This is awful and strange at the same time:
Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel after pagers used by its members exploded across Lebanon simultaneously, killing at least nine people and wounding almost 3,000 in a dramatic and unprecedented attack at a time of heightened tensions in the Middle East.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the blasts, which came just hours after Israel announced it was broadening the aims of the war sparked by the Hamas attacks on 7 October to include its fight against Hezbollah along the border with Lebanon.
Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said the blasts on Tuesday killed a 10-year-old girl, among others. “About 2,750 people were injured … more than 200 of them critically,” with injuries mostly reported to the face, hands and stomach, Abiad told a press conference.
The apparent sabotage attack followed months of targeted assassinations by Israel against senior Hezbollah leaders and came as US officials try to de-escalate tensions between the two sides and remain concerned that Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, could order a ground invasion of Lebanon. It threatens to derail efforts by the US to prevent Iran, which backs the Lebanese Shia militia, from retaliating against Israel for the July bombing in Tehran that killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh.
The blasts appeared to exploit the low-tech pagers that Hezbollah has adopted in order to prevent the targeted assassinations of its members, who could be tracked by mobile phone signals. Those wounded in the attack include Iran’s ambassador to Beirut, Mojtaba Amani, according to reports.
There’s a graphic video of a pager exploding in a grocery store at the Post, and just from a technology perspective, I’m amazed at the force of however much explosive was packed into a device that’s generally smaller than a deck of cards. Whoever did this — and how could it be anyone but Israel — had to know that there was a huge potential for collateral damage of innocent bystanders.
Sad News, We Have Lost Our Beloved OzarkHillbilly
Elizabelle
It’s an incredible story. And not in a good way.
I have not been following. Why Lebanon, and why now?
cain
I think it’s absolutely beyond the pale that they would do this and hurt innocent bystanders. A little girl is dead. Just absolutely gutted. You do your thing with Hezbollah, but you’re acting like Hamas and not giving a damn about collateral damage.
J. Arthur Crank
Christ, this is a wild story. Three thousand wounded?
What could go wrong with this?
rikyrah
this story is wild to me. still trying to wrap my mind around it.
Trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
While obv they’ve had this planned for who knows how long, the missile Hezbollah dropped into the middle of Israel last weekend would seem to be the specific thing they’re responding to. Bibi said as much in his response.
As to the how? just found this.
Hezbollah has a huge rocket arsenal and if Bibi just kicked over the hornet nest, I would expect they’re going to retaliate and Israel will be in that two-front war they seem drawn to
ETA there was also a Houthi missile I’d forgotten about. How about a three-front war? Can I get any votes for four?
BR
In case it wasn’t posted earlier, Harris just appeared at the NABJ:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7PNFOeNUv8
Timill
Schneier on Security has an article about this and is trying to keep the comments to the tech problems.
David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
This wouldnt have happened if Hezbollah used homing pigeons
Trollhattan
I’d get rid of my pager except I’d miss the crack too much.
Chief Oshkosh
Israel is on its way to being a complete international pariah.
MattF
Quite a feat. Seems that Israel has thoroughly infiltrated both Iran and Hezbollah.
And poor old Lebanon. My dad went to medical school at the American University of Beirut, and dearly loved the place.
rikyrah
Are they saying that whoever did this, was able to get explosives into the pagers? and they got those pagers sold to Hezbollah?
CaseyL
What I’m curious about is how Israel got its hands on everyone’s pager to insert the explosive.
Are these Israeli-manufactured pagers? Seems unlikely, but I think there has been some trade between Israel and Lebanon, so it’s not beyond imagination they bought pagers made in Israel…. just damned unlikely.
Do all shipments to Lebanon go through Israeli security checks? This, again, seems unlikely but not impossible.
So… how’d the explosive get into the pagers?
Chris
Well, I’m waiting for all the right-wingers who spent the last two decades telling me that going after your enemies with bombs in crowded civilian environments is the sign of a disgusting coward rather than an honorable soldier to come out and condemn Israel.
Waiting, but not holding my breath, because, y’know, I don’t want to kill myself.
CHETAN R MURTHY
@MattF: during The Trump administration I remember people talking about how easy it was to intercept electronic deliveries and install bugs. It didn’t require penetrating the recipient, but rather intercepting along a delivery route. Though it’s always possible that the explosives were put in during manufacturing.
SatanicPanic
@rikyrah: This is my question. How did they actually do this?
coin operated
There are no innocent bystanders in Bibi’s mind…just look at Gaza
CHETAN R MURTHY
During the Trump administration, I spoke with a friend who worked for a large internet company, and he told me that the rule of his employer was that if one of your devices was taken by customs for analysis or imaging, then the employee must assume it’s been compromised, not use it. Call a special phone number to let The employer know, and the employer would take the device and crush it. The assumption Being the Trump administration had installed a bug.
CHETAN R MURTHY
@SatanicPanic: from what I had read, these pagers came in one shipment to Hezbollah. Hezbollah then redistributed the pagers to its various cadres. So it remains to intercept the shipment, boobytrap the pagers, and then let it go onward.
mrmoshpotato
@CHETAN R MURTHY:
I was waiting for the twist.
