I don't see this as a smart move (let alone strategy) in any time frame. As a third-party observer greatly removed from the conflict I used to view Israel as an island under attack from terrorists. Now I'm struggling to see the differences between their activities and blowing up airplanes or launching rockets from schools and hospitals. You can say I'm naive, and why would Israel care about how I feel, but as a country and a people they only exist as long as we're their benefactor, and I don't think I'm alone in how I feel.
> Now I'm struggling to see the differences between their activities and blowing up airplanes or launching rockets from schools and hospitals.
Well, the obvious difference is that blowing up airplanes or launching rockets at residential areas intentionally targets civilians in order to spread a maximum amount of terror among the civilian population while blowing up pagers that were used for coordinating attacks against Israel very specifically targets operatives involved in such activities.
Some of the initial footage shows such a device going off while innocent bystanders remain unharmed. You can't get any more targeted than that.
Yes, such a pager might have ended up in the hands of a non-involved person, but given the facts known so far that's very unlikely, because there's a reason those people were carrying these devices on them: They were afraid of being tracked down by Mossad in the first place.
Many people fail to see this. You can't compare a terrorist attack that intentionally targets civilians with no apparent military target to a legitimate attack on a defined military target that unfortunately results in some collateral damage.
Many people fail to see this because they have an intact moral core. Conducting a military operation that has a fully predictable rate of civilian casualties is morally equivalent to targeting those civilians.
Israel has utilized a rate of expected civilian to militant casualties in Gaza at the rate of 100:1 [1].
> Conducting a military operation that has a fully predictable rate of civilian casualties is morally equivalent to targeting those civilians.
By that logic only the absolute number of (expected) civilian deaths matters... which can't be right.
If it were true, then exploding a city bus (1 soldier, 10 civilians) would be more moral than striking a military base (1,000 soldiers, 11 civilians.)
It would also suggest a kind of blame-shifting if one side decides to install their missile launchers in the playgrounds of elementary schools or whatever.
You are simply incorrect. “Rate” is a ratio, not an absolute number.
But to your point, Israel’s ratio in Gaza was as high as 100 civilians to 1 soldier in the shopping mall (or more accurately, refugee family shelters).
No, you've cut off the crucial second half of the sentence, which says a military operation with known risks of civilian deaths "is morally equivalent to targeting those civilians."
The phrase "those civilians" refers to a countable quantity of them.
Perhaps you meant to write "morally equivalent to targeting that proportion of civilians"?
Assuming that's a plural "you", I would paraphrase the subthread like this:
_________
(1) zer0x4d: "Many people fail to see that morality depends on intent, there is a qualitative difference between deliberate and incidental collateral damage."
(2) abalone: "No, only people suffering from broken moral cores think there's a difference. An attack when they knew a predictable rate of collateral damage is morally the same as deliberately targeting those civilians who died."
(3) Terr_: "It's based on the number of civilians who die? That doesn't make sense. Consider these scenarios, where even though fewer civilians die, the intent/planning of the act makes us judge it as morally worse."
(4) abalone: "Incorrect, I said it was about comparing the two rates of death."
(5) Terr_: "Well, that's not quite what you wrote earlier, is this other version closer to what you meant to convey?"
Hi Terr, the "you" was singular (and in reference to you, in particular). You paraphrase the subthread well enough, but your first comment within it misinterpreted what Abalone said.
> > Conducting a military operation that has a fully predictable rate of civilian casualties is morally equivalent to targeting those civilians.
>By that logic only the absolute number of (expected) civilian deaths matters... which can't be right.
Abalone (as well as myself, many others, including the signers of the Geneva Convention) is concerned about the use of force against a civilian population where it is predictable that there will be a high rate of civilian death. Abalone says that is morally equivalent to targeting those civilians and Abalone is correct (it is, in fact, a war crime). It is not necessarily about absolute number of civilian deaths, so your counterexample does not succeed.
I think the argument boils down to "what does it mean to target civilians?"
if 100 die to get 1 soldier, that sounds like targeting civilians. If 1 dies to get 100 soldiers, that sounds like (to me and many others) a successful and targeted attack with minimal collateral damage.
The argument being made sounds like if you know there could be 1 death that you should not target the soldiers and that there is no difference in that case to the 100 civilians to 1 soldier and as such, if any civilian could have been estimated to be collateral damage then no military action should have been made.
I think that is supercilious and discounts reality. Civilians are going to get killed and war is terrible. There is a difference in targeted ratios.
Lavender specifically calls out NCVs as high as 100 for high level commanders not soldiers, and NCVS aren't minimums they are maximums. Where is the actual case where 100 died for one soldier?
There are many points on this grey line, and we often fail to recognise those in the middle. For example, between your two points is a very significant type of action that this one may well fall under: an attack on a military target that you are fully aware will result in significant collateral damage.
The act of modifying and/or deploying the devices was targeted. That’s it.
Carrying out an explosives attack across a large geographic area that includes public spaces, with no specific intelligence on the location of the devices, or who is within the blast range, is the exact opposite of targeted.
What on earth would be more targeted than compromising pagers that only Hezbollah military is using?
