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Hezbollah is hit by a wave of exploding pagers that killed at least nine people and injured thousands
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- Title
- Dozens wounded after pagers detonate in Lebanon, media and security officials say
- Published
- Sep 17 2024
- Word count
- 372 words
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.
source
I've seen people saying that, but if Israel sold pagers to Hezbollah through a shell company for Hezbollah use, and then set off those pagers by sending a Hezbollah frequency message to them... At what point is the line between a civilian and military objects? If pagers used exclusively for military communication don't count, that seems like a severely conservative line.
A pager could have been bought by a member of Hamas and sold or otherwise ended up in non-militant hands. This is why booby traps are illegal, because they don't look dangerous. A landmine should look dangerous. A device designed to cause harm shouldn't look like anything other than an explosive. It wouldn't be okay to cut open a goat and plant a bomb in it, it's not okay to fill a pressure cooker with explosives, and it's not cool to fill a bunch of ostensibly civilian pagers with bombs and hope they stay with the original purchaser for when you set them off.
Just think about how many fakes get mixed together with real products on Amazon. You really want anyone making booby traps that might end up in those bins?
It really doesn't seem likely that anyone would sell their terrorism communication device; that would be an absolutely massive security breach that could get you killed. Ditto that people would likely be very careful with them -- having it found implicates you in a crime.
I would agree with you if these were ordinary cell phones, and there is even a somewhat of a argument for the handheld radios that were also exploded a day later, but pagers are very unusual today, and in the few niches where they are used are typically employer provided.
If Israel had left this for years without setting off the bombs, it might be more likely that they would have passed hands to non-militants, but in just 6 months makes that feel unlikely, particularly for it to happen at at a scale that would cause disproportionate civilian casualties (or even proportionate at the level of any other military strike Israel could have made on a particular target).
The children who died are a tragedy, but if Israel had chosen a more traditional drone strike on even a small percentage of those impacted by the pager bombs instead, far more children would have likely died. Orders of magnitude more would likely die in a land invasion. Israel has the right to retaliate for the hundreds to thousands of unguided rocket attacks that over the past year have killed their own children, and forced tens of thousands of people in Northern Israel to evacuate from their homes since October 7th. Frankly, this seems like the option that minimized civilian casualties.
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?
Icom says that those were probably counterfeits: https://www.icomjapan.com/news/4204/
I am a ham radio operator, and radios like those are particularly long lasting. The technology doesn't change much and they're built to take a beating. There's one part that wears off, and it's a battery - and I would assume that after a few years of intensive use users had to order replacement batteries, and since Icom doesn't make them anymore, then best they could get were some unofficial aftermarket parts. That's where I would look first.
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.
Not saying you're wrong, but where I live - Bristol UK - no racists turned up for the big riot, and it ended up just being a giant party in the street with 1000s of counter protesters. So there's good bits in there too.
Also, there hasn't been a coup attempt in Venezuela for 22 years. Maduro just retained power, but there was no violence.
I guess there was this shitshow in 2020.
Hey so, I can only speak for my student's experience but she's had friends who have been disappeared by the police over this election. She knows they're almost certainly dead, and hopes that it was all that happened to them.
But I think it's safe to say there's been violence.
I mean, I didn't say there isn't violence. I would guarantee there's violence, disappearances, and death, particularly meted out by Maduro. But a coup is a few steps up the violence scale beyond that.
It wasn't clear to me that the implication was a coup against Maduro rather than, arguably, a coup by him. I misunderstood the claim by the previous person and thus misunderstood your reply!
ETA also, of note, you did say "there was no violence" which is what I was replying to.
https://www.politico.eu/article/venezuela-arrests-united-states-europe-citizens-alleged-coup-kill-nicolas-maduro/
Combined with US sanctioning 16 of Maduro's allies 2 days earlier. And stealing his plane. And Spain officially not recognizing Maduro's victory. 3 Americans (one a navy seal!) and some Spaniards getting caught with hundreds of US weapons seems like a pretty obvious coup attempt. I could certainly be wrong, but my god you don't get more suspicious than that... given the history of the CIA in South America.
Glad to hear that, thanks <3
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.
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)
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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.
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)
Thousands injured in Lebanon as pagers used by Hezbollah explode (Washington Post)
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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
Hezbollah handed out pagers hours before blasts - even after checks (Reuters)
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"Mossad companies" in Budapest and Sofia appear to be shell companies, not front firms
I guess that’s true until they sacrifice them for one last job?
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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