to assume anyone with a pager is a member. Your logic makes sense, but even under those circumstances it's certainly possible for innocents to end up with...
I'm not sure it's necessarily reasonable to assume anyone with a pager is a member. Your logic makes sense, but even under those circumstances it's certainly possible for innocents to end up with pagers, and there are a lot of details we don't know that could push that possible much further. The collateral damage may well be small relative to alternatives, but I don't think it's sensible to take Israel's word on how much is targeted and how much is collateral damage given how unreliable their statements on that front tend to be.
Is it? How would someone else end up with a pager? Pager's are not commonly used by anyone, and if you were someone who used a pager and isn't part of a terrorist organization (e.g, doctors), you...
Is it? How would someone else end up with a pager? Pager's are not commonly used by anyone, and if you were someone who used a pager and isn't part of a terrorist organization (e.g, doctors), you can just buy them from normal companies. It's only because it's Hezbollah that you need to procure them clandenstinely - the FBI did the same thing to gangs in Mexico, because they also have issues getting IT.
Furthermore, if you were part of Hezbollah, you wouldn't give your Hezbollah pager to random people, since if nothing else they'll start getting Hezbollah messages and that's a security leak.
I think it depends how they actually planted the explosives, supply-side, and whether there was intermingling of the pagers acquired by Hezbollah for Hezbollah purposes and those used by others....
I think it depends how they actually planted the explosives, supply-side, and whether there was intermingling of the pagers acquired by Hezbollah for Hezbollah purposes and those used by others. They, for instance, could acquire pagers through their shell company and distribute some to Hezbollah but also sell some to legitimate parties through the shell company -- much like how money laundering operations also do legitimate business. It's also possible that the original planting of the explosives also included pagers designated for other companies in the area, depending on how targeted exactly the supply-side interference was. I don't know enough details to really say, and I doubt they'll ever reveal so much detail to the public for security reasons on either side. It's totally possible that they did indeed do this in the most targeted way they possibly could -- but I'm just cautioning against taking Israel's word for it.
Did you see the grocery store video? In that video, the victim is standing directly on top of a display of vegetables, and next to two other people. Both others appear unharmed, and the wagon...
Did you see the grocery store video? In that video, the victim is standing directly on top of a display of vegetables, and next to two other people. Both others appear unharmed, and the wagon holding the groceries is mostly undamaged.
BEIRUT (AP) — Dozens of people were wounded in Beirut’s suburbs and other parts of Lebanon after their handheld pagers exploded Tuesday, Lebanese state media and security officials said. It wasn’t immediately clear if people were killed.
A senior military intelligence official and an official with a Lebanese group with knowledge of the situation, both of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said that pagers carried by Hezbollah members were detonated. The second official said it was believed to be an Israeli attack.
Wake up babe, new example of non-kinetic attacks having a kinetic effect just dropped!
I really hope that I can someday learn how they did this and how the genius behind it realized it was possible. Sounds like a really cool attack vector.
I was saying to a friend earlier, if they had asked me yesterday if this was possible, I would have told them it was infeasible. The explosions don't look like just a battery over voltage...
I was saying to a friend earlier, if they had asked me yesterday if this was possible, I would have told them it was infeasible. The explosions don't look like just a battery over voltage explosion that could be caused by compromised firmware. The best theory I've seen is that Israel compromised the supply chain and added a few grams of explosive during manufacturing.
They've done this before with a cell phone, and in that case yes they added C4 or some explosive to the phone. This has to be similar because there's no way a pager battery, or really any battery...
They've done this before with a cell phone, and in that case yes they added C4 or some explosive to the phone. This has to be similar because there's no way a pager battery, or really any battery that would fit in a pager, could cause the damage these did.
I don't know that cool is the word I would have used but it certainly is very interesting and I will definitely be watching the open source space to see what analysts make of it. It for sure...
I don't know that cool is the word I would have used but it certainly is very interesting and I will definitely be watching the open source space to see what analysts make of it. It for sure massively damages Hizbollah communications, as well as make them fear any tech. For better or worse, Israel is so far ahead of its enemies that it's outright stupid to ever attack them unless you have a death wish or a hope to be martyred. The war in the region is not going to calm down anytime soon though.. it's going to get a lot worse. We are also approaching the 1 year anniversary of October 7th which I'm quite scared about seeing what will happen.
Has there ever been a major attack on the anniversary of another attack? Unless you're talking about fearing that Israel will kick everything into overdrive.
Has there ever been a major attack on the anniversary of another attack? Unless you're talking about fearing that Israel will kick everything into overdrive.
It does feel like it's going to get a lot worse. It feels like violence is increasing in too many places at once. Venezuela coup attempt, armored cops in the NY subway, race riots in the UK......
It does feel like it's going to get a lot worse. It feels like violence is increasing in too many places at once. Venezuela coup attempt, armored cops in the NY subway, race riots in the UK... it's so much.
I’m wondering how many of these pagers were sold to people that the Israelis didn’t intend to target? Are there other people walking around with pagers that have explosives in them?
I’m wondering how many of these pagers were sold to people that the Israelis didn’t intend to target? Are there other people walking around with pagers that have explosives in them?
ToI is claiming they're a custom model Hezbollah obtained a few months ago. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/exploding-pagers-were-latest-model-acquired-by-hezbollah-months-ago-sources/
ToI is claiming they're a custom model Hezbollah obtained a few months ago.
Not sure if the article is updated, but right now it only mentions that the pagers are the latest model. I don’t think there can be any certainty that the pagers were only sold to Hezbollah.
Not sure if the article is updated, but right now it only mentions that the pagers are the latest model. I don’t think there can be any certainty that the pagers were only sold to Hezbollah.
