Comment by ada1981
5 days ago
Incorrect. The reports are 42 total killed, 12 civilians including 2 children.
"Operation Grim Beeper" (seriously) on Wikipedia cites these numbers from Lebanese government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device...
The figure of merit in a military strike is casualties, not KIA; it's the "wounded" part you actually care about (in fact, in some tactical situations, wounding is preferable to killing, as it ties up adversary logistical resources).
Since the pagers that were targeted were exclusively used by Hezbollah (which fought an actual civil war with the Lebanese security forces specifically in order to establish its own telecom network), I would be extraordinarily wary of any source that has claimed more injuries to noncombatants than to combatants.
You can still tell a story where the pager attack was unacceptable owing to civilian casualties: there could be so many civilian casualties that any number of combatant casualties wouldn't justify it. But if you're claiming that there were more casualties to noncombatants over small explosions from devices carried principally in the pockets of combatants, it is rational to draw the conclusion that your reasoning (and sourcing) is motivated.
> it is rational to draw the conclusion that your reasoning (and sourcing) is motivated.
Have you provided any sources at all for you numerous claims throughout this thread? Would it also me rational to draw a the conclusion that someone who has provided no sources at all is also engaging in “motivated reasoning”? At least be consistent.
(We're conversing in multiple different parts of this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46227021)
Hezbollah is a legal political party in Lebanon. This is an important detail buddy.
No, it isn't. Hezbollah is an occupying military force in Lebanon, responsive only to a minority of its population, that happens to have a political party attached. It is the IRGC's faction of the Lebanese Parliament, except to the extent that it operates its own parallel government when that body is inconvenient to it.
Fair enough, 12 total only includes the original pager attack, not the subsequent radio one. However, you seem to have made the same mistake. 42 people were killed total, but that does not mean that there were 42 targets.
In any case, if Hezbollah themselves admit that 1500 of their fighters were injured by the attack (according to your own source), it seems extremely dishonest to claim that all 4000 were civilians or that there were only 42 targets.
I didn't say 42 targets.
Per the report: 42 dead, 12 of which were civilians. It follows that 30 were considered Hezbollah.
Several of those initially claimed to be civilians were later acknowledged by Hezbollah, so that number is still a bit fuzzy.
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The report is 4,000 civilians injured (which means they just didn't die -- people lost fingers, limbs, eyes, etc.)
Presumably if you have thousands of Hezbola people walking around within their homes, businesses, hopistals, shops, etc. it makes sense you'd have many civilian injuries when these went off. There wasn't a geo fence around them and if someone was in an NICU or preschool the explosions were indiscriminate.
So while there was some element of precision in placement of who had these pagers, there was zero awareness (by design) to where they actually were when they all exploded.
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>I didn't say 42 targets.
You quite literally did.
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>42 people were killed total, but that does not mean that there were 42 targets.
So they only managed to hit 30 targets with 12 misfires… that makes it even worse.
> In any case, if Hezbollah themselves admit that 1500 of their fighters were injured by the attack (according to your own source)
That’s 1500 in addition to the 4,000 civilians. The fact they managed to wound 2.5x+ as many civilians as targets isn’t exactly making them look better…