The Audacity of Krope
I just saw the news about Ozark. Just wanted to say I’m sorry and express condolences to anyone here who was close to him.
rikyrah
Are they saying that ‘Whomever’ was able to get explosives in 3000+ pagers.
Then, they were able to sell said pagers to Hezbollah.
Is that what ‘they’ did?
A terrorist organization doesn’t buy from different sources?
CHETAN R MURTHY
@mrmoshpotato: you might remember that back then people were talking about using burner devices for crossing the US border, and wiping their devices and installing burner accounts just in case.
CHETAN R MURTHY
@rikyrah: The reporting I saw was that all the pagers came in one shipment.
BR
This is an excellent response from Harris:
https://bsky.app/profile/kamalahqrepeater.bsky.social/post/3l4eqywnjx52q
SatanicPanic
@CHETAN R MURTHY: This all sounds like a movie plot.
The Audacity of Krope
No. “Whomever” was not able; “whoever,” positioned as the subject of the sentence, was able.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@The Audacity of Krope: It hurts, doesn’t it?
Urza
Apparently this was done to cell phones in the 90s. I would imagine its still possible now till we move off lithium batteries.
For those wondering, I do not believe it matters where the pagers came from. It is likely they targeted a single model they knew Hezbollah was using which probably makes it an easier attack and limits the blast radius.
rikyrah
@The Audacity of Krope:
thank you for the correction :)
Searcher
Putting the “terrorism” in “counter-terrorism”.
The Audacity of Krope
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I’ve seen worse.
@rikyrah: My pleasure, entirely.
Villago Delenda Est
Likud doesn’t care about collateral damage. Just ask Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Captain C
@MattF:
Given how many people in their own countries the Iranian Government (counting the Republican Guard) and Hezbollah have pissed off in various ways, it’s not surprising that the Mossad could find some discontented people to try and join up on their behalf.
pajaro
There has been a low scale conflict between Israel and Hezbollah since October 7. As a result of the anti-tank weapons that Hezbollah has occasionally fired, Israel has had to withdraw a good 60,000 of its residents from their homes; they have been displaced for 11 months now. Israel has killed hundreds of individuals in Southern Lebanon in exchanges of fire. Hezbollah has said it will not stop its fire until there’s a settlement in Gaza. Until now, neither side has seen it as in its interest to engage in a full scale war, which would be terribly destructive in both Lebanon and Israel (Hezbollah is believed to have over 100,000 rockets, many of which could hit central Israel).
Lately, Israel has been upping the ante. In the last week it’s officially added the return of its residents to Northern Israel is one of its war aims. Before today’s events, it had engaged in some well-publicized assassinations of Hezbollah commanders. Today’s actions are an obvious escalation. They have been talking for weeks about a possible ground incursion. Israel seems willing to engage in a three-front war (which includes Yemen) rather than conclude a peace in Gaza that gives it less than “total victory.” (This assumes that neither Iran or cross-border incursions through Jordan occur, which would add to the number of fronts).
We have been trying to talk the parties out of the regional war they have been inviting each other to enter for weeks. No one over there seems to be listening.
Chris
@BR:
I really like that this takes the boilerplate Republican talking point “people don’t feel safe!” … and then specifies that those “people” include all the people the GOP hates, and what they don’t feel safe from is the people behind things like Project 2025. Way to flip a narrative that’s usually the beginning of a “crime is out of control!” right-wing tirade.
rikyrah
Thee phuck!
TheRealThelmaJohnson (@TheRealThelmaJ1) posted at 8:06 PM on Mon, Sep 16, 2024:
A big story in Arizona is several members of the Football Team at Arizona Christian University were smuggling humans across the border. This University is run by the founder of the Center for Arizona Policy, the biggest anti-abortion lobby in AZ.
(https://x.com/TheRealThelmaJ1/status/1835847669518086274?s=02)
Glory b
I read that it was a software thing, made to heat the battery to the point it explodes/catches fire.
I saw the video of one exploding in a guy’s pocket at a grocery store produce section. I guess because it wasn’t an explosion as we usually think of them, people were very close to him but none were injured. The “explosion” was very small. No shrapnel etc.
For what it’s worth.
Tehanu
What a nightmare.
CaseyL
Over on TImes of Israel website:
But… this is still not making sense. It just seems insane to me that Hezbollah wouldn’t have a chain of custody for whatever items it gives its agents. Even if Mossad infiltrated Hezbollah’s shipping-and-receiving stores, it’s not like you can pull a quick switcheroo so no one notices!
3000 pagers isn’t one small box of pagers that you can tamper with in a couple hours. It’s a big shipment and would take days to tamper with them all. No one noticed the new guys pulling the boxes of pagers into a side room and taking them apart? Come on!
I’m not saying Israel isn’t behind this. I’m just saying, based on what we know so far, it sounds… implausible.
Chris
@Captain C:
Is it that, or is it even simpler and cruder – that Iran and Hezbollah have become so corrupt that it isn’t hard for an Israeli agent to bribe his way into causing this kind of havoc?
rikyrah
⚓️ 🇺🇸 Proud Navy Veteran (@naretevduorp) posted at 9:10 AM on Mon, Sep 16, 2024:
This Cult Is Different
I was asked recently to describe the single most disturbing thing I’ve learned about Americans in the past 10 years, since Trump first ran for President.
