Hamas invaded Israel 2023

[Colin Parkinson]

And the world is poorer for it from any party as it's increasing instability and in my opinion, probability of war. Trade is and has been the great pacifier and this only lessens the effect trade has on peace.

I am reminded of a quote from before the Great War, "the lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time".

Trade has failed to be a pacifier for a long time. The Northern States were opposed to the war of 1812 because Canada was their best customer. Modern day, Russia could have made a free trade deal with Ukrainian to massively benefit both countries in regards to grain shipment and industrial infrastructure sharing. South Korea has attempted to pacify NK with trade deals, to no avail.

 

[PrairieFella]

Trade has failed to be a pacifier for a long time. The Northern States were opposed to the war of 1812 because Canada was their best customer. Modern day, Russia could have made a free trade deal with Ukrainian to massively benefit both countries in regards to grain shipment and industrial infrastructure sharing. South Korea has attempted to pacify NK with trade deals, to no avail.

Maybe I am applying a principle from liberal-democracies to autocrats and theocrats, idk. This just seems like a shitty precedent that I fully know will be applied by some despot somewhere against innocent people. Such is progress I guess, we're always inventing shitty new ways to kill each that always seems to take some civvies with the bad guys. I'm so fucking tired of hearing about Israel and Palestine and Lebanon etc etc. A pox on all their houses.

 

[QV]

Using your intelligence agency to compromise an Eastern European factory building licenced Taiwanese products to build mini command-detonated grenades is. Unless I'm misunderstanding something here, I'm under the impression these would have had to be compromised at the factory, right? Or have I been "misinformationed" on this?

I'm not sure we are going to learn all the details of this op any time soon. Why couldn't they have been intercepted during shipment and tampered with or switched out? Is that beyond possible?

 

[dapaterson]

Idk how any importer can trust products from Israel or Israeli owned companies going forward. Whats to stop them from pulling some shit like this against other countries in the future? This is an impressive strike but man does this cast a shadow over the security of global trade.

They were not Israeli products. They may have been reverse engineered, disassembled and reassembled differently in Israel, but from the end user perspective they were not Israeli products. And had they known of the detour to Israel between their original point of manufacture and their sale, I doubt any of the implicated groups would have purchased them.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Let's suppose, just for sh!ts and giggles, that a world famous spy agency decided to fiddle with a bunch of pagers and blow up a few unpleasant people. Let's also suppose that doing the job required operators to intercept (a) shipment(s) and tamper with items.

Does anyone really think that those items would ever have landed anywhere near the home of the famous spy agency?

Also does anyone actually expect that famous spy agency to say, "hey, look, it was us"?

I think this was a 'neat' operation by someone; I also think the primary aim wasn't to kill or maim anyone - it was to spread fear and suspicion within the ranks of Hezbollah.

 

[OldSolduer]

Let's suppose, just for sh!ts and giggles, that a world famous spy agency decided to fiddle with a bunch of pagers and blow up a few unpleasant people. Let's also suppose that doing the job required operators to intercept (a) shipment(s) and tamper with items.

Does anyone really think that those items would ever have landed anywhere near the home of the famous spy agency?

Also does anyone actually expect that famous spy agency to say, "hey, look, it was us"?

I think this was a 'neat' operation by someone; I also think the primary aim wasn't to kill or maim anyone - it was to spread fear and suspicion within the ranks of Hezbollah.

A side benefit was killing and severely injuring many of them.

 

[QV]

Let's suppose, just for sh!ts and giggles, that a world famous spy agency decided to fiddle with a bunch of pagers and blow up a few unpleasant people. Let's also suppose that doing the job required operators to intercept (a) shipment(s) and tamper with items.

Does anyone really think that those items would ever have landed anywhere near the home of the famous spy agency?

Also does anyone actually expect that famous spy agency to say, "hey, look, it was us"?

I think this was a 'neat' operation by someone; I also think the primary aim wasn't to kill or maim anyone - it was to spread fear and suspicion within the ranks of Hezbollah.

And I have high doubt said world famous spy agency convinced the manufacturer to build in their surprise at the factory...

