Lebanon: 37 Dead, 3,400+ Injured in Wave of Explosions in Electronic Devices Booby-Trapped by Israel

[Uncle Joe]

We get an update from Beirut, after at least 20 people were killed and 450 others wounded in Lebanon on Wednesday when walkie-talkie radios across the country exploded without warning, the second day of an apparent Israeli operation targeting Hezbollah members by booby-trapping handheld communication devices. A day earlier, at least 12 people were killed and thousands more left with gruesome injuries when pagers began exploding across the country. Lebanon has banned pagers and walkie-talkies on all flights, while Lebanese citizens say they now live in fear that everyday household electronics could suddenly explode. Among those killed in the attacks are children, medics and other civilians. "This has been widely reported in the Western press as a sophisticated campaign that targeted alleged Hezbollah operatives, but the reality is that, for the most part, these explosions were occuring in civilian areas," says journalist Lara Bitar, editor-in-chief of the Beirut-based independent media organization The Public Source. Bitar warns that Israel's "terrorist attacks" could be a prelude to a larger assault. "The Israeli government has already taken a decision to escalate, to wage full-scale war on all of Lebanon."

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[Beringia]

1. Technical genius used to devolve humans from kindness

[moniss]

2. I note that so far most of the Western media

I've seen reporting on all of this are not carrying anything about the war crime aspect of this. It is a violation to booby trap products/places that are routinely used by civilians or where civilians would be routinely exposed. That prohibition is what keeps warring parties from doing things like poisoning each other's civilian food and water supply etc.

[FBaggins]

3. It is no even close to being a violation

Devices that are purchased by a terrorist organization specifically for the use of combatants and are close to non-lethal?

The fact that the combatant carries the device into a supposedly "civilian area" (Hezbollah doesn't distance their forces from civilian areas as would otherwise be required) does not mean that Israel was "booby trapping civilian places"

Frankly - I can't think of a plan that could even plausibly better target just combatants. Maybe putting jock itch powder in the fibers of their uniforms?

[moniss]

4. Your opinion is noted but not shared by some who work in

area of human rights/international treaties/war crimes etc. There are other conflicting opinions. So who is right? Maybe it's time for the ICJ/ICC to decide. Maybe not.

As far as the devices go it is impossible to conclude ahead of time that these would only be in the hands of Hezbollah fighters. As evidenced by the hundreds of wounded who were not and the children who died. Further more it is foreseeable that these devices could be around civilians since the activity/nature of things on the Lebanese side of the border is not concentrated to a specific small geographic area. The pagers were exploding all throughout the country and wounding and killing civilians in civilian areas.

It should be noted that there is a reason why booby trapping things with great exposure to civilian populations is forbidden. It has ghastly implications for escalation and spiraling horror for civilian populations. There are people who feel that anything that happens to civilians is merely "collateral damage" and is acceptable in reaching a goal. Given that the following scenario is an example of escalation: So country A booby traps some devices that can be foreseen as being in a mixed military/civilian circumstance in adversarial country B. The devices explode and seriously wound a thousand or so of the military personnel and kills several more. But also a few civilians are killed and hundreds are wounded. Country A says it is justified as a military tactic. Country B decides that in response they are going to booby trap the food and water supply in an area of military/civilian mix in country A. So they arrange to place poison in the water supply and bottled water facilities and to adulterate the supply of some fresh and processed foods. As a result thousands of hundreds and hundreds of soldiers and civilians in the area are sickened and many die. Country B says it is justified as a military tactic and bolsters it's rationale by the actions and assertions by country A when they committed their action. Country A says it disagrees with country B and considers a response that includes spreading nuclear waste in areas of country B...........

See where this is going? Do you understand better now why it is forbidden to begin with? Do you see that it is Pandora's box? Once you accept and deploy a tactic against someone you have no basis to complain when it is returned. Cooler heads have considered these matters of what is acceptable or forbidden during conflicts. It is not just "whatever we can make happen".

The Israeli government claimed that it was reasonable to tell the hundreds of thousands of citizens of areas of Gaza that they should evacuate and stay away from an area of conflict until the conflict is over. But supposedly that same rationale doesn't apply to their own citizens? The evacuated citizens in the north of Israel can be told to do the same thing. But it all follows a pattern for all of the parties in this region of conflict on down through the many,many years. One side does something to the other and then demands it be forbidden for a similar response to be used against them with each claiming a "moral ground" reasoning or a "he hit me first" defense despite the conflict being so ongoing and constant that who hit who first isn't even discernible or meaningful. It's a never ending scenario of event and response.

If the world were to fast forward a hundred years from now these parties would still be engaged in violent conflict with each other. Much of the world has given up on all of the sides in this conflict as to believing they will ever stop doing this with each other. Each side has their long term plans for how to continue to go at each other. Each side uses any lull only for the purposes of maneuvering for strengthening the implementation of those plans. It's what the documents show and the admissions of the old leaders on all sides. Meanwhile the average citizens on both sides are propagandized and used as tools by state leaders and their surrogates and suffer casualties as they are excused away as "acceptable collateral damage" because such and such was "among them". Each side operating from the mistaken idea that they are going to "defeat" the other.