On Sept. 17, just before 3:30 p.m., the small waiting room of Dr. Nour’s three-room pediatrics clinic in southern Beirut was packed. A mother was waiting to get preschool checkups for her three children. Two elderly patients were booked in for cataract treatments at the ophthalmologist office next door. Sitting next to them was a young couple whom Nour, whose name has been changed for security reasons, had not met before. The father bounced a 10-day-old baby on his lap. Clipped to his belt was a Gold Apollo Rugged Pager.
Nour brought the young couple into her examination room. She pulled out a blank file for the newborn and wrote his name: Aiman. She placed him on the scales: a little over 7 pounds. She lay Aiman on his back on an examination table and began to record his weight. As she did so, the man’s pager beeped twice.
“Excuse me,” he said, and reached down to silence it.
As he did so, about an ounce of explosives concealed within the pager detonated, sending shards of metal and fragments of its thick plastic casing out in all directions. The shrapnel tore deep wounds in the man’s abdomen, lodged in the ceiling of the clinic and lacerated the face of the baby as he lay on his back. Nour was thrown backward as the room filled with dust. She could not see through the smoke, but she could hear the woman’s voice shouting: “Aiman!”
I’m still utterly disgusted that the western media present this as anything other than state-backed terrorism.
Western media and a bunch of people here on Lemmy. “You don’t get it these were extremely targeted”
Oh? So the deaths and injuries of children and other civilians was purposeful?
I think the NYT podcast used the word ‘aimed an attack at Hezbollah’ which is certainly a choice to describe a bombing requiring no aim
I mean… yeah, I do believe their bombing of Gaza is also extremely targeted.
It’s just a question of who you target.
It was targeted at Gaza what more do you want? /s
And even if it hadn’t been as indiscriminate as it was, imagine the terror everyone around them must have (and likely continue to) experienced after seeing the person standing next to them in the grocery store suddenly have their goddamn legs blown off.
This is exactly how you create millions of more “terrorists,” and Israel knows exactly what they are doing. Just another generation who (understandably) wants to enact revenge with whatever means they may have, so Israel can give a plausible excuse to obliterate them with Western munitions.
Rinse and repeat.
I can understand why the people who performed the attack consider it to be “extremely targeted”. All accounts that I have read say that these pagers were used directly by Hezbollah as an alternative to cell phones, which they believe the IDF have the ability to track. I haven’t seen any reputable source claiming that these pagers were in use by the general population. So they consider these attacks targeted at Hezbollah, because only Hezbollah members should have had them.
They were not intending to target children or other civilians, but of course when something goes off at a random time like this there is no guarantee that only the targets are in possession of these devices.
However, I think the attack will end up actually harming Israeli security, for two reasons:
First of all, they put too much explosive stuff in it. If it were a smaller explosion (or even just a short circuit leading to device failure), fewer people would have been hurt, and they would have more claim to say they were targeting communications infrastructure. But if the explosions were smaller, the attack would not have gotten into the news. I think they made the explosions larger than necessary just to make headlines, without regard to collateral damage. I think that’s the part that would get any other country into hot water as a war crime.
But more importantly, they have proven to Hezbollah that Israel cannot track these closed pager networks, otherwise they would not have needed to blow them up! So now Hezbollah has learned to open up every pager before deploying, and once they source more devices they have their secure network back.
So in a few months, Israelis will be in a less secure position than they were before the attack, just because some of their leaders wanted to make headlines.
Pagers are a civilian object though.
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule12
There was no way to know where these people would be when the bombs went off. Israel could have detonated at night, to minimise the chance of civilian casualties. They didn’t. During busy markets.
This was literally textbook terrorism, and against international law (see link).
Exactly this. I don’t understand why nobody seems to want to talk about everyone that witnessed this shit and the sheer terror that they are most likely still experiencing.
Which was the point.
Do you think more Hezbros would have worn their pagers during the day or when they were asleep?
You know that Hezbollah is a part of their government right? They have seats in their parliament. So even if they just attacked “Hezbollah” they attacked politicians, politicians in their homes with their families. If anyone directly targeted U.S. governors or congresspeople, or godforbid knesset members, all of the same people would be screaming murder and terrorism from the tops of hills. This is blatant racism.
How do you feel putting a small explosive into the pocket of a Hezbollah operative compares to firing a rocket into a children’s playground?
Fuck off apologist equivocator. Pointing out the horrors that Israel perpetrates does not condone the horrors another group perpetrates.
That’s some great language. How do you propose we stop those horrors of ‘the other group’?
https://truthout.org/articles/sanders-files-to-force-first-ever-vote-in-congress-on-blocking-weapons-to-israel/
There’s a start.
We stop the horrors by placing stipulations on the aid we supply the Israelis. We stop turning a blind eye to how their extreme right wing factions like Netanyahu’s Likud party use our money and military resources. The United States, Europe and most of Asia are against settlements within Palestinian territories but each year right wing politicians allow or even encourage taking over more and more land. Plenty of Israeli citizens are against the settlements and against the Netanyahu regime so let’s work with them to make decisions that aren’t so obviously provocative to both their neighbors as well as the minority Israeli citizens who also live there. Let’s not pretend Netanyahu’s do whatever he pleases policies aren’t a big part of the anger and aggression we are seeing year after year. Our aid and financial support should be 100% conditional.
The reality (sadly) is that because of all the violence a majority of Israelis has given up on a two-state solution. Settlement of the West-Bank has lost internal opposition.
That’s a reality that’s hard to swallow for normal people, but it’s a reality that politicians have to aknowlegde. Outside pressure can slow it down or accelerate it (eg. Trump), but those 500k settlers are never going to move out, not even when the US stops all weapon shipments today. Now, when you’ve accepted that reality the question goes back to do you think the world is better with Israel existing or with Iran winning (and very likely putting a genocide on Israel’s population)?
Saying Israel can’t strike back at Hezbollah like this because “you can’t accept the horrors” is just going make the world worse, as you don’t have a solution for the other side “doing whatever they please” (as in attacking Israel in perpetuity)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
Well, considering the ongoing genocide has been a “dangerous situation with a high risk of escalation” for almost a year now, it’s not very surprising their state-sponsored terrorist attack is merely a James Bond-esque intelligence strategy.
Its was targeted strike on members of the terrorist group Hezbollah, its quite literally anti-terrorism.
A targeted strike should not have this much collateral damage.
2-4 collateral damage is pretty good compared to bombs and air strikes.