For me, it’s the staggering number of Americans who have the unimaginable (before 2015) capacity for tribalistic hate combined with the willingness to reject facts and suspend logic in service to that hate.
Yes, White Supremacy is the driving force behind Trumpism, and yes it is a Cult of Personality.
But this cult is different. Unlike other famous cults, an awareness exists that makes it more diabolical and more dangerous.
The Difference . . .
Like most cults, the Jim Jones’s Cult of the 1970’s was focused inward. Followers 𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗱 him, and participated in a murder-suicide event at Jonestown in response to that belief.
Most Donald Trump followers 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗿, but fake belief because they want him to exact a price against their perceived enemies.
The premise is false and the focus is outward. This difference makes it impossible to defeat with truth and logic.
The only way to defeat Trumpism is to deprive it of its power. Once the power to exact a price is gone, the cult becomes impotent.
That means voting against the Republican Party, the source of Trumpism’s power, at every opportunity . . . And convincing everyone you know outside the cult to do the same.
Please . . .
#VoteHarrisWalz2024
#StopTheMadness
(https://x.com/naretevduorp/status/1835682654869443039?s=02)
rikyrah
DNC War Room (@DNCWarRoom) posted at 4:42 PM on Mon, Sep 16, 2024:
Unearthed video: Trump-endorsed candidate Mark Robinson (R-NC) says women shouldn’t have access to birth control and says they just need to “get this under control” while pointing to his groin https://t.co/l2ipTnTFyq
(https://x.com/DNCWarRoom/status/1835796456952758676?t=HAEbmdOZMrxO1ILbRqeoIg&s=03)
mrmoshpotato
@BR: That is an excellent response. Fully expected from someone who isn’t just thinking about herself.
rikyrah
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
the idea that Kamala Harris has any trouble speaking extemporaneously is ridiculous, as the back-and-forth in this clip from her NABJ interview demonstrates
https://x.com/atrupar/status/1836122260748251532
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah: How subtle! /s
Belafon
@rikyrah: They were in a hurry to ditch the cellphones, so they didn’t take what would be considered standard precautions.
kindness
Bibi wants his all out war and shockingly, Bibi expects the US to fight it. I have some bad news for Bibi…
raven
@MattF: When Dr Kerr was there?
Tony Jay
Straight up terrorism.
CaseyL
@Belafon: It’s still thousands of pagers tampered with. That’s a lot of people and/or a lot of time. And no one noticed?
Wilson Heath
@David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch: Mossad would have fed the pigeons antacids. (If I’m recalling the urban legend right.)
pajaro
addendum to my last post: apparently, the explosions killed 8 and have wounded 2750 people. And the US had no advance notice that this was going to occur.
suzanne
This seems like it was intentionally designed to harm and kill civilians indiscriminately, and minimize damage to Hezbollah.
catclub
Have they never watched the Wire?
Glory b
@Villago Delenda Est: I think this was something very different. These weren’t like suicide bombs, meant to kill/injure/ terrorizelarge numbers of people.
The Israelis will likely have disabled a large number of fighters & target those who have hidden their relationships with Hezbollah. I read that some fairly high ranking Iranian had a pager explode too.
The Israelis will be able to get more information about locations, personnel, etc, while having minimized harm to others.
Not to mention having disabled communications, what fighters will want to carry their devices now?
Kent
Netanyahu wants permanent war. It is the only way he gets to be permanent prime minister.
Belafon
@suzanne: Seems exactly the opposite to me. Hezbollah was trying to get rid of their cellphones because it was making them targets, and the pagers were an obvious target to try to take out as many of them as possible. Whoever set it off wasn’t too concerned about where they went off, but the targets were those receiving the pagers.
Searcher
@CaseyL:
Honestly a lot of organizations are run poorly?
Chet Murthy
From Al-Monitor: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2024/09/israeli-supply-chain-infiltration-likely-behind-hezbollah-pager-blasts-analysts
“Israeli supply chain infiltration likely behind Hezbollah pager blasts: analysts”
BR
@catclub:
Maybe they hired Lester:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UaiNXi0oIA
cckids
@rikyrah:
I’m torn about all the R’s encouraging fellow R’s to vote for Harris; I’d prefer that they all STAY HOME. Because most of them will vote R for the rest of the ballot, and we need the Senate.
They will justify it as “to keep those libs in check” but it will kneecap any progress we might otherwise make.
suzanne
@Belafon:
Well, the fact that they all seem to have gone off simultaneously and, as you say, there seems to be little concern about where they went off….. that’s why I said it seems like it was designed to be broadly destructive.
If one was hypothetically targeting specific people, one wouldn’t detonate them all in such a big fell swoop.
prostratedragon
@The Audacity of Krope: How did that tale of the pedant in Hell go again?
BR
@suzanne:
I think @Belafon is right. And as a surprise move they had to set them off at the same time. This tactic won’t work again.
suzanne
@BR: Well, potentially I can be convinced….. but just setting them all off at once, rather than tracking specific people and detonating them when those people are away from others seems to me to be a tactic for doing as much damage as possible. At the very least, it’s utterly indifferent to civilians.