At some point the criticism really gets absurd. There probably was collateral damage, yes. This is what you have to account for if you start wars against another nation. Repeatedly.
Opposite of targeted are the missiles that hit northern Israel.
> Some of the initial footage shows such a device going off while innocent bystanders remain unharmed.
This is anecdotal and misleading. There are reports of civilians maimed including the murder of a child. This is entirely plausible due to the indiscriminate nature of these bombs with respect to immediate bystanders.
If an enemy had set off thousands of small bombs in American supermarkets and homes, maiming thousands of whoever was nearby and killing children, we would undoubtedly call it a mass terrorist attack.
2000+ bombs hurting 2000 fighters and one child? I'd argue that almost no war is without collateral damage, but this one action might be uniquely low in the amount of collateral damage done.
> This is anecdotal and misleading
I saw 5 videos and in every case only the person carrying the pager was hurt. Even people less than a foot away weren't harmed. Look at the video on the front page of nytimes.com right now to see what it's like. Highly targeted at Hizbullah soldiers, no bystanders hurt. The exact opposite of "indiscriminate".
You're working yourself up into some righteous anger about this, which is fine, that's your choice. But at least recognise that that's what you're doing. You need a certain narrative to be true so you're twisting facts to suit that.
Sure, there has been at least one civilian death, and others might be reported later. While we don't have numbers yet, the evidence so far suggests a low ratio of civilian casualties, probably much lower than what's possible using convention warfare against an enemy embedded in a civilian population.
Israel also do bad things. Maybe it flies under the radar of being called terrorism by the west - but look at west banks settlements, jailing kids forever for throwing stones, turning Gaza into something that makes Mad Max look like a dream in the name of self-defence, appartheid conditions in Israel and the occupied territories. Offensives on Gaza before Oct 7 - 2023 was particularly bad, and the general embargo aroudn Gaza that made life pretty rotten before the current war - etc.
Israel do enough operations that ticks the "look we killed soldiers guys!" box and they really like to get media attention on that. Otherwise it is "Hamas was hiding there". Hard to verify - they may be right sometimes, but I bet not all the time based on the the number of deaths and the amount of destruction in Gaza.
This isn't happening. Kids are being jailed for throwing stones, yes. Just like you or I would be jailed if we threw a rock at a cop. But it is not "forever".
I know there is a documented case of a non-involved person getting injured, but do you have evidence that this attack was not 99% effective? The attack vector was the device specifically used only by involved people.
A 9 year old child was killed, proving this attack wasn't as targeted as you think. However Israel is happy to accept any amount of collateral damage as long as it doesn't happen to them.
Any child death is tragic, but this is really one of the most targeted strikes in the history of warfare. It is safe to believe that everyone that was given a pager for secret communication by a terrorist group, is associated with such group, probably in a military capacity. Furthermore, videos show that extremely close bystanders are left unhurt.
I think this only goes out to show that criticism towards Israel waging warfare is not really about the way that warfare is fought, but really on the right of Israel to fight at all. As no one in history has achieved a more precise attack in urban setting towards a non-uniformed organization ever.
There is no comprehensive information yet on the ratio of civilians to militants maimed by this attack, and any claims otherwise are propaganda.
If an enemy had exploded small remote controlled bombs in American supermarkets and homes targeting members of the American political parties, the sponsors of terrorism and oppressive dictatorships in many foreign countries, there is no question we would characterize it as a terrorist attack.
Yes. If China detonated several thousand bombs in Idaho civilian locations on the premise they were targeting militias, some of whom fought in Syria and/or against Chinese oppression of the Uyghurs, this would absolutely be an act of mass terrorism.
> but this is really one of the most targeted strikes in the history of warfare.
You are making that up and quoting yourself. There was not a single fire-control system onboard these pagers; there was no visual designation of the target, and no confirmation that it was being carried by it's owners. The target was broadly designated and not even discriminated on a case-by-case basis. A button was pressed, and consequences including the death of a child are now in play.
Israel has the capability to field targeted strikes on their own using domestic Litening and SPICE munitions (not to say they don't end up targeting civilians anyways). The unforunate bottom line is that this was an indiscriminate and presumptive attack that generally relies on a complete disregard for collateral damage. Innocent bystanders died, ones that would not be targeted by any morally accountable soldier in the command-and-control loop. That means an error was made, in civilized armies.
Thousands were injured, yes. How many of the thousands injured belonged to Hezbollah? It’s a safe bet that the majority of injuries were sustained by owners of these Hezbollah-supplied pagers.
International law allows, to some extent, collateral damage during war (and Israel and Hezbollah are certainly at war). What percentage of collateral damage would you say is acceptable here? 50%? 20%? None?
Hezbollah are also terrorists. You might think it is ok to fight terror with terror, all I am trying to point out is that this is indeed a response in kind.
Hamas may be the “legitimate” government of Gaza (or at least the most recently elected one), but Hezbollah is not the legitimate government of Lebanon; it’s a minority party with outsized influence in parts of Lebanon due to its militia and intelligence services.