“Those explosions aren’t just batteries,” says Jake Williams, vice president of research and development at Hunter Strategy who formerly worked for the US National Security Agency. “Based on the reporting, these pagers were likely interdicted by Israeli authorities and modified with explosives. This highlights the risks of supply chain security, especially in places where technology is harder to ship to.”
“It's unlikely that hacking was involved, as it's likely that explosive material had to be inside the pagers to cause such an effect,” says Lukasz Olejnik, an independent consultant and visiting senior research fellow at King’s College London’s Department of War Studies. “Reports mention the delivery of new pagers recently, so perhaps the delivery was compromised.”
Impressive attack, I assume they got involved with their supply chain and delivered pagers with explosives. I wonder what message was used as the trigger word. 'kaboom', maybe something witty?...
Impressive attack, I assume they got involved with their supply chain and delivered pagers with explosives.
I wonder what message was used as the trigger word. 'kaboom', maybe something witty?
This also hurts their capabilities significantly cause it takes out their active terrorists pretty efficiently and they can't trust their pagers now either.
If there was good intelligence that Hezbollah ordered a batch of a particular pager model and planned to distribute the devices hand to hand, it's an incredible (and disturbing) example of...
If there was good intelligence that Hezbollah ordered a batch of a particular pager model and planned to distribute the devices hand to hand, it's an incredible (and disturbing) example of leveraging social network effects. With enough time, the tactic can penetrate throughout the footsoldier level of a terrorist network organized in isolated cells, exposing all the members.
This tactic probably took years of planning, and I can't see it being effective more than once. And it leaves open the strategic question of whether it will be effective in blocking Hezbollah for any length of time, or will simply drive Iran to escalate to open warfare.
How could it be planned years ahead when Hezzabollah decided to switch to pagers months ago? I see this as quite similar in effect to a terrorist attack. It’s setting off bombs in civilian areas....
How could it be planned years ahead when Hezzabollah decided to switch to pagers months ago?
I see this as quite similar in effect to a terrorist attack. It’s setting off bombs in civilian areas. (In this case, rather small bombs. Nonetheless.)
I'd be very curious as to how thousands of pagers were loaded up with explosives so carefully that they continued to function long enough for widespread distribution. While there's evidence Mossad...
I'd be very curious as to how thousands of pagers were loaded up with explosives so carefully that they continued to function long enough for widespread distribution. While there's evidence Mossad may have done this a few times previously for one-off assassination devices, the scale and undetectability suggests extensive research and planning effort, even if a specific type of telecommunications device wasn't the target.
The history of physical supply chain attacks is that it takes years to identify and cultivate assets who are in a position to provide accurate information or intervene. I'll grant that the global distribution of supply chains makes it quick to intercept and tamper with a specific shipment once you know that it's on its way.
Edit: More details are emerging. Per Reuters' Lebanese source, the pagers were modified at the production level with a circuit board that included the explosive charge.
They updated the story again. Archive link: https://archive.is/pum3P And it seems Israel did it again: I suspect that ongoing work on one-off assassination devices was pretty good preparation for...
Hand-held radios used by Hezbollah detonated late on Wednesday afternoon across Lebanon's south and in Beirut's southern suburbs, a security source and a witness said, further hiking tensions with Israel a day after similar explosions launched via the group's pagers.At least one of the blasts took place near a funeral organized by Iran-backed Hezbollah for those killed the previous day when thousands of pagers used by the group exploded across the country and wounded many of the group's fighters.
The group, which was thrown briefly into disarray by the pager attacks, said on Wednesday it had attacked Israeli artillery positions with rockets in the first strike at its arch-foe since blasts wounded thousands of its members in Lebanon and raised the prospect of a wider Middle East war.
The hand-held radios were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, around the same time that the pagers were bought, said a security source.
I suspect that ongoing work on one-off assassination devices was pretty good preparation for these attacks when the opportunity came up. They need to have people at similar places in supply chains. The requirements for the devices are pretty similar. Pagers and radios likely have more empty space inside than cell phones. The scale is unprecedented, but it’s scaling up something they already do.
No one's yet trying to take or hold land. Israel is having a hard enough time actually completing any of their stated objectives in Gaza and doesn't want to invade Lebanon, and Hezbollah doesn't...
No one's yet trying to take or hold land. Israel is having a hard enough time actually completing any of their stated objectives in Gaza and doesn't want to invade Lebanon, and Hezbollah doesn't want to try and hold what's currently Israeli soil. So they keep poking at each other.
Icom, a Japanese manufacturer of radio equipment, said in a statement on its website Thursday morning that it produced the IC-V82 handheld radio from 2004 to October 2014 and shipped it to overseas markets, including in the Middle East, during that period. But there had been no shipments since the model was discontinued about 10 years ago and the production of batteries to operate the unit had also been discontinued, the company said.
Furthermore, the photos of the devices did not show the hologram sticker that Icom had attached to the units to prevent counterfeiting, “so we cannot confirm whether the product was shipped from our company or not,” the statement said.
Looks like BAC Consulting in Hungary was a shell company set up by the Israelis. What we know about firm linked to Lebanon pagers (BBC) … … … … Who made the pagers? The Israelis. The Israeli...
Looks like BAC Consulting in Hungary was a shell company set up by the Israelis.
BAC Consulting is a Hungarian-based company which Gold Apollo says had permission to use its brand through a licensing agreement.
BBC Verify has accessed BAC’s company records, which reveal it was first incorporated in 2022 and has a single shareholder. It is registered to a building in Budapest's 14th district.
As well as BAC, a further 13 companies and one person are registered at the same building.
…
[…] BAC's website, which is now inaccessible, previously said it was scaling up its business in Asia, and had a goal to "develop international technology co-operation among countries for the sale of telecommunication products".
…
A company brochure, published on LinkedIn, lists eight organisations BAC claims to have worked with - including the European Commission and the UK Department for International Development (DfID).
