Comment by dralley
5 days ago
Targeted attacks against military/militia leadership is not terrorism - almost by definition.
If it was just random devices exploding, then sure, that could be considered terrorism. But it wasn't random devices, it was communication devices procured by Hezbollah and directly given by Hezbollah to their own members for their own purposes.
Two things
Firstly, generals, like anybody else can be terrorized.
Secondly, even if you only kill generals, that doesn't mean you didn't cause terror for everybody else. Imagine for example that Hezbollah found a way to poison the food for Israel's top X military personnel. It would cause a state of emotional terror for many people in Israel about their food safety for decades most likely, even if they weren't in the military themselves.
When Ukraine assassinates a Russian general with a car bomb, is that "terrorism" or is that just a targeted killing of a military leader during a war? Do you think this is somehow morally problematic beyond the typical standards of war?
Do you think that "normal" means of military action, like dropping a 500lb bomb, is less "terroristic" than essentially setting off a firecracker in their face/hands/pocket? Because, like, that's the alternative. If your position is that all forms of war are illegal, then you have the right to that opinion, but it's not a realistic position.
>When Ukraine assassinates a Russian general with a car bomb, is that "terrorism" or is that just a targeted killing of a military leader during a war?
That depends on when the car detonates. If the car detonates when he and his guard enter it at 6 am near the defense ministry sure. If the car detonates when it is parked in the middle of Moscow at noon and 100 people are around then by pre-2022 standards it would be terrorism.
I think instead of these fake whataboutisms we should just admit that there is no universal bar and if it's "our team" then we are willing to change the standard.
In this case, we know that when Israel set off these pagers some innocent bystanders got hurt. No need to "whatabout".
4 replies →
No, generals in an operational military force are definitionally combatants, and cannot in fact be "terrorized".
this
why is that guy trying to fight against dictionary-definition of "terrorism"?
where did "intentionally creating a state of terror == terrorism" come from?
making up word definitions to win arguments?
No. Generals are always legitimate military targets.
So let me just understand your position here. Suppose the US declares war on Venezuela. Suppose a venezuelan living in America just looks up a bunch of US generals addresses online, and then sets all their houses on fire killing them in their sleep in their McMansions in suburbia.
Are you saying that's a valid military strike, and therefore can't possibly be terrorism? Suppose this person is so successful he kills 1,000 and generals and numerous quit their jobs and move in fear for their life, just to really clarify what you're arguing here.
8 replies →
The Geneva Convention ought to have something to say about how a general may and may not be attacked.
If I remember correctly, the assailant must be dressed in some sort of military uniform to be considered a prisoner of war if captured. Lacking the uniform, it would be espionage and no Geneva Convention rights.
Obviously, neither side in the conflict is adhering to these rules.
I should give this a read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions
9 replies →
Terrorism doesn't mean "anything that makes someone scared," or else all wars would be acts of terrorism.
There isn't a universally agreed upon definition, but generally it refers to targeting non-combatants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism
For example, when the Allies tried to assassinate Hitler with a smuggled briefcase bomb during WW2, that wasn't terrorism: that was just regular warfare. Hitler was the leader of Germany and directed its military.
Similarly, smuggling pager bombs to members of Hezbollah generally wouldn't qualify as terrorism, since Hezbollah a) is a militia (famously it's the largest non-state militia in the world), and b) was actively fighting a war against Israel — a war that Hezbollah themselves initiated.
I can’t reply to zugzug underneath (is there a maximum comment depth), but it feels pretty obvious that the US President is a very legitimate target in any war with the US. Maybe the most legitimate target.
Good luck trying to get them though.
So you're arguing if the US declared war on Venezuela, that Venezuela could just use a drone to blow up the US president and that's just how war should work from now on?
Because it's only a matter of years until drones get small and stealthy enough that nobody is safe; exploding pagers are a clear first step in this direction.
8 replies →
Hezbollah is an organization that tries to destroy Israel. If any law doesn't have an answer to that problem, it isn't worth to discuss legality.
But that isn't the problem here, luckily. It was an extremely targeted operation, generals are military target and know the risks of war. A war that they started in this case.
> Firstly, generals, like anybody else can be terrorized.
This isn't part of any modern definition of terrorism, otherwise war is terrorism, stalking is terrorism, bullying is terrorism &c.
> Firstly, generals, like anybody else can be terrorized.
You know terrorism doesn't mean people were terrorized, right? Surely you understand that.
The issue is that Israel has no idea where those pagers were at the time of the attack, civilians were directly hurt by the explosions: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/survivors-of-israels-page...
Israel had in fact very clear intelligence that the specific pagers they were detonating were overwhelmingly going to be in the custody of combatants. This was very probably the most precisely targeted large-scale military strike of the last 100 years. That's not a value judgement; it's a descriptive claim.
Twelve civilians killed and 4,000 injured does not indicate a precise attack.
There is no credible figure for the number of combatants killed or injured. The Times of Israel reported that 1,500 fighters were injured. Taking these two data points together, a majority of those injured were civilians rather than combatants.
