Maybe there will be a faulty one laying somwhere now thrown away by the owner? That will be nice for analysis.

It wasn’t “stupid”. As a psy-op, it further complicates Hezbollah’s communications, sows fear among Hezbollah members, demonstrates Israel’s far-reaching capabilities, makes civilians suspicious of Hezbollah officials, etc. If Israel does something similar a couple more times, Hezbollah will have to resort to bicycle couriers and smoke signals.

It also undermines Hezbollah’s credibility. The Lebanese people are not stupid. They know that Hezbollah is a shadow government allowing Iran to control Lebanon and use it as a staging ground for attacks on Israel. That leaves Lebanon in a permanent state of semi-war with Israel, not to mention its involvement in multiple other external conflicts. None of which is helpful for the health and prosperity of Lebanon.

Lebanon is a natural trading nation and always has been. It is a beautiful country full of kind people with excellent commercial instincts. They are held down as a nation by the fact that Hezbollah has turned the country into a pawn of the Ayatollah.

Specifically in Hungary, same country that has been voting with Israel in the UN and also has a Fascist government.

It sure makes manufacturing involving explosives much more easily to go ahead if the local government has approved of it.

I’m curious what this will do to the “Made In EU” brand in the rest of the World.

No way did lithium batteries kill eight people.

They have over-pressure vents and will vent pretty violently and catch fire, but should not explode due to pressure build up.

As someone who’s accidentally punctured a large lithium ion battery with 100% charge I can tell you that explode isn’t exactly the right word. While I’m sure you could create an enclosure that could explode from the pressure, the battery itself just kinda shoots out a small jet of fire along with some toxic gas.

There are several reports that the devices were made with the explosives built-in.

According to the spokesperson of the Taiwanese brand in a press conference, those were all devices produced by a Hungarian licensee of the brand.

Hungary, you know, been voting with Israel in the UN and also has a Fascist government which is massivelly racist against Arabs.

Kind makes sense that those things were manufactured in a country very friendly of Israel and with their authorization, already with the explosis built-in.

The interesting second and third level effects to consider of this are around the impact on things like Globalization (if having to start paying attention to the alliances of the countries the stuff you buy comes from the places which are part of a supply chain stop being irrelevant) and even brand licensing (that Taiwanese company will have their name pop-up associated with this in every single internet search from now on)

Also curious about what will this to to “Made in EU” - Hungary might just have screwed the rest of us much more than ever before.

I heard they recently switched to pagers because cell phones where deemed to be compromised. So I think besides the direct deaths and injuries, this attack also targeted lines of communication and trust in technology as a whole (or anything supplied by your superior even).

Perhaps the latter? My first thought is still that the pagers intended use was for triggering explosives, and they were simply triggered early by the other side.

NYT says this switch to pagers has been recent, after the Oct 7 attacks last year, when Hezbollah suspected that Israel was spying on the cell network, and using it to locate targets for strikes. So all these pagers got distributed to Hezbollah-affiliated people in short order . This system doesn’t use commercial networks, and has been called a “closed” network by the NYT.

If all that is true, then that means anyone with one of these closed-network pagers got it from being involved with Hezbollah in the first place.

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Gone now, deleted by moderator

Of course not.

How many injuries, I wonder.

It is extremely cool that we continue to take “Everyone wounded by these pagers was Hezbollah” at face value once again.

This, from the same organization that bombed hospitals, schools, and refugee camps while insisting every one of them was a Hamas command center.

Most likely most of them were though. I mean I don’t think many people outside Hezbollah were using pagers, not to mention that most likely they tampered one or two batches of them only.

I am just wondering what the official government of Lebanon is thinking about this incident because in my opinion that’s a huge blow into the sovereignty of a foreign country. Imagine something similar happens in Israel or the US, do you think those countries would sit on the diplomatic table and negotiate?

That’s still a lot more targeted than the air strike example.

There’s thousands of Hezbollah militants as well. We don’t know yet exactly how targeted the attack was.

Regardless “only” 9 people died so far. Thousands were wounded, but that’s much better than land mines would’ve been. This attack was extraordinarily targeted, and despite there being civilians hurt, they’re likely to be less hurt than the militants and unlikely to be among the dead. Every civilian death is a tragedy, but Hezbollah and Israel are in an armed conflict. Some civilian deaths are unavoidable. I much prefer Israel do this than the indiscriminate bombing on Gaza.

does it still stand? are Hamas using the same supply chain of altered pagers?

signs point to no.

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National order isnt based on tit for tat. If someone commits a war crime against you it doesnt mean you get to do it too.

In my opinion the time of day they chose to blow them shows they wanted as much collateral damage as they could.

What’s the advantage of making excuses for committing war crimes?

I would agree with this if they somehow only harmed Hezbollah severely. That was not the case.

Likely because the bulk of those wounded by this attack were not Hezbollah

What makes you think that? These pagers were bought by Hesbollah to be used by their guys.

Because Arab lives have no value in Israeli western society.