BBC Verify has approached all the listed organisations for comment. The UK Foreign Office - which has taken on DfID's responsibilities - told us it was in the process of investigating. But based on initial conversations, it said it did not have any involvement with BAC, despite the firm's claim.
…
BAC's website listed one person as its chief executive and founder - Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono - and does not appear to mention other employees.
…
NBC has reported it had spoken to Ms Bársony-Arcidiacono, who confirmed her company worked with Gold Apollo. However, when asked about the pagers and the explosions, she said: "I don’t make the pagers. I am just the intermediate. I think you got it wrong.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied any role in the explosions, but 12 current and former defense and intelligence officials who were briefed on the attack say the Israelis were behind it, describing the operation as complex and long in the making. They spoke to The New York Times on the condition of anonymity, given the sensitivity of the subject.
…
By all appearances, B.A.C. Consulting was a Hungary-based company that was under contract to produce the devices on behalf of a Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo. In fact, it was part of an Israeli front, according to three intelligence officers briefed on the operation. They said at least two other shell companies were created as well to mask the real identities of the people creating the pagers: Israeli intelligence officers.
B.A.C. did take on ordinary clients, for which it produced a range of ordinary pagers. But the only client that really mattered was Hezbollah, and its pagers were far from ordinary. Produced separately, they contained batteries laced with the explosive PETN, according to the three intelligence officers.
The pagers began shipping to Lebanon in the summer of 2022 in small numbers, but production was quickly ramped up after Mr. Nasrallah denounced cellphones.
That made the most sense. When you're an international terrorist organization, you can't just waltz up to any old company and make an order. You are economically sanctioned by everyone and their...
That made the most sense. When you're an international terrorist organization, you can't just waltz up to any old company and make an order. You are economically sanctioned by everyone and their mother, after all. So you have to be clandestine, and find companies willing to do some shady orders. That's an easy in for organizations like Mossad.
The FBI did the same thing with cartels - they set up the phone company Anom to sell them. In that case, it was for wiretapping rather than exploding, but regardless they were the entire supply chain. The cartels are in a similar situation to Hezbollah in that they don't have a lot of options to buy phones from.
This is absolutely insane! Imagine hackers being able to remotely explode the cellphone in your pocket or while you're having a call. Not to mention the innocent people that got harmed as part of...
This is absolutely insane! Imagine hackers being able to remotely explode the cellphone in your pocket or while you're having a call. Not to mention the innocent people that got harmed as part of this attack you can't really control.
Something extra has got to be going on here. Lithium batteries are barely tamed beasts, but they won't detonate. They'll burn ferociously and unstoppably, but I'm not sure they can be coaxed into...
Something extra has got to be going on here. Lithium batteries are barely tamed beasts, but they won't detonate. They'll burn ferociously and unstoppably, but I'm not sure they can be coaxed into an explosion.
this sort of thing is very cute and flashy, but it doesn't really scale. in my opinion, as citizens, we should primarily be worried about things that scale
this sort of thing is very cute and flashy, but it doesn't really scale. in my opinion, as citizens, we should primarily be worried about things that scale
The suspected attack appeared to be the latest salvo in the nearly year-long conflict between Israel and Hezbollah tied to the war in Gaza. It triggered the worst mass casualty event in Lebanon of the war, leaving the country’s health system reeling: At least 2,800 people were injured across the country, mostly with wounds to the face, hands or stomach, Health Minister Firas Abiad said. At least nine people were killed.
...
Footage from hospitals also showed people with severe injuries, such as missing fingers or deep gashes to their body, including badly injured children. Video filmed inside Bahman Hospital in Beirut’s southern suburbs depicted bedlam, as dozens of injured people crowd the hospital’s rooms and corridors. Some of the injured lie on the floor covered in blood, while others use paper towels to cover their wounds. Several more injured men are carried through the hospital entrance on gurneys or bloodied sheets as sirens ring out in the distance.
The language in this and other articles called this a hack, and some talk about intervention with the pagers before they were distributed by Hezbollah. When I read the headline, I assumed the...
The language in this and other articles called this a hack, and some talk about intervention with the pagers before they were distributed by Hezbollah. When I read the headline, I assumed the pagers would have had to have explosives added to them, but it doesn't seem to be the claim?
If so that leaves 1) a hack where a lithium battery was induced to overheat and explode, but I can't see the batteries in these pagers being very large or 2) they had explosives in them by design, and the hack merely triggered them. This last case seems insane to me, though I suppose if it were true it would illustrate how far out of hand things have gotten.
There's CCTV video of a couple of the devices exploding, so I would be very very surprised if these devices were not part of a supply chain compromise and this was purely a hack. Lithium ion...
There's CCTV video of a couple of the devices exploding, so I would be very very surprised if these devices were not part of a supply chain compromise and this was purely a hack.
Lithium ion batteries don't explode in the manner shown in the videos, they burn (albeit very violently).
Topics surrounding Israel always are the most frustrating ones on Tildes for me. This is an extremely bad development for it will definitely lead to paranoia, it worsens the situation in the...
Topics surrounding Israel always are the most frustrating ones on Tildes for me. This is an extremely bad development for it will definitely lead to paranoia, it worsens the situation in the middle-east, and it increases the possibility of a multi-party war, while people are going "Nice attack, here's your achievement." I guess it's easier to take this stance if you don't have skin in the game and live in a far off rich nation.
Yeah I don't like the casual, or celebratory, attitude. Shit is incredibly complicated, but innocent people are afraid, a child was killed, a whole "attack on another country's soil is fine when...
Yeah I don't like the casual, or celebratory, attitude. Shit is incredibly complicated, but innocent people are afraid, a child was killed, a whole "attack on another country's soil is fine when we/our allies do it" thing is present, as is the possibility of escalation and the near guarantee of retaliation.