Almost 3000 wounded are not a problem if they're Hezbollah, no? The child is tragic of course, but one dead child when targeting enemy soldiers is more ethical than the dead children in deliberate attacks on civilians, which is what Hezbollah is doing.
Why are you pretending otherwise? Is it the bigotry of low expectations? Arabs/Muslims can act very reasonable and humane too, so there's no reason to measure them with a different yard stick
Anyone who got resold / loaned those devices, those who were next to blast radius of those devices while going with their lives, any relatives who were unfortunate enough of having an hezbollah member in their family.
This is basically just one step above a chemical attack, and can only be excused as "the end justifies the means" by the interested parties.
Why would you use 80s technology that allows you to circumvent Israeli tracking, and get that from Hezbollah if you're not in cahoots with them? People in Lebanon can afford smart phones.
With the people next to the blast radius you have a point, but when targeting guerilla fighters that blend in with civillian populace it's hard to not inadvertantly target innocents too. But a small explosive device that is used by enemy soldiers and kept close to their bodies is the best way to avoid innocent casualties.
Also, Hezbollah hiding between innocents doesn't mean Israel shouldn't defend themselves. If you hide behind civillians you're the one to blame for casualties, not the party that defends against you
I guess you've never been in most of middle east. Pagers, shortwave radios and "80s technology" are still widely deployed among the general population.
This isn't about pagers generally, this is about a particular batch of 5,000 pagers ordered by Hezbollah. They weren't distributed to random Lebanese citizens.
Hezbollah employs doctors (heck, it runs hospitals) and Hezbollah personnel (in any of the political, armed, or social services parts of the organization) presumably fairly often live in households with children.
"Doctors and children are among the dead" isn't inconsistent with "this came from an order of devices specifically for Hezbollah" (it does cast doubt on "this was a precisely-targeted attack on Hezbollah combatants", but that's a very different claim.)
We'll need to await more info about the second wave of explosions from other devices, but the first wave was widely reported to be from a specific order of 5,000 pagers for Hezbollah, see e.g. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-planted-exp...
Again, these guys don't go to distributors saying "Hello, we're evil Inc, we want your devices for our nefarious plans!" - they were coming from a batch imported trough local resellers like...basically every other consumer retail channel.
Without taking in consideration that "Hezbollah" as a loosely defined group ranges from conservative politicians and institutions to bona fine terrorists.
These devices were being shipped in equal measure from the guys sending rockets to Israel to the local equivalent of those preppers who like to spend their weekend eavesdropping the police radio waiting for WWIII.
Unfortunately real life is a bit messier than a Tony Scott movie, and we didn't harm 5000 evil terrorists ready to destroy America and Israel from their Cobra underground lair, just a bunch of random people - a few of them genuinely bad guys (how many? thousands? hundreds? less than ten?), and everyone else who may or may have not sympathized with a group that may or may be not considered a terrorist organization, depending on who you ask.
Mainstream sources are saying it was a specific shipment of 5,000 pagers, which Hezbollah ordered from Gold Apollo (a manufacturer, not a local reseller), that was tampered with.
Are you claiming that these sources are wrong, and Hezbollah actually bought them from some retailer who happened to have 5,000 units of tampered inventory?
Per Reuters, "The senior Lebanese security source said the group had ordered 5,000 beepers made by Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, which several sources say were brought into the country in the spring."
I suppose the source could be lying, but what is your alternate theory exactly? Militaries don't tend to procure their communications equipment from the shelves of Radio Shack. Lebanon doesn't have a booming pager market, so it's unlikely that some local distributor just happened to have 5,000+ pagers sitting around.
This was clearly a special order (which doesn't mean no distributor was involved), and Occam's razor suggests that Mossad tampered with that particular order, rather than tampering with random pagers and just hoping that some of them might end up being purchased by Hezbollah later.
"Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah says the group’s leadership was mostly spared during Tuesday’s attack targeting pagers that killed several members in Lebanon as they were using older devices while “new ones were sent elsewhere.”
Beacuse it's a pager, and they're rather common in most of Egypt, Turkey and middle east countries for medical support and first-time responders.
I mean, the reason Hezbollah switched to those devices was also because they're readily available in the country.
I'd be extremely, extremely surprised if this was a "targeted" shipment rather than a generic batch that was expected to a certain degree to be bought by hezbollah members.
> I'd be extremely, extremely surprised if this was a "targeted" shipment rather than a generic batch that was expected to a certain degree to be bought by hezbollah members.
Because they're not S.P.E.C.T.R.E. It's a separatist group whose more extreme members resort to terrorism, not much differently than IRA, Basque Nationalists or Bosnian Indipendentists.
Their supply channel is the same as the civilian population, they're not shopping for vibranium from Hydra.
It would be interesting if we could trace the local distributor for those devices and see where they were available at retail, it would probably match the areas in Lebanon where members of hezbollah are commonly located.
I'm confused, how do you know the 99% of those wounded aren't Hezbollah operatives?
How many innocents would get harmed during a more conventional military strike against the same group of operatives?
I would be fairly surprised if Hezbollah opsec guidelines didn't say that you must have the pager at you at all times, and make sure it can't be accessed by others.
