I don’t care about hizbollah.
And Hezbollah doesn’t care about any civilians that get killed near them. ‘Involuntary Martyrs’ is the term I believe they used. According to reports, only 14 people have died, which is an extraordinarily low number considering that Israel went after thousands of targets that don’t wear uniforms and deliberately intermix freely amongst civilians.
I’m going to guess she was very close to her father when the bomb went off. According to reports, a message (phone number?) was sent to all of the intercepted Hezbollah pagers at 3pm local time (IIRC), after a couple of seconds, the bomb went off. So a likely scenario is the father had the girl on his lap, the pager starts buzzing/ringing, dad reaches into his pocket and pulls out the pager to read the message. Proximity to the pager killed the girl while only injuring dad since he has a much greater body mass. Or, perhaps the pager was laying on a table and the girl picked it up? It’s sad, either way.
Hezbollah fighter could choose to live normal life and not be a member of Hezbollah. Lay down with dogs, wake up with fleas…
If there were an anti-Russian militia that set up shop in America and occasionally attacked Russia and Russia figured out a way to target many members of this militia and a few innocent bystanders were also injured or killed, the rest of the world would say “yeah… that is what you get” and Americans would say “Why are we allowing these armed assholes to set up shop in America and attack Russia?”
I doubt if Hezbollah would attack the IDF directly. The IDF is armed and would shoot back immediatley.
Israel learned that Hezbollah was ordering new pagers to be given to members of Hezbollah and no one else. Every member of Hezbollah is a sworn enemy of Israel. These pagers were to be used for secure communications between members of Hezbollah. It was highly likely that nearly every one of these pagers would be carried by members of Hezbollah at the time they went off (IIRC 3pm local time).
Hezbollah has been saying for a while it ‘might’ escalate its actions against Israel. Now… that does not seem as likely.
They thought the pagers were secure communication devices. Now they know they are not. Hezbollah was maybe planning to escalate its attacks on Israel, without good, secure communications, they probably can’t. On the flip side, if Israel decides to invade Southern Lebanon to escalate things with Hezbollah, Hezbollah is going to have a much tougher time coordinating its defense since its supposed ‘secure’ communication system has just been blown up, the previous system (cell phones) what already suspected of being compromised, and now today, walkie-talkies used by the senior Hezbollah leadership have also exploded.
Agreed. The “Pepper munitions” might be paint-ball style rounds shot from paint-ball style guns. I’m not sure in this case, but other police departments have had them. The grenade launchers are for tear gas grenades. Perhaps also flash-bang or stun grenades.
I’m a little puzzled by the down votes for MBFC. You can still be upset at Israel for everything going on in Gaza and the West Bank and also accept the fact that maybe, just maybe, their actions where justified at this compound in Syria (stopped clocks telling the correct time twice a day and all that…).
“Scientific Studies and Research Center” is the Syrian Umbrella organization responsible for biological and chemical weapons research facilities across Syria. This specific facility was designed for missile manufacture and assembly.
Pfft. No one votes for number 2.
There is one big flaw with socialism: socialist governance seems to require concentrating an extraordinary amount of power in elite government decision makers; this tends to produce a new ruling class, the widespread deprivation of political rights for everyone else, and crippling poverty.
Probably both. Divert pressure off the front. Disrupt supply lines and infrastructure (roads, bridges and railroads). I’ve also heard mention that one axis of advance is towards a nuclear plant.
I’ve seen some keyboard warriors theorize that the Ukrainians intend to capture the plant as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Russian because Russia currently holds a Ukrainian nuclear power plant. My (wild ass) guess is that if they make it to the plant, they will just destroy its ability to generate power, then retreat.
Russians really like raping.
Russian values? I assume he means rape, murder, theft and rape.
Yes, deliberately going after civilians when there is no nearby military target would be terrorism. Attacking a member of a military organization’s chain of command is a legitimate target.
A lot of people in this sub don’t seem to understand what the definition of terrorism is. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is the use of violence against civilians for political aims. Hamas is a paramilitary organization, let’s just call it an army for ease of discussion. There is currently an actual shooting war going on (no cease fire) between Hamas and Israel. Members of an army’s leadership are legitimate targets during times of war.
Now, attacking an army’s leadership in a third country (I’m counting Gaza as country 1 and Israel as country 2 for this discussion) can have big, negative repercussions for the country that does the attacking in the 3rd country. However, this assumes country #3 is trying to remain neutral. Iran is anything but a neutral 3rd party in the conflict. They have armed and trained Hamas for decades as well as threatened to destroy Israel many, many times over 40 years. For Israel, there was no real downside to killing that Hamas leader in Iran.
I may be mistaken. I’ve done some Googling. Wikipedia tells me that Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Yemen declared war on Israel when it was founded in 1947. It ended in an armistice (basically a cease fire). In later years, Algeria and Morocco attacked Israel along with others. In 1979, Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel, it was the first country to do so. Jordan did so later, but I am not sure when. All of those other countries still are technically in a state of war against Israel. I don’t see any mention of Iran being at war with Israel in the past, so I don’t think Iran is technically at war with Israel.
From the videos I have seen, very few truly innocent bystanders are being hurt. These are very small explosive charges. In one video, a Hiz dude looks at his pager while he is in the produce section of a market. There are about 4 - 5 people within 10 feet of him. The pager explodes, Hiz dude goes down, no one else is hurt. In a second video, Hezbollah member is paying for something. He is within arm’s reach of the clerk he is giving the money to. The pager goes off, he goes down. The clerk runs away unscathed.
In the history of warfare, this operation may be the most surgical of strikes ever in regards to intended targets hit vs innocent civilians hit.
It’s a sad fact of modern warfare that if a militant group doesn’t wear uniforms and tries to hide amongst civilians, it opponents will eventually go after them and there will be civilian casualties.
Here are the videos I was talking about. Be warned, they are a little rough to watch. There isn’t any blood, but the audio is quite disturbing. You may want to mute them.
Here is the market video I was talking about. https://funker530.com/video/hezbollah-operatives-getting-wrecked-by-exploding-pagers
Here is the payment video: https://funker530.com/video/another-hezbollah-pager-explodes-on-camera