But it's fine because it's in a country we don't like with mostly people we've categorized as bad guys. (And I'm not an expert, I don't claim to be , they could be all the worst guys, even the 8 year old. Some of the comments here are still in very poor taste.
There are multiple comments in this thread that are either overly casual, something that you'd see said in a CoD lobby, or outright jokes. Completely tone deaf. So yeah I totally agree with you.
There are multiple comments in this thread that are either overly casual, something that you'd see said in a CoD lobby, or outright jokes. Completely tone deaf. So yeah I totally agree with you.
Hezbollah has repeatedly attacked Israeli soil over the past year. Last month, they attempted to launch hundreds or thousands of rockets in an attack that Israel foiled just half an hour before....
Hezbollah has repeatedly attacked Israeli soil over the past year. Last month, they attempted to launch hundreds or thousands of rockets in an attack that Israel foiled just half an hour before.
Thousands of rockets have been shot by Hezbollah over the course of the war, and the only reason Hezbollah hasn't killed far more people than this attack did is the billions of dollars Israel(unsustainably) spends on air defense. Even that defense isn't perfect, and if not for Israel's prompt action last month, the attack that was foiled would have killed many Israelis, including civilians, since many of the rockets Hezbollah uses aren't particularly accurate.
This attack was strictly targeted at people carrying Hezbollah pagers, meaning militants and those they needed to communicate with, even if it wasn't 100% perfect in achieving that goal. By contrast, this escalation is part of a back and forth in part started by Hezbollah firing a poorly targeted missile that hit a play field and killed 12 children.
Yes, celebrating harm is awful, but the military advantage brought by this attack relative to the number of non-target casualties is likely one of the highest on record. If this attack isn't acceptable, is there any method that Israel is permitted to offensively retaliate?
I didn't, and won't, weigh in on Israel's right to use offensive force and if I want a geopolitical history lesson on this it won't be on any social media. I found the comments here being excited...
I didn't, and won't, weigh in on Israel's right to use offensive force and if I want a geopolitical history lesson on this it won't be on any social media.
I found the comments here being excited about the cool new way to maim and kill people in poor taste. Still do.
I'm saying it's maiming and death, and you're asking me if it's really technically assault and murder. And that's not relevant to my opinion or point.
i'm so tired of people discussing how Israel is always in the wrong. They literally can't win socially even though they're responding to escalation of force. Yes A child died, but how many...
i'm so tired of people discussing how Israel is always in the wrong. They literally can't win socially even though they're responding to escalation of force. Yes A child died, but how many children have been murdered in untargeted attacks?
It's awful that there is warfare going on, and the Middle East can't seem to just live in peace and harmony, but no one seems to agree on who should live in peace on the land. It's been this way since at least the 1960's if not earlier, and it's getting worse and worse. It sucks, and unfortunately, none of us really understand unless we live in the region, what the toll really is on all of the people there.
I do understand what your comment was about. It's just really upsetting to keep reading how nothing Israel does is the correct move, even when they do as much as they can to mitigate civilian...
I do understand what your comment was about. It's just really upsetting to keep reading how nothing Israel does is the correct move, even when they do as much as they can to mitigate civilian casualties, while trying to protect their borders.
I guess I'm just frustrated that this is in this reply chain. It is perhaps possible that I don't think anyone could do anything right when it comes to war and violence. I understand feeling...
I guess I'm just frustrated that this is in this reply chain. It is perhaps possible that I don't think anyone could do anything right when it comes to war and violence.
While I feel like it's still too early to tell(fog of war is a major thing with these kind of operations when they just occured), the optics of the attack is basically in reverse. Due to how...
Yes, celebrating harm is awful, but the military advantage brought by this attack relative to the number of non-target casualties is likely one of the highest on record. If this attack isn't acceptable, is there any method that Israel is permitted to offensively retaliate?
While I feel like it's still too early to tell(fog of war is a major thing with these kind of operations when they just occured), the optics of the attack is basically in reverse. Due to how spread out it appears, and collateral damage thus also appears widespread, it's difficult for ordinary people to not feel like this.
I think this was not a good move regardless of the practical objectives Israël has or has not achieved. In terms of international standing it is corroding even further when her allies are increasingly skeptical.
I'm reminded again of our different media circles for what we see about this conflict. I am interested to see what data eventually comes out of the fog on the demographics of those injured in this...
I'm reminded again of our different media circles for what we see about this conflict. I am interested to see what data eventually comes out of the fog on the demographics of those injured in this attack were.
Where I will be disagree with you is that this worsened Israel's relations with other nations. I haven't seen any evidence of that. The only condemnations I've seen have been from countries or organizations that already reviled them anyway.
For the record, you appear to be correct from what I can see. I've been trying to get a diverse media picture of the events but it's mighty difficult. Not sure if I read wrong, got caught in...
I haven't seen any evidence of that. The only condemnations I've seen have been from countries or organizations that already reviled them anyway.
For the record, you appear to be correct from what I can see. I've been trying to get a diverse media picture of the events but it's mighty difficult. Not sure if I read wrong, got caught in propaganda or am just overwhelmed at the different perspectives. I was wrong on this matter it seems.
Incidentally, I do hope this will end up having only or almost entirely Hezbollah. They are terrorists for all intents and purposes. This shouldn't matter for my arguments but I felt the need to state this explicitly given the political polarization of this conflict.
Yeah, purposely going looking for people whose viewpoints you often find abhorrent can be... rough. The reading I was doing on this topic basically killed the whole day for me, particularly since...
Yeah, purposely going looking for people whose viewpoints you often find abhorrent can be... rough. The reading I was doing on this topic basically killed the whole day for me, particularly since I was scrolling through Twitter trying to find casualty videos, and twitter is a cesspit of people who are actual swastika-carrying Nazis.