This is likely the most precise large scale military strike of all time. You can't control for everything - some pagers might have been in the hands of innocent people - but it sure seems like an ideal attack vector.
> blowing up airplanes or launching rockets at residential areas intentionally targets civilians in order to spread a maximum amount of terror among the civilian population
Which is exactly what Israel has been doing for decades by
and on and on and on since a time when none of us was even born. Let's not pretend Israel is the good guy here. There are no good guys, and while I don't accept the acts of Hezbollah, what is a colonized people being genocided to do when the world doesn't care about them being denied human rights ?
I wonder if it would endanger the plane. A 20g explosive sitting in the pocket of a person will clearly cause serious injury, but I am unsure if it has penetration power to actually go through the plane body. I am reminded of mythbusters experiments with small amount of explosives to block up doors, but I don't recall how much they needed in the end.
Poking holes in the fuselage of a jetliner isn't going to take down a plane. Consider the cases of a turbine fan blade taking out a window, the case where the MAX door panel blew off, the cases where the cargo door came off, and the 737 "convertible" case. You'd have to take out a large part of the structure to bring it down.
Take a look at all the photos of B-17s taking severe combat damage yet returning home. Jetliners are a lot more redundant today than the B-17s were.
However, if the hole took out the flight controls, or set a fire, then the airplane has a big problem.
In some of the cases you mentioned, there were passenger deaths due to being ejected from the aircraft. I'm on mobile or I'd link exactly which incidents but I remember at least two cases from when I was bored in a lecture and read through most of Wikipedia's "list of deaths in aircraft incidents" list or whatever it's called
>Poking holes in the fuselage of a jetliner isn't going to take down a plane. Consider the cases of
These are all fake news. According to Hollywood, a single bullet from a gun will cause an airplane to break apart in mid-air. You can't honestly expect me to believe Hollywood movies get physics wrong.
Similarly, as soon as a car's wheels leave the ground, it bursts into a fireball according to many TV shows I've seen.
Naturally the close quarters will results in multiple people being harmed. The question is more about the physics and if the explosives has enough penetrating power to go through the walls of the plane.
The bigger risk to the plane (and passengers) would likely be if the person carrying the explosive was working in the airport and the explosion occurred during a critical moment, like when a pilot is taxiing.
Most of the flight would be out of range and I’m not even sure that explosion would take out a plane. Plus it would probably be powered off because Hezbollah is serious about flight safety.
Do we know whether or not they embedded gps tracking into the bombs?
I would think they would have that ability, not just to avoid a horrible accident like blowing up a plane, but also to gather valuable tracking intel on a terrorist organization.
My understanding is that pagers are typically radio Rx-only, and that it is not possible to track their location like a cellular device -- which is likely why Hezbollah chose to use them.
Though it would be possible to add this ability when the hardware was intercepted, a transmitting device is also easy to detect.
The AR924's in question are POCSAG pagers; broadcast from base stations and receive only at the pager end. Two way pagers are a thing but use an entirely different protocol for communications.
I was thinking about this, but then it probably wouldn't even get past a security xray scan. Which makes me think, in the 5 or so months these were reported to being in the wild, one never boarded a plane?
From what I can find, the targeted pager-model can receive UHF messages in the 450~470MHz range. That could reach passenger jet cruise altitudes if the transmitter is strong enough.
I think it's safest to assume Hezbollah are using strong transmitters, because they'll want to be able to broadcast across rather large areas and in a way that resists potential jamming.
On the flip side, I'm having a hard time imagining these as threats to an entire airplane, given the tight constraints on how much explosive power can be secretly snuck into a functioning pager.
Penetration of 450-480MHz through the shell of an airplane would, on the ground,require a transmission strength of approximately .4dB/m at a distance of 1 kilometer, which is doable by most measures, but would quickly become unrealistic as the plane gained altitude.
What do they do, then? Are you implying that connections can only exist as a two way relationship? Are rivers not connected to streams, tributaries, etc?
Receiving data from a network is a connection, no matter how you want to define it.
The towers resend the message for a while so that they get through - some guy might be in a plane on approach to Beirut right now his pager coming into range as they land ....
We can nuke a dictator. It's going to blow up everything within miles, evaporating millions of people, but it can't get any more targeted than that. Deal with it.
Seriously, tho, it's infuriating that a government literally triggered explosion among general public, right in front of innocent eyes. This is an act of terrorism, harming the lives of innocent people who've been largely unrelated to the conflict.
They may have discriminated carefully on which devices were modified, but any care or intelligence ends there.
When they triggered the bombs, they can’t have known who or what was in the blast radius. Video shows one going off in a produce market. The fact that those variables are uncontrolled make it indiscriminate, by definition.
> This is false. Many innocents are killed including children
That article - just like all other sources - mentions one 8-year-old girl, not "many innocents" and not several children either. Hence, this is deliberate misinformation.
> You can't determine where the device is when the bomb is activated.
You absolutely can. It's highly likely to be in the targeted person's pocket. Where else would it be?
After all, people usually don't hand their phones to random strangers or leave them lying around - and those pagers aren't even mere personal devices used for private purposes. Why would any of those devices end up anywhere else but the pocket of the person using it?
