← Back to context

Comment by jackling

6 days ago

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 comments

jackling

Reply
tptacek  6 days ago

Right, if in fact 1500 Hezbollah fighters were injured, any claim that over 1500 noncombatants were injured is suspicious. We have video footage of the explosions (along with a directional sense of the wounded vs. KIA count of the strike). It is not plausible that more noncombatants were injured than combatants, given the pagers were strictly military comms devices.

  • jackling  5 days ago

    Both the 1500 and 4000 number were confirmed by Lebanon, and no reputable watch organization has credibly disputed them, you're not citing evidence just conjecture on how you believe everything went down due to a relative small bits of information.

    > along with a directional sense of the wounded vs. KIA count of the strike

    I am not sure what this means.

    To add, you're making it impossible to argue anything against your claim. We're discussing how the pagers hurt civilians and if they were properly targetting combatants. You're saying no matter what, since you know the pager was targetting combatants, the evidence that civilians were hurt must be false. Your logic circular.

    • juliusdavies  5 days ago

      Do you want some deeply studied anthropological journal article on “The use of pagers in Lebanese society “?

      Do you know of any civilians anywhere in the world that currently use pagers?

      Who had the pagers and why they had the pagers is almost derivable from first principles at this point, never mind the international journalism on the subject.

      11 replies →