Where are you getting the claim that this was “probably the most precisely targeted large-scale military strike of the last 100 years”? That is a far-reaching assertion, especially given the lack of sources.
You say this is not a value judgment but a descriptive claim, yet the claim does not appear to be backed by facts.
(The 4000 figure) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device... (The 1500 figure) https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-year-on-some-lebanese-bystan... (General HRW source) https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/18/lebanon-exploding-pagers...
15 replies →
Do you have any sources at all for your assertion “This was very probably the most precisely targeted large-scale military strike of the last 100 years”? It is hard to engage with your statement in any reasonable fashion without knowing where you are getting your information.
18 replies →
They knew who purchased those devices. Did they know that at the moment of detonation only military personnel had those devices on them? Military propaganda of course will nod at “intelligence” to defend any actions in public, as there is no way to prove these statements.
You think you are not allowed to do a military strike if civilians may be hurt?
Your comment is nonsense. What do you mean by “allowed”? Who is enforcing the rules of what is “allowed” and what isn’t? The fact is that Israel carried out an attack that severely harmed civilians. The question is whether it was targeted or whether it constitutes terrorism.
My claim is that since Israel could not have possibly known who was in possession of the pagers at the time of the attack, and since the attack occurred regardless of who was nearby—detonating all pagers in civilian-occupied areas—Israel did, in effect, target civilians.
If you attack a military target that is surrounded by civilians, and that attack injures or kills those civilians, then those civilians were also targeted. Do you think all that matters is who the primary target was, and that as long as Israel decides the civilian casualties were “worth it,” the decision is moral?
3 replies →
Zionists don't care about civilian casualties. It's extremely well documented. They even defend the explicit rape of their "prisoners". They will just explain them away as Hamas sympathizers and people will shrug their shoulders and move on.
I, like roughly 90% of the world's jews, am a zionist and I care about civilian casualties. In fact, I don't know a single zionist who doesn't care about civilian casualties. You just made up this racist nonsense, and your comment is totally inappropriate for HN.
What is true is that I'd deny allegations about civilian casualties that I think are false, but that would be because I think they're false, nothing to do with zionism.
1 reply →
Some Zionists are some crazy people, some others might have learned from their enemies. Some just want Israel to exist. Some people just dislike Jews.
Not only military leadership was killed, there was a significant amount of civilians being harmed.
Even if you drop a bomb to target a military personnel, but you drop it in the middle of busy city, this will be a war crime, as you didn’t do anything to avoid civilian casualties, and disregarded them.
The Irish terrorists that were mostly the responsible to put word "terrorism" into political discourse targeted almost exclusively politicians and military. And targeted way better than that Israel attack.
[flagged]
How is communication devices procured by Hezbollah and directly given by Hezbollah to their own members not a directed attack?
Hezbollah is an organization consisting of civilian infrastructure besides its military wing (political party, media, hospitals/medical centers, schools, banking, etc) . These devices were distributed amongst different personnel of whom nobody knows their military activity and can safely be assumed it's highly likely they're civilians (hence the randomness of this, not targetted at all). Besides the fact that these targets weren't in active duty but rather targeted in their homes, workplaces, and other random whereabouts (supermarkets, playgrounds, etc) again emphasising how random and not targetted any of it is and the danger it imposes on others (physical or psychological) around them. It's just insane.
1 reply →
[flagged]
> Targeted attacks against military/militia leadership is not terrorism - almost by definition.
I mean, you're not wrong: the State seeks monopoly on violence; the kind of damages it can inflict, where, when and however it wants. Everyone else is ... a terrorist, and whatever they do is ... terrorism.
> communication devices procured by Hezbollah and directly given by Hezbollah
Replace "Hezbollah" with "the US Govt" and you'll arrive at some answer.
Btw, off-duty / non-combat personnel aren't deemed to be "at war".
The reason foreign military organizations don't routinely target active duty US military generals isn't that they're worried about being dragged into some mostly-fictitious courtroom to answer for their misdeeds. It's that the United States armed forces will very quickly reduce their entire organization, and much of the surrounding area, to its combustion products.
There aren't a lot of opportunities in life you get to use the word "annihilatory"; this is one of them. And in the immortal words of William Munny out of Missouri: "deserve's" got nothing to do with it.
> US military ... worried about being dragged into some mostly-fictitious courtroom to answer for their misdeeds...
Acutely aware of this fact, yeah.
> There aren't a lot of opportunities in life you get to use the word "annihilatory"; this is one of them.
Not wrong. None of the former great empires that fell were as military capable as the super powers of the modern era.
> And in the immortal words of William Munny out of Missouri: "deserve's" got nothing to do with it.
True. Some on the Left have extreme take on "Nation States" for this reason:
The Idea of the Nation-State Is Synonymous With Genocide: A conversation with political theorist Mahmood Mamdani (2024), https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/mahmood-mamdani-na...
7 replies →