FTFY.

To be fair, Jewish lives also only matters to the west if they are busy murdering brown people.

You know not everyone in Hezbollah is a « militant » right? They have a large political party and civilian governance apparatus. This is terrorism, nothing new to Israel.

First off, I think we should contextualize what happened - according to some news sources, the bombs were supposed to go off in the first days of an Israeli attack that would probably start an all out war (Some Hezbollah operatives became suspicious). The operation wasn’t intended to create an “escalation where Hezbollah will answer”, rather opening a full out attack against Hezbollah to force them to stop firing missiles at Israeli civilians and abide by the UN resolution.

Israel didn’t send “thousands of bombs God knows where they land”. They planted bombs in hardware that is used exclusively by Hezbollah operatives and their accomplices to evade gathering sigint. Yes, civilians got hurt. That’s the nature of war, and what makes it so horrible - people who might hold no malice nor pose any threat to the other side get hurt and die. The modern rules of warfare aren’t designed to eliminate civilian casualties, rather mainly to deter the warring parties from using civilians as a tool of war. That’s why an army can’t hide behind civilian population, but given an army that’s hiding behind civilian population, it’s acceptable for the other army to fire at them as long as they take proper measures to minimize civilian casualties (this in meant only as an example, not directly relating to Hezbollah or Hamas). If any act that results in civilian casualties is not “proper defense” I don’t think there has been a single case of “proper defense” in large scale armed conflict in modern history. People in the west might not realize it because for the last decades wars are fought away form their boarders, so it’s easier to view civilian casualties as optional.

And you know what? I’d WISH all civilian casualties in war would be confined to people who are in direct proximity to enemy personnel. If I could press a button and replace all Hezbollah attacks against civilian targets with bombs sent to IDF personnel, I’d do so in a heartbeat.

Regarding Netanyahu - right now, he’s slowly climbing in the polls. His plan is to keep his coalition from falling apart till the next election. Anything that disturbs the current situation is not in his interests (and, on the whole, the last time Netanyahu was proactive in anything other than a political capacity was about 2 decades ago). If Netanyahu wanted a war, he would have the public’s support for it months ago (in fact, the public very much supports a large scale conflict in order to stop Hezbollah targeting Israeli cities). His hand is being forced by other parties in the coalition. The obvious “culprit” are the far-right parties, but I personally think the main catalyst are the ultra-orthodox parties. This gets a bit complicated, but bear with me: The ultra-orthodox parties need to pass a law that’ll exempt their constituents from military service (long story short - they were exempt for years but due to court rulings, need a new law to keep that privilege). Galant (the minister of defense) is the one stopping the law from passing. Netanyahu was about to replace him and sell it to the public as Galant being the one who was against a war against Hezbollah. Actually, I’ll go as far as saying Israel being forced to activate the bombs prematurely, thus stopping Galant from being fired, makes  a war a bit less likely (Though obviously other factors have also been put in play, so the government can’t just do a U turn).

Communication with whom? These pagers were ordered by Hezbollah.

Political parties don’t launch rockets at neighborhoods…

I refuse to answer such a stupid question.

What I’m asking is how tf did text messages and whatever in the walkie talkies ignite a spark strong enough to ignite the PETN?

Pager with firmware that activates an output on date/time X/Y and triggers an ignition signal. That signal is sent o an actual detonator in the device, which sets off the explosive.

Radio with DTMF receiver that activates an output when, for example, touchtone 4 is received over the air, or alternatively if the radio has GPS, another date/time activation via firmware.

Both of these things are relatively trivial for a nation-state to pull off.

So yes, in both cases it’s possible that faulty devices are still around. However, if all the rest of your group has had exploding pagers and radios, most people in the same group would have dropped their still-working pager or radio into a bucket of water by now. There’s probably a few, and they’re probably being carefully taken apart right now to see how it was done.

Afaik such an idea was nonsense previously.

It’s not nonsense, it just takes planning and resources. And now that people know it is possible, buying and using any sort of equipment for your group without having the nagging concern there might be a bomb in it is impossible. And that’s a pretty powerful limiter.

I think they’re implying this mostly hit Hezbollah members, not than none of the victims were innocent.

That said, you do know Hezbollah is basically the same as Israel, just without the backing of the USA, right? They also want genocide. The way this was dealt with was one of the best options when dealing with a group that wants to genocide your country. It also shows Israel chose to start the war with Hamas, and likely allowed the October 7 attack to happen, if they’ve had this capability all along.

The dad who’s girl died literally brought this on himself. He chose religious fanaticism over family. He’s in Lebanon, not Gaza, not West Bank - he could have chosen not to be part of a group that wants to wipe out a whole nother group. This is on him the same way it’s on an antivaxxer when they’re kid gets sick. There’s plenty of damn good reasons to wish Netanyahu dead and in hell, but this ain’t one. I doubt him and his right wing extremist possé came up with this operation since they would have deliberately chosen something with way more innocent casualties.