Chief Oshkosh
@Glory b:
@Belafon:
Much of our conjecture is based on the idea that these pagers were given specifically and only to Hezbollah “fighters” (whatever that means).
Given the source, I don’t see why I should believe that. I think it’s much more likely that SOME of these pagers ended up with SOME Hezbollah-associated people and that the rest of them ended up in the pockets of innocents.
And I’m sure Bibi is not only fine with that, but views it as a bonus.
john b
@Glory b:
tracking the pagers via a non-explosive device would have been a bit more minimal.
Belafon
@cckids: Yes, but if they follow the advice given, to vote against Republicans, every vote will help.
BR
@suzanne:
Oh definitely there was indifference as to who else might be hurt. As for who got the pagers, it seems pretty likely that it was officials or those affiliated in Lebanon and Iran because the reason they were switching to pagers was because they were concerned that their operatives were being tracked via their phones.
Geminid
@CaseyL: Reports are that around 5 months ago the Mossad placed 20 grams of a high explosive in shipments of three different pager models. Israel may have a mole in Hezbollah who told them about the shipments; maybe Hezbollah was upgrading its pager network.
@Glory b: The Mossad was able to trigger the explosives by making the pager batteries overheat.
All this is from Clash Report, a Turkiye-based news site.
@Glory b: Clash Report showed some video of Iran’s Ambassador to Lebanon being transported to a hospital. Not too surprising if he had one of the pagers, because Iran and Hezbollah work hand in hand, and their ambassador to Beirut is probably no ordinary diplomat.
CaseyL
I’m still not buying the story as it is currently being told. Too many logistical questions.
If it was just a matter of sending a signal that heats up the batteries so they explode… that I could buy, I think. But inserting actual explosive material into each of the pagers? No, I can’t.
Is there any reason to think this couldn’t just as well have been a Hezbollah propaganda act?
It’s not like Hezbollah cares any more than Israel does about collateral damage, and Hezbollah would surely be in a better position to have sabotaged the pagers.
ETA: @Geminid:
I posted the above comment before I saw yours. “Reports say..” Who says? Where is that report from?
Israel is a thuggish RW rogue state, to be sure. But its adversaries aren’t any better.
Trollhattan
Welp, buckle in.
Belafon
@CaseyL:
There are tons of videos.
prostratedragon
@rikyrah: This takes us back to your “This cult is different” post above. They will look at that interview as if it took place in some loop out of time of which their minds, returning to common time, are completely unaware.
BR
Something a bit more mellow — a Walz family video sharing what books they’re reading:
https://www.tiktok.com/@vidsoftim/video/7415669467214073130
MattF
@raven: Don’t know. Broke his heart when the AUB alumni association started sending him antisemitic propaganda.
CaseyL
@Belafon:
Videos of what? Mossad agents tampering with pagers?
Geminid
@suzanne: Once one was detonated the others would be discarded, so it was all or none, I think.
The Audacity of Krope
I never heard of such a thing. Please enlighten me.
Geminid
@CaseyL: I wrote three sentences sentences later that the reports are from the Turkiye-based news site Clash Report.
suzanne
@Geminid: I think you’re right. But “all or none” is such a definitionally indiscriminate approach that that is why my first thought is that one would only do this if one was deliberately trying to kill civilians.
Chet Murthy
@CaseyL: Imagine that Hezb did the deed: a false flag operation. Iran has thoroughly penetrated Hezb, just as we/Russia/everybody penetrates our/their clients’ operations. Iran’s -ambassador- got hurt: do you really think Hezb would have allowed that to happen if they knew ? It seems highly, highly unlikely that this was a false-flag.
By contrast, this sort of technological exploit is right up Israel’s (and -our-) alley. Remember Stuxnet? And back in the day, we arranged for the Soviets to get the plans for a microprocessor that had a flaw: when they fabricated it and tried to use it to control a pipeline, it blew up spectacularly.
Geminid
@suzanne: This was a widespread attack but I think Israel was going after Hezbollah combatants. But they certainly did not care about civilian casualties because these were forseeable.
I’m not sure about the reported injury total but this will or will not be verified in the next 24 hours, it seems to me.
The figure of 8 Hezbollah soldiers killed is likely accurate. Unlike Hamas, Hezbollah reports when one of its soldiers “dies on the road to Jerusalem,” as they put it. As of last week they had reported over 500 killed since October 8, when they started firing rockets unto northern Israel.
mrmoshpotato
@Chet Murthy:
The pipeline exploded?
Chet Murthy
@mrmoshpotato: https://www.wired.com/2004/03/soviets-burned-by-cia-hackers/
prostratedragon
@The Audacity of Krope: All I remember is the punchline, in which the Devil explains, “Now, this is why you’re here.”
Chet Murthy
@suzanne: I don’t think Israel cares about killing civilians. They simply do not care. If one sits where they sit, one can imagine the logic goes like this:
“our adversaries don’t care about the laws of war; so we won’t care either”
But the problem is, Israel’s -allies- care about the laws of war, and for self-interested reasons, not just for vague-and-airy notions of [waves hands]. We care b/c if the rules break down, terrorism will rise worldwide, and that hurts us and our allies. I don’t think Israel understands this.
