this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2024
223 points (95.5% liked)

News

23376 readers
1859 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

On Sept. 17, just before 3:30 p.m., the small waiting room of Dr. Nour’s three-room pediatrics clinic in southern Beirut was packed. A mother was waiting to get preschool checkups for her three children. Two elderly patients were booked in for cataract treatments at the ophthalmologist office next door. Sitting next to them was a young couple whom Nour, whose name has been changed for security reasons, had not met before. The father bounced a 10-day-old baby on his lap. Clipped to his belt was a Gold Apollo Rugged Pager.

Nour brought the young couple into her examination room. She pulled out a blank file for the newborn and wrote his name: Aiman. She placed him on the scales: a little over 7 pounds. She lay Aiman on his back on an examination table and began to record his weight. As she did so, the man’s pager beeped twice.

“Excuse me,” he said, and reached down to silence it.

As he did so, about an ounce of explosives concealed within the pager detonated, sending shards of metal and fragments of its thick plastic casing out in all directions. The shrapnel tore deep wounds in the man’s abdomen, lodged in the ceiling of the clinic and lacerated the face of the baby as he lay on his back. Nour was thrown backward as the room filled with dust. She could not see through the smoke, but she could hear the woman’s voice shouting: “Aiman!”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 66 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Western media and a bunch of people here on Lemmy. "You don't get it these were extremely targeted"

Oh? So the deaths and injuries of children and other civilians was purposeful?

[–] anarchrist@lemmy.dbzer0.com 34 points 2 months ago

I think the NYT podcast used the word 'aimed an attack at Hezbollah' which is certainly a choice to describe a bombing requiring no aim

[–] aasatru@kbin.earth 23 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I mean... yeah, I do believe their bombing of Gaza is also extremely targeted.

It's just a question of who you target.

[–] kurwa@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

It was targeted at Gaza what more do you want? /s

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

And even if it hadn't been as indiscriminate as it was, imagine the terror everyone around them must have (and likely continue to) experienced after seeing the person standing next to them in the grocery store suddenly have their goddamn legs blown off.

This is exactly how you create millions of more "terrorists," and Israel knows exactly what they are doing. Just another generation who (understandably) wants to enact revenge with whatever means they may have, so Israel can give a plausible excuse to obliterate them with Western munitions.

Rinse and repeat.

[–] dhork@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

I can understand why the people who performed the attack consider it to be "extremely targeted". All accounts that I have read say that these pagers were used directly by Hezbollah as an alternative to cell phones, which they believe the IDF have the ability to track. I haven't seen any reputable source claiming that these pagers were in use by the general population. So they consider these attacks targeted at Hezbollah, because only Hezbollah members should have had them.

They were not intending to target children or other civilians, but of course when something goes off at a random time like this there is no guarantee that only the targets are in possession of these devices.

However, I think the attack will end up actually harming Israeli security, for two reasons:

First of all, they put too much explosive stuff in it. If it were a smaller explosion (or even just a short circuit leading to device failure), fewer people would have been hurt, and they would have more claim to say they were targeting communications infrastructure. But if the explosions were smaller, the attack would not have gotten into the news. I think they made the explosions larger than necessary just to make headlines, without regard to collateral damage. I think that's the part that would get any other country into hot water as a war crime.

But more importantly, they have proven to Hezbollah that Israel cannot track these closed pager networks, otherwise they would not have needed to blow them up! So now Hezbollah has learned to open up every pager before deploying, and once they source more devices they have their secure network back.

So in a few months, Israelis will be in a less secure position than they were before the attack, just because some of their leaders wanted to make headlines.

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 22 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Pagers are a civilian object though.

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule12

There was no way to know where these people would be when the bombs went off. Israel could have detonated at night, to minimise the chance of civilian casualties. They didn't. During busy markets.

This was literally textbook terrorism, and against international law (see link).

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 1 month ago

Exactly this. I don't understand why nobody seems to want to talk about everyone that witnessed this shit and the sheer terror that they are most likely still experiencing.

Which was the point.

[–] nonailsleft@lemm.ee -1 points 1 month ago

Do you think more Hezbros would have worn their pagers during the day or when they were asleep?

[–] kurwa@lemmy.world 20 points 1 month ago

You know that Hezbollah is a part of their government right? They have seats in their parliament. So even if they just attacked "Hezbollah" they attacked politicians, politicians in their homes with their families. If anyone directly targeted U.S. governors or congresspeople, or godforbid knesset members, all of the same people would be screaming murder and terrorism from the tops of hills. This is blatant racism.