> This is an indiscriminate attack.
Launching rockets at civilians is. Blowing up pagers explicitly used for terrorist activities isn't.
>After all, people usually don't hand their phones to random strangers or leave them lying around - and those pagers aren't even mere personal devices used for private purposes
And even compared to a phone, the limited functionality of a pager means the owner isn't going to hand it to a friend to show them a funny video or sports highlight, or to a kid to let them play games on it.
TBH, toddlers and younger kids would find pagers extremely fun: if you are at home, I wouldn't think that too far fetched.
However, since children causalties are "good anti-propaganda", any more would have certainly been reported, so I doubt there are more. Still, how successful targeting was is anyone's guess.
> You absolutely can. It's highly likely to be in the targeted person's pocket.
This seems intentionally avoiding the point. Duh, it's a pager. The real question is can the person donating the explosive tell if the pocket is completely isolated from innocents or if it's standing in a crowded line sitting very near to a childs head.
I do believe that Israel _tried_ to discriminate but its an explosive, you can only aim those to a point. Israel wasn't deliberately trying to kill children/harm innocents, Isreal did knowingly engage in a set of actions where it was possible outcome.
I want to be clear i am not trying to choose a side. These are actions of war in the 21st century.
Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
> After all, people usually don't hand their phones to random strangers or leave them lying around - and those pagers aren't even mere personal devices used for private purposes. Why would any of those devices end up anywhere else but the pocket of the person using it?
I leave my phone all the time, my kids are actually playing games on it. Also, I can be on public transportation, I can be driving, near a flammable object, or boarding a plane. As demonstrated an 8-year-old girl died, it's enough proof that an innocent died.
I think the part you are missing is that this was not an ordinary cellphone. These were pagers handed out by Hezbollah to the militants in their organization so they could communicate, specifically because they did not want to use ordinary cellphones out of fear of being tracked.
The only person who would be likely to have such a pager is a Hezbollah militant who is deemed responsible for secret Hezbollah information (i.e. mid-to-high ranking members). While it is technically possible that such a pager would get into the wrong hands, that would be the fault of the person who left his pager on the table or let his family play with it.
> While it is technically possible that such a pager would get into the wrong hands, that would be the fault of the person who left his pager on the table or let his family play with it.
What the hell? Why isn't it the fault of the one who detonates the bomb? This sets a dangerous precedent for attacking unsuspecting army personnel, even when they're off-duty. I don't think people's stance would be the same if this were done to off-duty IDF or US Army personnel and when they just doing ordinary things in public, for example. Moreover, Hezbollah is also a political party, and it's not just their military wing that's being targeted.
>This sets a dangerous precedent for attacking unsuspecting army personnel
Israel and Hezbollah are at a state of war. Hezbollah is a paramilitary organisation that does not meaningfully distinguish between military and civilian staff. There is already a very clear legal precedent - being an unsuspecting or off-duty combatant offers you no protection under international humanitarian law. Unless you're hors de combat, you're a legitimate target at all times. Sabotage of this type is an entirely legitimate ruse of war.
"While in some countries, entire segments of the population between certain ages may be drafted into the armed forces in the event of armed conflict, only those persons who are actually drafted, i.e., who are actually incorporated into the armed forces, can be considered combatants. Potential mobilization does not render the person concerned a combatant liable to attack."
Given that the pagers are for secret messages to be sent between militants, it would be highly unlikely for them to end up in the wrong hands unless the militant is being irresponsible.
Certainly you would not expect somebody in the military to leave a loaded gun around the house. But, also it should be obvious that they would not leave their radio device for transmitting top-secret information either due to the implications of having such information and how that would affect the safety of family members.
It is likely that nobody could have expected their pager to literally explode. But, military or merely involved in the "political" side, anybody who lets their family play with such a radio/pager is putting their family at risk.
I think the struggle here is that the combatants aren't on a battlefield in these modern wars. They're walking around a city full of civilians. Observing this it's hard not to feel like it wasn't a military target, however it clearly was.
Not only that, but from reports, it sounds like they deliberately sent an alert several seconds before detonation to ensure that the user of the pager would be the direct target. Or perhaps that was just the time it took for the fuse to detonate the explosive? Either way, some of the videos out there show the incredible precision that the owner of the pager was taken down and people in the vicinity were unscathed.
There are 100,000+ northern Israeli's who are refugees inside Israel because Hezbollah is firing hundred of rockets indiscriminately daily at civilian targets, but Israel doing something specifically targeted at higher level Hezbollah operatives makes you feel like Israel is doing exactly the same thing? All while you don't even yet know the reason for the Israeli op (was it to stop an imminent Hezbollah action? Seems odd that this also impacted so many operative in Syria, doesn't it? Why aren't people mentioning that this was larger than Lebanon?)
> The 1982 Lebanon War began on 6 June 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon. The invasion followed a series of attacks and counter-attacks between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) operating in southern Lebanon and the Israeli military that had caused civilian casualties on both sides of the border.
You asked "but what pissed them off so much". Maybe it was the PLO operating in Lebanon, not sure.
>As the Americans discovered, this level of radicalization doesn't come naturally to people.