Israel is piling up enemies and hurling away friends with great force. It’s not a sustainable policy.
Jerszy
@suzanne: Very much the opposite. These pagers specifically were en route to be distributed among actual terrorist soldiers & operatives, the particular ones who were replacing their exposed cell phones – so they were specifically agent that were necessarily in close communications for operations. Pagers, specifically one’s link to fellow cell members, are items one keeps close on the body, keeps within sight and reach, and doesn’t share – particularly with friends, family or kids. From all reports, the explosives were not powerful enough to harm anyone beyond a foot or so – overwhelmingly only hands, arms, & stomachs were injured, and of the targets. (I’m sure all the final figures aren’t collected yet, but there were 3,000+ pagers detonated, 2,700+ injuries, and the sole reported mistaken killing is a single child? That’s a hell of a risky and unlikely *successful* operation that was incredibly well-targeted and engineered for least-casualties of innocent civilians, to be honest – completely regardless to how one feels about the larger conflict.
mrmoshpotato
@Chet Murthy:
I guess the Russkis needed that section with the comment //BOOM CODE.
rikyrah
philip lewis
@Phil_Lewis_
NEW YORK (AP) — Judge refuses to grant bail to Sean “Diddy” Combs, orders him sent to jail while he awaits sex trafficking trial.
3:27 PM · Sep 17, 2024
https://x.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1836139943288090782
Geminid
@Chet Murthy: A few years ago Israeli agents managed to fill a marble slab with explosives, it was then sent to an Iranian uranium enrichment facility along with some other slabs. The Iranians use them as bases for gas centrifuges. The slab was detonated some time later and it wrecked the centrifuge hall.
This could not have been done without help from inside Iran, but there are people there like the MEK who hate the regime far more than the Israelis do.
R'Chard
I don’t know if that explosion typified all the others. But by appearances it did not injure the bystanders, and the produce and bag next to it were barely disturbed. It was likely a battery that blew up, probably lithium these days. WSJ has a story that says the same, from a Lebanese security official theorizing, I believe. It was not a big explosion, nor an exotic explosive. It targeted the bearer of the pager.
There are videos on YouTube of cellphone batteries incinerating/exploding, this seems to be similar size explosion. Injurious (maybe even fatal) if it’s in your pocket or on your belt, but not a threat a few feet away.
If that’s the case, maybe that lot of pagers could have been pre-programmed to explode at a preset time. They have chips, and clocks. But it would be easier, cheaper, and less risky to hack into Hezbollah’s network, and send one command to all their pagers to max overload the batteries, if such a thing is doable. I suspect we will find it is.
The Audacity of Krope
@prostratedragon: Well, I’m not worried. All existence is some form of hell, one might call it wandering, and the devil is a supervillain half reimagined from a character in a book.
Kay
@cain:
They’ve killed 40,000 (at least) civilians in Gaza, 12,000 of whom are children, but this one (additional) little girl is beyond the pale?
Quinerly
@rikyrah:
Nailed it. Should be widely shared.
Quinerly
@rikyrah: watched the video yesterday. He’s a disgusting POS.
Baud
@rikyrah:
👍
suzanne
@Jerszy: Well, I’ll hope you’re right. Too little information to make solid judgments right now.
Josie
I am not tech savvy, so I don’t understand how someone outside Lebanon could set off the explosions all at the same time. Could someone explain that to me?
CaseyL
@Chet Murthy:
I don’t know what Hezbollah would consider acceptable collateral damage – or, indeed what it’s current relationship with the various factions of the Iran government might be. Every single government in the Mid East is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, all of them happy to undermine all the others.
Mind you, I’m not saying Israel didn’t do this. All I am saying is, the logistics of sabotaging thousands of pagers by packing each of them, individually, with a tiny bit of explosive putty just seems implausible.
If Mossad intercepted the pagers en route, that makes the scenario more plausible. (Though one has to wonder if anyone at Hezbollah asked why the shipment hadn’t arrived on schedule… maybe whoever the interceptor was just shrugged and said “Supply chain problems, you know how it is.”)
Josie
@Kay: Good point.
Comrade Misfit
Now imagine how much the average Hezbollah fighter is going to trust new pagers or phones from the organization in the future, knowing what happened to a previous general issue. As a strike against the organization, this was pretty brilliant.
lowtechcyclist
@rikyrah:
This. This cult is all about a revenge porn fantasy that they’d like to make a reality. It’s all about their wanting to stick it to a whole shitload of people and groups that they hate.
Trivia Man
@Josie: i assume they sent a mass page to that distribution list. Physical access to add explosives and make something that gets triggered by a call from a special number.
lowtechcyclist
@rikyrah:
This. Trumpism is a revenge cult, pure and simple. It’s all about wanting to stick it to the many individuals and groups that they regard as enemies, and stick it to them good and hard. Round them up in camps, deport them, subject them to trial by military tribunals, whatever it takes. I’m sure a fair number of them relish fantasies of vigilante justice.