If you're interested in my preferred source, I typically click links from Times of Israel when I'm looking up an event. They're at the Israeli center to center-left. I will mention I don't typically read their opinion content (I'm rarely on the home page), and that anything marked as a blog is really a blog -- there are thousands of people who write those, and TOI doesn't really review them beyond vetting people before they can make an account.
On Hezbollah, I appreciate the clarification; as part of the aforementioned cesspit, I've seen a disturbing number of claims on social media that they're nothing but a legitimate political party...
When you’re the website owner and coder, I’m sure there’s all kinds of stuff you can do behind the scenes! I just wonder how much of it is manually editing links and addresses, versus whether...
When you’re the website owner and coder, I’m sure there’s all kinds of stuff you can do behind the scenes! I just wonder how much of it is manually editing links and addresses, versus whether Deimos has already created a tool for this exact case
You know, as creepy as it is that such a tactic exists, I can't think of a more targeted way to hit the people you want to hit with minimal collateral damage.
Unless you are saying Israel wanted to kill an 8-year-old girl, this doesn't seem very targeted to me.
It's all a matter of degree, yeah? Is it as targeted as individually capturing, sentencing, and punishing each one of them after a trial? No. Is is more targeted than any missile or most military raids? Absolutely. That you're bringing up a singular girl is proof of its efficacy, not its failure.
For what it's worth, I went looking for casualty videos everywhere I could find them, and I couldn't find more than one where the injured weren't men, almost all young adults. I saw one video with a few frames of a small child being carried by a woman, and there was some blood on the child. I couldn't tell how severe his injuries were.
If what I saw was reasonably representative, then that would imply this attack was effective in inflicting maximum damage to Hezbollah while minimizing civilian harm.
Oh yes. It's generally far worse than one innocent casualty to eight "proper" targets.
I can think of a couple ways. When the Russians poison one of their enemies or they have an “accident,” that’s even cleaner, in terms of collateral damage. It’s more controlled.
On the one hand, yes, it’s good when innocent people die less often. By the low standards we use for war, targeted attacks are much better than untargeted ones.
But that doesn’t make it any less unsettling. These people are sharks. Sometimes, it’s sharks against sharks. But still, you don’t want to be in the water when they’re around.
This reminds me of my mixed feelings about the war in Ukraine. Yes, we want the Ukrainians to win, but the logical consequence of that is rooting for more Russian deaths. If you want them to win, give them more weapons so they can kill Russians more effectively. War is what happens when the importance of winning overrides nearly all normal morality.
One consequence of the war is that the drones become more technologically advanced and more usable for assassinations. Expect them to be used for targeted attacks in the future.
What happens when states adopt, professionalize, and scale up terrorist tactics to use against their enemies? If it becomes more widespread, we get buildings built more like bunkers, metal detectors and other searches everywhere, increased electronic surveillance, more border restrictions, more walls, more guards, more locks, more cameras, less privacy. Airport security is a preview.
We live our lives assuming terrorist attacks are rare. Hope it doesn’t change.
Is it? I can’t think of many Russian poisonings, and out of a small sample I can immediately think of three unintended casualties of Novichok nerve agents. I’m doubtful that spreading polonium has had no negative effects on outside parties either.
Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess
Nick Bailey
Yeah, I guess I was making an unwarranted assumption there. Thanks.
True, but for the most part it is just causing injuries, so those people can continue to operate, albeit with more paranoia and fewer fingers.
The paranoia might be a significant part of the purpose. Degrading their communications from being able to use electronic devices to only being able to send out their tea boys to run paper notes would be a pretty significant reduction in their ability to rapidly coordinate.
I think you underestimate recovery from a significant wound. If things were exploding on their belts, even a minor wound compromises mobility, limits energy for things other than recovery, stresses medical supply chains, etc. It's not a knockout blow, but to hit a thousand or more of the support staff in one blow with make everything harder and slower.
Edit: corrected number of wounded
There's always Slaughterbots.
Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say
This detail is particularly shocking. I don't know how these were produced compared to the pagers, since if it is a model from 2014 and got explosives inserted during production, that would potentially mean this has been planned for a decade somehow. Alternatively (and more likely in my opinion), the explosives may have been added later.
Either way though, they were made by a different company than the pagers, so they would be compromised at different points. Hezbollah now has incentive to abandon all devices purchased in the last few months, which seriously hampers their communication abilities right now. It will likely take a good chunk of their funds to replace them, but they'll also be MUCH more paranoid of any new devices. The fact it happened to two separate devices from two companies is alarming.
This is tactically brilliant in some ways, but also feels like it has strong potential to escalate tensions in the Middle East even further. Any sort of attack would do that at this point, honestly. Israel isn't popular with its neighbors, and launching a large-scale attack on foreign soil—even one as precisely coordinated as this one, as opposed to just attacking areas/cities—won't help with that. The precision may create more incentive to take them out, as this attack was genuinely unpredictable and shows Israel has disturbing degrees of access to supply chains. It raises the question of what else they have in the works.
Some other possibilities: maybe they've been sitting in a warehouse all this time? Maybe it's a mislabelled counterfeit that was manufactured somewhere else?
This article has a video of one of the explosions:
https://nos.nl/artikel/2537529-doden-en-duizenden-gewonden-door-exploderende-hezbollah-piepers-in-libanon-en-syrie
Relatively safe to watch as there is no blood.
Judging by the video above, I don't see any way at all feasible to make a more precise attack than this against known terrorists. In the video, only the person with the pager is hurt. The people standing less than 1 meter next to him look to be completely unharmed. It's a lot less innocent casualties than 500 kg bombs, that's for sure.