It doesn't? Theocratic governments have been around for millennia. They're not some kind of modern invention; they're really just a reversion to how most societies worked in the past.
I never understood this logic. We made peace with the Japanese and Germans after the horrors of WWII. There will probably be peace between Russia and Ukraine at some point. Only Arabs attacking a specific country seem to be infantilized to the point where every retaliation is destined to perpetuate the conflict.
Nice, using Islam as a scapegoat. Lebanon is a democratic republic that has 43.4% Christian population. If that is their intention, why not focus on their country first rather than attacking Israel?
Lebanon had a civil war along religious lines. There are many Lebanese Christians in the USA that could help you with what seems to be a misunderstanding about the country.
Hezbollah's founders writings at the time are available online, and that they are clear about their goal being the rule of Islam. Their slogan was 'The Islamic Revolution in Lebanon'. They were founded as an Islamic revolutionary group, that is very core to who they are. Highlighting that is hardly 'using Islam as a scapegoat' whatever that means.
You are mentioning a civil war that happened a decade ago that is by no means exclusive to Hezbollah. I couldn't care less what their founders wrote, but, strangely, they care about the rule of Islam in Israel when their president is a Maronite Christian and their party is one of the parliament members. I can agree that they are Iranian proxies for war against Israel, but it's far from installing Islamic rule. I mean they are also responsible for the secular movement that comprised many religious factions [1]
I'm referring to a time when Hezbollah was founded. Kind of important to an organization, it's founding, and it's reason for being founded, don't you think?
You are trying to obfuscate Hezbollah's public statements calling for Islamic rule. Hezbollah wants Islamic rule and Sharia law for Lebanon, they are very clear about this. Currently realities that they have to put up with do not change that. They are also clear all of their actions and philosophy is consistent with and based on Islamic teaching. Again it is not deceptive to point out they are an Islamic organization.
Hezbollah is firing rockets to conduct terrorism on the civilian population living in the area. Are you are OK with terrorism if you feel it's justified?
Had Israel killed 15000 people when Hezbollah launched, I think it was 3000 rockets at civilians in an attempt to overwhelm Israel's iron dome defenses for civilians, during and immediately after Oct 7th, partnering with Hamas in ending the semi-peace that had been in place in order to kill the maximal amount if Israeli civilians/instill maximal fear? We are talking about those attacks on this thread about Lebanon.
> order to kill the maximal amount if Israeli civilians
This is hasbara. Both are part of the same wider conflict in which Israel is aiming to eliminate Palestine from the map. There was never peace to begin with, including before October 7. Israeli gradual decade-long land grabs are an act of war in themselves.
I think the desire to throw grenades over the fence comes more from the neighbor coming over the fence once in a while and murdering anything he finds.
You forgot to mention your neighbor razed the yard and killed some relatives too. Throwing some Molotovs, while it may not justified, is still an expected reaction.
Well, yesterday’s actions aren’t really gonna fix that situation for those 100,000 Israelis now though are they? It wasn’t designed to make that border region safer overnight because those rockets are going to keep coming even more often now. Hezbolah might even get so pissed off they go all out and rush the border.
It absolutely alleviates the situation. The rockets were going to be fired either way. Now with a few dead, a bunch of wounded, and a communication channel disabled, it's going to be harder to coordinate future rocket attacks.
It looks like Israel wants to be secure. It was attacked in October and since then retaliated to attacks.
It is not a terrorist attack, it was an reaction of Hezbollah indiscriminately firing rockets into Israel. That are terror attacks. Something UN troops are supposed to stop, but that is another topic.
You can look up what Hezbollah wants and that is nothing else than the elimination of Israel. The terror is almost exclusively one sided here and it is sourced from radical fundamentalism.
And no, Israel doesn't not murder, rape and torture, that is purely projection.
Personally I’m all for Israel’s security. I find it devastating how hard long term peace in the region seems to be, and how it keeps getting further and further away.
> It is not a terrorist attack, it was an reaction of Hezbollah indiscriminately firing rockets into Israel
It was literally a terrorist attack - it was designed to cause terror. If Hezbollah had done this to the Israeli government or even IDF reservists, I've no doubt that you would call it a terror attack.
And why might Hezbollah be firing rockets onto Lebanese land illegally occupied by militant Israeli settlers, I wonder? Could it also have something to do with Israel launching unprovoked airstrikes in Lebanon?[0] Israel is the occupier, Israel is the aggressor - Israel needs to stop.
> Something UN troops are supposed to stop
That's ironic, given how many UN staff Israel has murdered since last October.
> And no, Israel doesn't not murder, rape and torture, that is purely projection.
I'm sorry, but you're either incredibly misinformed, or an that's an outright lie - even the UN says Israel has institutionalised the use of abuse, torture, sexual abuse and rape[1][2]. Even B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, agrees with this![3]
I've read countless reports of Israel torturing Palestinian hostages - they are doing it on a huge scale, and in mind-bendingly evil ways.
Israel is a sick, apartheid regime that must be stopped.