The one thing I can think of to do with Trumpists we know that otherwise seem like decent people is make them face up to this if possible, refuse to let them avoid this fundamental fact. From there, they can make whatever choice they make, but at least it’ll be a bit harder for them to avoid the reality of what they’re supporting.
lowtechcyclist
@rikyrah:
Sounds like a plan! We can have women line up to get his groin under control by giving him swift kicks there.
KenK
@rikyrah: those NILs aren’t going to pay for themselves.
lowtechcyclist
@suzanne:
That’s certainly how I see it. If they were going to do this at all, they didn’t have to have the pagers go off during the day when their holders would be around a lot of other people who had nothing to do with them.
We’re supporting a war criminal over there. Hamas and Hezbollah are committing war crimes too, but we’re not giving them any aid, nor should we ever consider doing so, for exactly that reason. I don’t want us to support anyone’s war criminals.
anitamargarita
@Glory b: and yet, large numbers of people were terrorized and injured. Israel seems to have no interest in minimizing harm. In fact I would argue that their whole aim right now, is to harm as many as possible.
@Glory b:
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Jerszy:
Thank you for a cogent and well reasoned analysis on this.
Damien
I’m really curious, how should a country deal with hostile, state-sponsored enemies that are civilian-embedded? Are we arguing that Hezbollah isn’t a legitimate military target? Is it completely realistic to never execute a military operation when there is the chance of civilian casualties?
I’m not trying to justify Israel’s move here, but arguing that something like this, which feels as targeted toward Hezbollah fighters as possible, is beyond the pale seems truly like the argument is that there can be no widespread reprisals or attacks on militants.
Leave aside Gaza for a minute, and just explain to me what would be a better, more focused attack against a terrorist organization. I hate using that word, but seriously: Hezbollah?
Additionally, the argument that it shouldn’t have been conducted during the day would be getting flipped on its head and Israel would be getting ravaged here for blowing these pagers while fighters were with their families.
Again, I’m neither justifying nor attacking the decision here, I’m just trying to recognize that there’s only so many ways to wage war, especially against enemies that hide amongst their civilian populations. Israel is doing it very badly, but does this really fall into that?
Gin & Tonic
Either Schneier or a commenter on his site is saying that this was due to a mass order of batteries for the pagers. The order was intercepted, explosives were inserted along with a chip to control the explosive, and then sent on.
Interestingly, the report has the order being placed with B&H Photo in NYC. This is a very large electronics/photo/etc retailer, which quite incidentally, is owned, run and staffed by Orthodox Jews.
Leto
@Damien: I’m just going to say that an attack like this violates the Laws of Armed Conflict, which Israel is a signatory to. Specifically the Geneva Convetions of ‘47 which form the basis for LOAC. I’ve been saying this, to no avail, for at least six months now. I don’t know how much more clearly this needs to be expressed.
CaseyL
@Leto:
Well, how would you fight Hezbollah, then?
This is much the same problem as fighting Al Qaeda after 9/11. The US and allies, at George Bush’s urging, decided to invade Iraq, which had nothing to do with the attack.
We never attacked Saudi Arabia, where most of the attackers lived and which had been funding Al Qaeda.
We made a half-hearted effort to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, where bin Laden lived. While the combined efforts, and 20+ years, did manage to do damage to Al Qaeda, the Taliban is back in charge in Afghanistan.
I supposed we could go after Hezbollah’s funders and sponsors, who would be (checks notes) Iran. So… declare war on Iran?
Geminid
@Gin & Tonic: The Turkish news site Clash Report reports that the Iranian Ambassador was blinded. They also cited a Saudi Arabian news site’s reporting that hundreds of Hezbollah personnel were blinded. Evidently the pagers signaled a message and then detonated when the recipients had time to look at them.
Clash Report is basically an aggregator site like Visegrad24. Veteran security analyst Levent Kemal reposts them so I think they are a fairly reliable outfit. Kemal commented on the pager story: “An epic fail for Hezbollah.”
Levent Kemal reports on conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. He’s an Ankara-based freelance journalist with his own news site, ActaFabulae. The Middle East Eye has featured Kemal’s reporting on Russian activities in Africa.
Glory b
@Josie: The source I read said it was via software.
JaySinWA
@Gin & Tonic:
If I were in charge of the logistics of such a large operation, I would have ordered and prepped a set of devices in advance and then intercepted the real shipment(s) and substituted the rigged devices rather than intercepting and modifying that many after interception.
Glory b
@anitamargarita: The video I saw, of the guy in the grocery store, showed a puff of smoke from his pants, then he fell down.
The people next to him weren’t hurt. Even the table of produce wasn’t disturbed.
This isn’t to say others were more destructive, but that one left everyone else around him untouched.
Maybe other videos show different types of scenes. There was no explosion, no destruction, no other injuries.
Damien
@Leto: I’m not arguing about that– though I would really appreciate (seriously, no sarcasm) if you could outline how–what I’m discussing is the larger question of how precisely states should prosecute wars in this age of stateless but state-sponsored and civilian-embedded hostiles.
I mean, this attack/reprisal used a known Hezbollah technological weakness to target soldiers/fighters that are otherwise mostly invisible within civilian areas. There was at least one civilian casualty, which is tragic, but what military operation has zero collateral damage, aside from potentially those of outré military on military? Ukraine seems to have done really well at this, but again: military on military.