Same video, but on Reuters:
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/dozens-hezbollah-members-wounded-lebanon-when-pagers-exploded-sources-witnesses-2024-09-17/
Another video, slightly graphic: https://x.com/DrEliDavid/status/1836037485492629605
Update: Iran's ambassador in Lebanon has been wounded in the explosion of pagers, Iranian News reports say.
I think the fact that he had a Hezbollah pager should surprise no-one.
I mean, I'm a little surprised that Hezbollah used pagers, but you are otherwise correct. I guess it's a way around Israel being able to precisely geolocate you by cell phone. But I guess it makes it pretty easy to hit you when your organization is buying pagers and no one else is.
Why isn’t a pager as easy to locate?
Different technology. Most phones these days have gps built in, and even if they don't, they're two way communications, whereas pagers just respond to a particular wave emitted from a transmitter. Especially if they're one-way pagers, those literally don't have any outbound signature to be tracked.
Update 2: Eight people have been killed and 2,750 wounded - 200 of them critically - by exploding pagers across Lebanon, the country's health minister says.
Damn. And given the amount of surveillance Israel has, this is probably enough for them to identify many of the members they previously weren't aware of. If someone is injured, they either had one of the pagers, or is very close to someone who did.
Or they happened to be standing next to the targeted person at a market stall, or in line for a coffee. I don’t think that being injured in this attack is strong evidence that you’re affiliated with Hezbollah in isolation.
Yeah, this is why I'm skeptical of all the people insisting that this is a great way to target members of Hezbollah with minimal collateral damage. That's only true if you accept the assumption that the victims of this attack are definitionally members of Hezbollah and not innocent bystanders. I'm sure some of the people targeted here were affiliated with Hezbollah, but given Israel's habit of justifying atrocities with assertions of association with terrorist groups, often with little to no evidence, I'm not exactly eager to accept the assumption that those hit by this attack must necessarily not be innocent civilians.
The assumptions are that anyone with a pager are members of hezbollah (which seems fair given it’s a supply chain attack - Mossad likely found the hezbollah shell company they were using to buy pagers) and that the explosions were comparatively small. That is, small relative to drone strikes or missile strikes or targeted assassinations by people. Which I think is reasonable, all of the latter 3 probably involve more indirect casualties of bystanders.
It came out that the 8 or 9 year old girl killed had picked up the beeping pager from the kitchen table to bring to her father at home.
From video evidence, it appears that the micro explosive only harms someone holding it directly. Bystanders only a few feet away are unharmed.
This is probably the most precisely targeted military operation in human history against an enemy that uses civilians as human shields, and Israel is already being condemned by UN officials.
You weren't kidding... I understand the fear of escalation, but this is one of the most targeted attacks I could possibly imagine. It reminds me of people telling off Israel on October 7th...
I'm not sure it's necessarily reasonable to assume anyone with a pager is a member. Your logic makes sense, but even under those circumstances it's certainly possible for innocents to end up with pagers, and there are a lot of details we don't know that could push that possible much further. The collateral damage may well be small relative to alternatives, but I don't think it's sensible to take Israel's word on how much is targeted and how much is collateral damage given how unreliable their statements on that front tend to be.
Is it? How would someone else end up with a pager? Pager's are not commonly used by anyone, and if you were someone who used a pager and isn't part of a terrorist organization (e.g, doctors), you can just buy them from normal companies. It's only because it's Hezbollah that you need to procure them clandenstinely - the FBI did the same thing to gangs in Mexico, because they also have issues getting IT.
Furthermore, if you were part of Hezbollah, you wouldn't give your Hezbollah pager to random people, since if nothing else they'll start getting Hezbollah messages and that's a security leak.
I think it depends how they actually planted the explosives, supply-side, and whether there was intermingling of the pagers acquired by Hezbollah for Hezbollah purposes and those used by others. They, for instance, could acquire pagers through their shell company and distribute some to Hezbollah but also sell some to legitimate parties through the shell company -- much like how money laundering operations also do legitimate business. It's also possible that the original planting of the explosives also included pagers designated for other companies in the area, depending on how targeted exactly the supply-side interference was. I don't know enough details to really say, and I doubt they'll ever reveal so much detail to the public for security reasons on either side. It's totally possible that they did indeed do this in the most targeted way they possibly could -- but I'm just cautioning against taking Israel's word for it.
Did you see the grocery store video? In that video, the victim is standing directly on top of a display of vegetables, and next to two other people. Both others appear unharmed, and the wagon holding the groceries is mostly undamaged.
https://x.com/Ins1der_News/status/1836263406321479901/video/2
Update 3: "American and other officials" have said that it was a supply chain interdiction.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/17/world/middleeast/israel-hezbollah-pagers-explosives.html?unlocked_article_code=1.LU4.KBB6.31tI3f8yYkQl
Wake up babe, new example of non-kinetic attacks having a kinetic effect just dropped!I really hope that I can someday learn how they did this and how the genius behind it realized it was possible. Sounds like a really cool attack vector.Supply chain interdiction
I was saying to a friend earlier, if they had asked me yesterday if this was possible, I would have told them it was infeasible. The explosions don't look like just a battery over voltage explosion that could be caused by compromised firmware. The best theory I've seen is that Israel compromised the supply chain and added a few grams of explosive during manufacturing.
Absolutely insane.
They've done this before with a cell phone, and in that case yes they added C4 or some explosive to the phone. This has to be similar because there's no way a pager battery, or really any battery that would fit in a pager, could cause the damage these did.
And it really drives home the importance of supply chain sovereignty w.r.t. national security.
I don't know that cool is the word I would have used but it certainly is very interesting and I will definitely be watching the open source space to see what analysts make of it. It for sure massively damages Hizbollah communications, as well as make them fear any tech. For better or worse, Israel is so far ahead of its enemies that it's outright stupid to ever attack them unless you have a death wish or a hope to be martyred. The war in the region is not going to calm down anytime soon though.. it's going to get a lot worse. We are also approaching the 1 year anniversary of October 7th which I'm quite scared about seeing what will happen.