Sure, except Moses and the Jewish people were on the land around 1500 BC, and the Islamic religion didn't start until after 500 CE. So the Jewish people got there at least 2000 years earlier, so if we are doing the "who ethnically cleansed who" game, I think the Jewish people appear to be at most, reversing the previous ethnic cleansing? Or is there some kind of moral "expiry date" on ethnic cleansing?
This is a pretty heated thread, and I’m not trying to fan any flames: the Assyrians and Sumerians were there before that. It always seemed a bit arbitrary to me to claim land based on whose religion started first — although not quite as arbitrary as “my God said it’s mine, so there.” Plus I believe they claimed that Ashur promised the land to them.
I think we can all agree that the ancient Roman and Byzantine empires were not exactly gold standards in protecting human rights. However, the fact that something was done to the Jews thousands of years ago does not make it acceptable to do the same to another population today.
The birth of Islam did not cause a whole new race of people to spring from the ground, some of their ancestors lived in the region as well. And according to the Torah the Jewish people who came to that region with Moses during the exodus had to fight off the caananites and philistines before they could settle, so apparently itd been occupied for a while- not that I'd put too much stock in the ancient history thats come down to us, certainly not enough to enforce modern territorial claims
Israel left Gaza. It gave the Palestinians what they wanted. Their own area with no settlers. Israel forcefully removed all of its people from all of Gaza.
In exchange they immediately voted in a terrorist organization as their government and began to attack Israel over and over again.
Of course the guy's a lunatic. He also happens to have a lot of support within certain very powerful circles, not in spite of but because of what he's proposing to do in Gaza, and for his lunatic, outright fascistic worldview generally. That's why they made him National Security Minister, after all.
There was nothing remotely racist in my post, and I don't appreciate the smear.
There are like 20% Arabs among Israel citizens. The are about 20 (not %, just 20) Jews in Lebanon. Who's ethnically cleansing whom again?
Both Jews and Palestinian Arabs have legitimate claims against each other. The levels of barbarity in pursuing these claims is not even remotely comparable.
By native i assume you mean arab. Not to mention that the infant mortality rate dropped something like 90% after the state was founded and the arab population is still growing at a huge rate.
Not necessarily, this can happen with immigration alone. For example, French and English descendants used to form a much greater percentage of the Canadian population, yet they were not "ethnically cleansed".
If we are talking about pre-globalization many countries are no longer have a majority “native” population. (US, Japan, Taiwan, parts of Europe) and that is just the reality of human history.
I think we have to decide on a time when the back and fourth geocoding between groups is no longer acceptable. Most of the world thinks it’s around the end of ww2 and the start of globalization, but are you contending that it should be later, and the Arabs should take back Israel?
There are old stories of the Russians planting mines inside children's toys during some of the later cold war conflicts. This is starting to feel a bit like that. Nobody had any way of knowing who was holding those pagers when they sent that packet but they still distributed thousands of munitions throughout the populace and pressed the red button. Now there are probably at least a hundred or so still out there that haven't exploded and are just live UXO sitting in people's desk drawers.
Yes. Except there are credible reports of Israel also doing this in the past.
"Israeli fighter planes have also attempted to kill children by dropping thousands of booby-trapped toys on Lebanese villages and towns. The Israeli occupying forces have used this method through the years and continue to do so, the most recent example being when booby-trapped toys were dropped on the town of Nabatiyah, killing and injuring children and permanently disfiguring others."
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-180386/https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/227779/Mariam%252C_res...
So you can guarantee every single pager went to a solider of war? By that logic, soldiers in the Ukraine war also use cellphones and drones so it's A-OKAY to implant bombs in those products too?
Ok so the US DEA detonates explosives on cartel members.
Your daughter is enjoying a cappuccino at a bistro when a cartel member walks by, the device detonates burning and scarring her face. You’re good with it.
Your oldest son has ordered a deli sandwich and is waiting for his order. He kneels down to tie his shoes. Next to him is a cartel member. The device detonates, destroying his ear drum. You’re good with it.
Your sister is shopping for produce at the market, as she walks past a cartel member to choose an avocado, the device detonates, maiming her left hand. She loses her fingers and is let go from her job as a software engineer. You’re good with it.
Your mom sits down in an empty seat on public transportation. The man next to her is cartel. The device detonates and shrapnel pierces an artery in her leg. She dies. You’re good with it.
Your brother, nephew, and youngest son are walking down the street. You were supposed to pick the kids up at 3pm but had to work late. You asked your brother to walk them home instead. A cartel member is driving a vehicle down the same road. Suddenly the device detonates and they lose control, the vehicle swerves up on the sidewalk striking all three. Your brothers leg is maimed and mangled, before he passes out from pain he watches his son die, trapped beneath the vehicle. Your son is flung into a wall and suffers a severe brain injury, he survives but never walks or talks again. You change his diapers for the next 40 years. You’re good with it.
Your dad is an ER doctor, a man comes in complaining of trouble breathing. As your dad is listening to his lungs, the device detonates, ejecting shrapnel into your father’s face. The man was part of the cartel, if he doesn’t work for them, they will kill his sister. Your father is blinded and can no longer practice medicine. You’re good with it.
Two things:
1) This is war. It's not pretty and it's never not messy.