How are you supposed to fight an embedded, invisible fighting force?
I genuinely would like to hear some expert opinions on this, because I honestly don’t know.
Kay
@Leto:
Dead letter. The Biden Administration (so the United States) hasn’t recognized any of it since October 7th. Nothing at all protects civilians in conflicts now – all bets are off and anything (absolutely anything) goes.
Chet Murthy
@Leto: @Damien: I’m curious: in what way does this violate the LOAC? If Hezb can identify only one bona fide civilian who was killed, out of 3000 attacks (and I’d think that Hezb would have every incentive to list all of ’em), that seems pretty well-targeted?
Geminid
@CaseyL: There would be no need to attsck Hezbollah if they complied with the UN Security Council resolution issued as part of the ceasefire that ended the 2006 Israeli/Hezbollah war. The resolution, numbered 2601 I think, required Hezbollah to withdraw its armed forces in southern Lebanon to the north side of the Litani River.
The Lebanese government cannot enforce this resolution. For one thing, Hezbollah and its political allies have gridlocked the government. For another, Hezbollah outguns the Lebanese Army.
The US tries very hard to keep this war contained. So far, Hezbollah has been shooting hundreds of their smaller rockets into northern Israel and Israel has retaliated accordingly. But reporting from many sites including Al Jazeera says that Hezbollah’s arsenal exceeds 125,000 missiles, almost all smuggled in from Iran over the last decade at least. Some of these are large guided missiles with warheads weighing 500 kilograms or more.
A couple months ago, when a full-scale war seemed imminent, Israeli journalist Noga Tarnopolsky quoted an Israeli Health Ministry official who said the ministry had plans for mass burials in the event of a full-scale war between Hezbollah and Israel.
CaseyL
@Geminid:
Well, that’s been the problem with terrorism for as long as there have been terrorists. How do you fight according to the rules of war when your opponent does not?
Over on Mastodon, I had a brainstorm: the place Hezbollah ordered the pagers from was an Israeli covert operation. No switcheroo needed: the pagers were assembled already sabotaged. That’s the most plausible scenario I can think of, frankly. (Some commenters there and I are having a lot of fun with the idea – the sales reps! the fulfillment centers!- because we’re horrible people.)
Another Scott
I’m just getting caught up on this.
One thing I would remember is that both sides have their stories that aim to paint the others as monsters.
Remember when that missile fell on a hospital in Gaza? The immediate reports were that Israel had attacked a hospital and “at least 500” were killed. Days later the reports were that a Hamas rocket had malfunctioned and falling. There’s still some controversy about what happened (unsurprisingly as it’s hard to do an impartial investigation in a war zone).
I don’t know how careful, or indiscriminate, this attack on Hezbollah was. I wouldn’t be surprised if the stories change in the coming days and weeks – they usually do.
Hang in there, everyone.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jerszy
@Leto: From a LOAC perspective, this may be the most surgical, targeted mass strike on NON-civilian combatants in the entire history of military conflict – particularly for one embedded in a civilian, non-combatant population – and entirely legit.
I’ll presume you’ve been taking Hezbollah and Hamas to task re disregard for the LOAC for even more months than that.
CaseyL
Now the word is the pagers were sabotaged en route. Which is insane.
They’re suggesting that a large group of Mossad agents rode a long way in a (non-A/C?) cargo container, over some of the worst roads in the world, wearing headlamps and using little tiny tools, to stuff explosive putty into 3000 pagers without once blowing any of themselves up..?
Who is writing this stuff?
Ironcity
@Jerszy: Pagers of my acquaintance, admittedly from pre-cell phone days, used a AA battery mostly, though I suppose AAA could be used these days with the better electronics now available. Don’t know that a lithium rechargeable would pack enough energy to explode. The amount of C4 or similar plastic explosive needed to provide the desired explosion, such as the one on video in the produce section, is likely no bigger than a dime, maybe less. In my (misspent) youth I had something to do with EOD training and some other like things and I have built a very garden variety letter type device with a very modest amount of C4 under trained and authorized adult supervision that when placed on the blotter on the large steel desk (LSD) with the swivel chair appropriately placed then initiated the swivel chair goes to another zip code in pieces, the LSD folds in half with the large shallow drawer in small smoking shreds and the blotter disappears (is that what “blotto” means?).
Presuming it is the Israelis they get full marks in craft. I have little sympathy for the terrorists and their friends, though the Israeli treatment of the Palestinian man/woman in the street has been pretty shameful over the decades. No sympathy for their current fearless leader and his buddies in the right-wing parties having open season on olive farmers.
CaseyL
The ultra-black-humor hilarious conversation I’m having at Mastodon has moved on to speculating they swapped out the cargo plane altogether, substituting Gold Apollo’s pagers for sabotaged ones.
(Gold Apollo is the company the pagers were purchased from, according to the article claiming the pagers were tampered with during shipment.)
Another Scott
@CaseyL:
FTFNYT:
True? No idea. Who knows.