Has there ever been a major attack on the anniversary of another attack? Unless you're talking about fearing that Israel will kick everything into overdrive.
The October 7th Hamas attack was on the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War.
The US consulate in Benghazi was attacked and destroyed on September 11, 2012.
It does feel like it's going to get a lot worse. It feels like violence is increasing in too many places at once. Venezuela coup attempt, armored cops in the NY subway, race riots in the UK... it's so much.
I’m wondering how many of these pagers were sold to people that the Israelis didn’t intend to target? Are there other people walking around with pagers that have explosives in them?
ToI is claiming they're a custom model Hezbollah obtained a few months ago.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/exploding-pagers-were-latest-model-acquired-by-hezbollah-months-ago-sources/
Not sure if the article is updated, but right now it only mentions that the pagers are the latest model. I don’t think there can be any certainty that the pagers were only sold to Hezbollah.
https://www.wired.com/story/pager-explosion-hezbollah/
Impressive attack, I assume they got involved with their supply chain and delivered pagers with explosives.
I wonder what message was used as the trigger word. 'kaboom', maybe something witty?
This also hurts their capabilities significantly cause it takes out their active terrorists pretty efficiently and they can't trust their pagers now either.
If there was good intelligence that Hezbollah ordered a batch of a particular pager model and planned to distribute the devices hand to hand, it's an incredible (and disturbing) example of leveraging social network effects. With enough time, the tactic can penetrate throughout the footsoldier level of a terrorist network organized in isolated cells, exposing all the members.
This tactic probably took years of planning, and I can't see it being effective more than once. And it leaves open the strategic question of whether it will be effective in blocking Hezbollah for any length of time, or will simply drive Iran to escalate to open warfare.
How could it be planned years ahead when Hezzabollah decided to switch to pagers months ago?
I see this as quite similar in effect to a terrorist attack. It’s setting off bombs in civilian areas. (In this case, rather small bombs. Nonetheless.)
I'd be very curious as to how thousands of pagers were loaded up with explosives so carefully that they continued to function long enough for widespread distribution. While there's evidence Mossad may have done this a few times previously for one-off assassination devices, the scale and undetectability suggests extensive research and planning effort, even if a specific type of telecommunications device wasn't the target.
The history of physical supply chain attacks is that it takes years to identify and cultivate assets who are in a position to provide accurate information or intervene. I'll grant that the global distribution of supply chains makes it quick to intercept and tamper with a specific shipment once you know that it's on its way.
Edit: More details are emerging. Per Reuters' Lebanese source, the pagers were modified at the production level with a circuit board that included the explosive charge.
They updated the story again. Archive link: https://archive.is/pum3P
And it seems Israel did it again:
I suspect that ongoing work on one-off assassination devices was pretty good preparation for these attacks when the opportunity came up. They need to have people at similar places in supply chains. The requirements for the devices are pretty similar. Pagers and radios likely have more empty space inside than cell phones. The scale is unprecedented, but it’s scaling up something they already do.
Why doesn't this already all count as open warfare?
No one's yet trying to take or hold land. Israel is having a hard enough time actually completing any of their stated objectives in Gaza and doesn't want to invade Lebanon, and Hezbollah doesn't want to try and hold what's currently Israeli soil. So they keep poking at each other.
Japanese walkie-talkie maker investigating Lebanon explosion reports (Washington Post)
Looks like BAC Consulting in Hungary was a shell company set up by the Israelis.
What we know about firm linked to Lebanon pagers (BBC)
…
…
…
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Who made the pagers? The Israelis.
The Israeli government did not tamper with the Hezbollah devices that exploded, defense and intelligence officials say. It manufactured them as part of an elaborate ruse. - New York Times - (archive)
…
So Israel didn't just interdict the supply chain; they were the supply chain??
That made the most sense. When you're an international terrorist organization, you can't just waltz up to any old company and make an order. You are economically sanctioned by everyone and their mother, after all. So you have to be clandestine, and find companies willing to do some shady orders. That's an easy in for organizations like Mossad.
The FBI did the same thing with cartels - they set up the phone company Anom to sell them. In that case, it was for wiretapping rather than exploding, but regardless they were the entire supply chain. The cartels are in a similar situation to Hezbollah in that they don't have a lot of options to buy phones from.
So it seems.
This is absolutely insane! Imagine hackers being able to remotely explode the cellphone in your pocket or while you're having a call. Not to mention the innocent people that got harmed as part of this attack you can't really control.
Something extra has got to be going on here. Lithium batteries are barely tamed beasts, but they won't detonate. They'll burn ferociously and unstoppably, but I'm not sure they can be coaxed into an explosion.
this sort of thing is very cute and flashy, but it doesn't really scale. in my opinion, as citizens, we should primarily be worried about things that scale
Thousands injured in Lebanon as pagers used by Hezbollah explode (Washington Post)
...
The language in this and other articles called this a hack, and some talk about intervention with the pagers before they were distributed by Hezbollah. When I read the headline, I assumed the pagers would have had to have explosives added to them, but it doesn't seem to be the claim?
If so that leaves 1) a hack where a lithium battery was induced to overheat and explode, but I can't see the batteries in these pagers being very large or 2) they had explosives in them by design, and the hack merely triggered them. This last case seems insane to me, though I suppose if it were true it would illustrate how far out of hand things have gotten.
There's CCTV video of a couple of the devices exploding, so I would be very very surprised if these devices were not part of a supply chain compromise and this was purely a hack.
Lithium ion batteries don't explode in the manner shown in the videos, they burn (albeit very violently).