 

[KevinB]

Using your intelligence agency to compromise an Eastern European factory building licenced Taiwanese products to build mini command-detonated grenades is. Unless I'm misunderstanding something here, I'm under the impression these would have had to be compromised at the factory, right? Or have I been "misinformationed" on this?

Again this isn’t exactly something new.

The Israeli’s where only the one to use it “en masse” as opposed to using it for limited HVT so as the method wasn’t investigated.

Similar activities were also used in GWOT for ammunition and other munitions, by tampering with stuff at the OEM level, including inside some hostile states government factories, as it isn’t necessarily subversion of the company, when covert entry and alteration/replacement of materials can also have the same results.

 

[daftandbarmy]

And the beat goes on....

Twenty killed by second wave of Lebanon device explosions

Walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah blow up a day after pager blasts killed 12 people.

www.bbc.com

 

[dapaterson]

In Montreal, gangs gift TVs to their enemies. Which are packed with TNT.

West End Gang - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[RangerRay]

Now do Hamas!

 

[Jarnhamar]

That's some Clyde Shelton shit right there.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Let's suppose, just for sh!ts and giggles, that a world famous spy agency decided to fiddle with a bunch of pagers and blow up a few unpleasant people. Let's also suppose that doing the job required operators to intercept (a) shipment(s) and tamper with items.

Does anyone really think that those items would ever have landed anywhere near the home of the famous spy agency?

Also does anyone actually expect that famous spy agency to say, "hey, look, it was us"?

I think this was a 'neat' operation by someone; I also think the primary aim wasn't to kill or maim anyone - it was to spread fear and suspicion within the ranks of Hezbollah.

You know…I had a random thought.

Suppose Hezbollah has outlived it’s usefulness to even Iran. Suppose they did it?

 

[SeaKingTacco]

To continue that thought: if Iran knows Hezbollah wants to shoot 10s of thousands of missiles into Israel, but they also know Tehran will eat the Israeli retaliation (because the Israelis have told the Qataris or the Saudis as much), what would Iran do?

 

[RangerRay]

Would Iran blow up their own ambassador though?

 

[Good2Golf]

Would Iran blow up their own ambassador though?

….ummmm….

Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s president, dies in helicopter crash aged 63

Iranian president was travelling in the country’s East Azerbaijan province when it came down in a forested area.

www.aljazeera.com

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Would Iran blow up their own ambassador though?

Factions within factions, my friend….

 

[KevinB]

To continue that thought: if Iran knows Hezbollah wants to shoot 10s of thousands of missiles into Israel, but they also know Tehran will eat the Israeli retaliation (because the Israelis have told the Qataris or the Saudis as much), what would Iran do?

Probably stop shipping Hezbollah missiles?

Since they haven’t done that, I don’t think that the Iranian regime wants to stop at this point.

Unless

Factions within factions, my friend….

That may very well may be true - But I don’t think that Iranians have the reach that the Israelis do as far as.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Probably stop shipping Hezbollah missiles?

Since they haven’t done that, I don’t think that the Iranian regime wants to stop at this point.

Unless

That may very well may be true - But I don’t think that Iranians have the reach that the Israelis do as far as.

Right, but that is IRGC territory.

Suppose Iranian Intelligence or the Military is tired of this little game (or doesn’t feel like being in a death cult anymore). Then what?

I agree with you this has Mossad’s fingerprints on it, but…I have to think that Hezbollah would have sourced the pagers through Iran.

 

[McG]

I said above, there was no way in advance whether or not these would be accurately targeted. There are now 4000+ casualties and rising, but only 2700 pagers were sent out. How the hell is that proportional?

The pagers were bought by Hezbollah and issued to Hezbollah leaders. In the middle of the day when people are out conducting their business, there is a very high probability that the vast majority of those pages will be on the person to whom they were issued. So, this would have been very precise. Could some of the targeted individuals have been carrying children or operating motor vehicles? Maybe. But that does not equate to indiscriminate firing of cluster munitions into civilian parks & infrastructure.

Proportionality is not determined by an absolute number of casualties irrelevant of who those casualties are. If 2700 pagers hit only 2500 Hezbollah officials, those 2500 casualties were legitimate targets, not part of some disproportionate collateral damage. Your assessment of disproportionality must be based on the number of casualties who were not Hezbollah, and right now there is no reporting to indicate that number is particularly large.