What gets me is the weight. Adding 2 oz to a pager would seem to be a big increase in weight and noticeable. (Other reports say 20 grams (0.7 ounces).) And space is usually at a premium in things like that, so …
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
@Another Scott: A minor quibble: the rocket that hit the hospital parking lot was fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas’s largest militia ally. At the time, PIJ announced it had attacked Haifa with a salvo of rockets; video showed the salvo with one of rockets looping around and landing in the hospital’s vicinity.
These were likely Iranian-made Badr-3 missiles which carry 250 kg warheads, which is⁸ consistent with the crater in the parking area where civilians had congregated hoping to find safety. When the PIJ fought a 4 day war with Israel months before last October 7, estimates were that 20% of the rockets they fired landed within Gaza.
CaseyL
@Another Scott:
There are many, man, MANY things about this event and story that strain credulity. The more we’re told, the nuttier it gets.
I think the amount of explosive might be far less than suggested. Mind you, I know very little about how much power can be packed into tiny little dabs, but I’m sure Mossad (or whoever) has access to the very latest in chemicals that go *boom*.
FWIW, my money is that the pagers left the factory already primed. That, however, infers that Gold Apollo is an Israeli front.
Geminid
@CaseyL: Nobody ships this type of product overland; the pagers almost certainly came by air freight.
A lot of Lebanon’s trade passes through Cyprus and that could be where the Mossad tampered with the pagers. If so, Hezbollah was especially negligent because Israel and Cyprus are known to be defacto allies.
CaseyL
@Geminid: Yes, but how?
OK, let’s posit the shipment arrived at a secured airfield. (Collusion with the airfreight company? or would the plane land wherever its crew were told to land?)
Did the Israelis have boxes of substitute pagers – identical to the ones ordered, down to the serial numbers, and with the explosives already in them – ready to swap out? If so, where’d they get them? Would Gold Apollo notice two separate orders of 3000 each for the same pagers? (Maybe not, if a lot of military use them.)
Or did they do the sabotaging there at the airfield? It’s got to take a while to disassemble, alter, and re-assemble 3000 pagers. Say, 3 minutes per pager, that’s 9,000 minutes or 150 hours. Have a crew of 10 working on the gig, that’s 15 hours per person. Not all in one go: you don’t want to be staring at and handling tiny machines and explosive material for 15 hours straight. So, two days with 10 people working on it. What’s the flight crew doing in the meantime? They’d have to be in on it, or given some kind of cover story.
I mean, it completely sounds like a plotline from NCIS, but how plausible is it?
Another Scott
@Geminid: Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Bill Arnold
@Geminid:
Interesting. It appears that the Israelis exploited a loophole in the laws of armed conflict. Laser blinding weapons are prohibited, but small bombs that cause one to look at the bomb at close (reading) range before it detonates and sprays the face with shrapnel are legal.
motoran
It should be clear beyond any doubt that Israel is a rogue nation that happily engages in terrorism. Zero difference between them and Hamas, or Hezbollah.
Another Scott
@CaseyL: What would make the most sense to me would be if the batteries, explosives, extra circuits, (if that’s actually what happened) were prepared ahead of time. The shipment was then intercepted, the batteries, etc., were swapped, and then the parts were sent on their way.
TimesofIsrael.com:
I assume that “injected” is some sort of garbled translation. But “injecting” some sort of liquid into the device that then hardened into an explosive would presumably be easier than taking 3000-5000 of them apart and messing with things that way.
Dunno.
Presumably everyone over there is looking for one that didn’t explode to take apart and see what actually was done to it (if it actually was more than a lithium battery being induced to explode).
I doubt that a factory or legitimate reseller did the modifications. They’d kill their business, and Mossad couldn’t pay them enough to make up the difference.
I assume we’ll know more eventually. But, maybe not!
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
CaseyL
@Another Scott:
My money is on “we’ll never know exactly what was going on,” because every nation, military, and terrorist group in the world will be thinking of two things:
1. Tightening the hell out of their procurement security
2. “How can we do to our enemies what the Israelis did to theirs?”
No one is going to have any incentive to reveal the details.
Sasha
Literally the most targeted attack against terrorists ever.
wjca
Do we know that they didn’t? From what I’ve seen so far, they might well have done so. One source got tampered with and exploded. The other sources were fine. If there’s a statement that all the new pagers exploded, I’ve missed it.
Geminid
@wjca: There’s more on the pagers from Turkish news site Clash Report:
In news of other explosions, Clash Report showed some video taken from the Russian town of Toropets that showed a massive blast from a distant munitions dump hit by a Ukrainian drone; also, the names and faces of four IDF soldiers killed by an IED in Rafah yesterday.
Jerszy
@motoran: While you are most certainly welcome to believe so, discerning readers recognize that every detail of the story we have been discussing proves the opposite of your premise. Have a good day.
Paul in KY
@CaseyL: We got a great deal from ACME-Mossad Worldwide!
Paul in KY
@mrmoshpotato: An early Rick & Morty episode also did this. They get Rick’s ‘recipe’ for something and when they make it, the ship blows up.
Matt
They’ll just say “that 8-year-old was obviously Hezbollah” and we’ll just accept it, like we already have for hundreds and hundreds of under-1-year-olds in Gaza.