Hezbollah devices explode again in Lebanon, raising fears of wider Israel conflict
Topics surrounding Israel always are the most frustrating ones on Tildes for me. This is an extremely bad development for it will definitely lead to paranoia, it worsens the situation in the middle-east, and it increases the possibility of a multi-party war, while people are going "Nice attack, here's your achievement." I guess it's easier to take this stance if you don't have skin in the game and live in a far off rich nation.
Yeah I don't like the casual, or celebratory, attitude. Shit is incredibly complicated, but innocent people are afraid, a child was killed, a whole "attack on another country's soil is fine when we/our allies do it" thing is present, as is the possibility of escalation and the near guarantee of retaliation.
But it's fine because it's in a country we don't like with mostly people we've categorized as bad guys. (And I'm not an expert, I don't claim to be , they could be all the worst guys, even the 8 year old. Some of the comments here are still in very poor taste.
There are multiple comments in this thread that are either overly casual, something that you'd see said in a CoD lobby, or outright jokes. Completely tone deaf. So yeah I totally agree with you.
Hezbollah has repeatedly attacked Israeli soil over the past year. Last month, they attempted to launch hundreds or thousands of rockets in an attack that Israel foiled just half an hour before.
Thousands of rockets have been shot by Hezbollah over the course of the war, and the only reason Hezbollah hasn't killed far more people than this attack did is the billions of dollars Israel(unsustainably) spends on air defense. Even that defense isn't perfect, and if not for Israel's prompt action last month, the attack that was foiled would have killed many Israelis, including civilians, since many of the rockets Hezbollah uses aren't particularly accurate.
This attack was strictly targeted at people carrying Hezbollah pagers, meaning militants and those they needed to communicate with, even if it wasn't 100% perfect in achieving that goal. By contrast, this escalation is part of a back and forth in part started by Hezbollah firing a poorly targeted missile that hit a play field and killed 12 children.
Yes, celebrating harm is awful, but the military advantage brought by this attack relative to the number of non-target casualties is likely one of the highest on record. If this attack isn't acceptable, is there any method that Israel is permitted to offensively retaliate?
I didn't, and won't, weigh in on Israel's right to use offensive force and if I want a geopolitical history lesson on this it won't be on any social media.
I found the comments here being excited about the cool new way to maim and kill people in poor taste. Still do.
I'm saying it's maiming and death, and you're asking me if it's really technically assault and murder. And that's not relevant to my opinion or point.
We agree.
i'm so tired of people discussing how Israel is always in the wrong. They literally can't win socially even though they're responding to escalation of force. Yes A child died, but how many children have been murdered in untargeted attacks?
It's awful that there is warfare going on, and the Middle East can't seem to just live in peace and harmony, but no one seems to agree on who should live in peace on the land. It's been this way since at least the 1960's if not earlier, and it's getting worse and worse. It sucks, and unfortunately, none of us really understand unless we live in the region, what the toll really is on all of the people there.
I'd like to be clear that that was not what this comment thread of this post was about.
I do understand what your comment was about. It's just really upsetting to keep reading how nothing Israel does is the correct move, even when they do as much as they can to mitigate civilian casualties, while trying to protect their borders.
I guess I'm just frustrated that this is in this reply chain. It is perhaps possible that I don't think anyone could do anything right when it comes to war and violence.
I understand feeling frustrated because I am too
I don't like war either, and think it's all senseless violence for the egos of a few rich people.
While I feel like it's still too early to tell(fog of war is a major thing with these kind of operations when they just occured), the optics of the attack is basically in reverse. Due to how spread out it appears, and collateral damage thus also appears widespread, it's difficult for ordinary people to not feel like this.
I think this was not a good move regardless of the practical objectives Israël has or has not achieved. In terms of international standing it is corroding even further when her allies are increasingly skeptical.
I'm reminded again of our different media circles for what we see about this conflict. I am interested to see what data eventually comes out of the fog on the demographics of those injured in this attack were.
Where I will be disagree with you is that this worsened Israel's relations with other nations. I haven't seen any evidence of that. The only condemnations I've seen have been from countries or organizations that already reviled them anyway.
For the record, you appear to be correct from what I can see. I've been trying to get a diverse media picture of the events but it's mighty difficult. Not sure if I read wrong, got caught in propaganda or am just overwhelmed at the different perspectives. I was wrong on this matter it seems.
Incidentally, I do hope this will end up having only or almost entirely Hezbollah. They are terrorists for all intents and purposes. This shouldn't matter for my arguments but I felt the need to state this explicitly given the political polarization of this conflict.
Yeah, purposely going looking for people whose viewpoints you often find abhorrent can be... rough. The reading I was doing on this topic basically killed the whole day for me, particularly since I was scrolling through Twitter trying to find casualty videos, and twitter is a cesspit of people who are actual swastika-carrying Nazis.
If you're interested in my preferred source, I typically click links from Times of Israel when I'm looking up an event. They're at the Israeli center to center-left. I will mention I don't typically read their opinion content (I'm rarely on the home page), and that anything marked as a blog is really a blog -- there are thousands of people who write those, and TOI doesn't really review them beyond vetting people before they can make an account.
On Hezbollah, I appreciate the clarification; as part of the aforementioned cesspit, I've seen a disturbing number of claims on social media that they're nothing but a legitimate political party...
@cfabbro maybe we should edit the title now that it's 2800 injured rather than "dozens?"
Done. Changed it to APs new headline.
/u/KapteinB's post made the same minute as mine:
https://tildes.net/~news/1iw7/dozens_of_hezbollah_members_wounded_after_pagers_explode_in_lebanon
I've removed that one and moved the comments over to this one.
I didn't know that could be done so easily.
When you’re the website owner and coder, I’m sure there’s all kinds of stuff you can do behind the scenes! I just wonder how much of it is manually editing links and addresses, versus whether Deimos has already created a tool for this exact case