2) This is precisely why every human, and every leader of humans, should avoid war at all costs. The image of a "clean" war is a myth. Even the Allies in WWII were not immune to this, see the bombing of Dresden[1].
Whatever you think of either side in this, it's clear that neither is doing enough to end this.
Becouse christianity formed our societes like this. With help of Romans...
Becouse we learned about separating religion from power, law, medicine, science, etc. Some tries to get rid of religion completly but that another subject.
And it is absolutely sure US agency would not do such thing on "USA soil".
But down there is a open battle in WW3 - Israel delivered something to Ukraine and next day rockets started falling on them, fired by suicidal ponies.
You can bomb an ordnance storage facility even if there's a hospital right next to it (or, in fact, right not on top of it).
They've made sure the pagers were used by Hezbollah first and foremost, tough shit if few were given to kids to play.
And yes if Ukrainians were able to blow up all drones within say 50km of the front lines on the Russian side they'd be justified to do that, even if some were in civilians' hands.
You've been victim of what's called manufactured consent.
Why hasn't Israel allowed any investigations in Gaza, not showing evidence they're using to obliterate practically all of Palestine now, not allowing foreign journalists in either to document things?
No, we sure can go all the way back to 1948 and talk about how Israel gained territory in a series of defensive wars, Palestinians and their Arab allies getting their asses handed back to them every single time.
We'll sure find some occurrences of Israel chasing away Arab civilians early on, but that's beside the point. This attack, and the absolute majority of Israel attacks of the last decades, target enemy combatants, and civilians only ever suffer collaterally. Israel never mounted an attack on civilians, and went very far in reducing civilian casualties when attacking combatants - roof knocking and all that.
How 'bout 0%? I have zero compassion with displaced Palestinians - they were wronged, but what they did after was so much wronger.
We both know how Palestinians repaid those who was kind to them- by Lebanon Civil War and Black September. Israel was ready to cede what it won in defensive wars, they got out of Gaza, built infrastructure and invested in businesses to provide jobs.
Palestinians had countless opportunities to make peace and live a better life. They choose war every single time, made Dalal Mughrabi their hero, dug up water pipes and made missiles out of them.
Even if up to 30% of casualties were civilian this would still be quite a surgical strike in my opinion. At 50% I would not say so anymore. Nobody knows yet anyways.
If your standard for engaging in military action is that they must be able to prove to you personally that their target is really a militant, you are completely delusional.
"Israeli fighter planes have also attempted to kill children by dropping thousands of booby-trapped toys on Lebanese villages and towns. The Israeli occupying forces have used this method through the years and continue to do so, the most recent example being when booby-trapped toys were dropped on the town of Nabatiyah, killing and injuring children and permanently disfiguring others."
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-180386/
It's a bit silly to think the Ukrainians would do something like this, because any such thing would instantly lose them the war as all western support is withdrawn.
Russia meanwhile... they just seem like they want to see the world burn. Given the fact they're fighting using convicted criminals, it doesn't seem all that far fetched.
Western media has full control over information and if Ukrainians would do something like this, no one would even know.
There were multiple cases of Ukrainians doing something evil or borderline evil that were swept under the rug. One of the recent examples is the cassette munition explosion over a beach in Sevastopol, which killed few children and wounded a hundred of people. I stopped following the war closely but it got my attention because that's my home town. And in this case I even agree that the rocket wasn't specifically targeting the beach (that would be stupid), it was likely targeting the nearby airbase; but that's not the point.The point is that every single time something like this happens, it gets silenced.
There are multiple high-quality videos of the explosion recorded from different angles. On Reddit, a high-quality video of an even like this, surreal and frightening, would otherwise have been upvoted to skies. But not when it puts Ukrainians in bad light! One the next day, as a random Reddit user, you'd never even know about this event (I wonder how many people know about this at all).
And again, this is just one example. I can probably collect few hundreds of cases likes this over the first two years of the war, where as a Western media consumer you would never know about something that could potentially change your opinion on the conflict. And just like this, you're being manipulated. Of course, so are the Russians who solely rely on Russian news sources. The only way to know the truth is to follow both sides closely, especially to what each side hides and silences. You'd be surprised.
Why would that specific video be up-voted into the skies? It's just another piece of misery porn and we had at least 2 years of that on almost daily basis at that point.
The point is that every single time something like this happens, it gets silenced.
Except it doesn't. Stuff like this gets reported all the time (for exactly what it is), also when Ukrainians do it. Like the EW-intercepted drone that hit that apartment outside Moscow, killing (according to local reports) someone inside. Even RFE/RL reported it.
Not every single incident of course -- but they do get reported, very frequently.
People tend not to dwell on it, of course -- because they know these things are bound to happen to some degree (and anyone with more than a completely casual understanding of WW II knows that inadvertent civilian casualties, even in allied countries, were extremely high). And that there are far too many perfectly deliberate atrocities happening, and at far greater scale (and except for a few isolated cases, all coming not so coincidentally from one side). And because they understand the far bigger point, which is that at the end of the day, the war (and all the suffering that will be required to end it) is Putin's fault anyway.
But that's very different from the simple matter of these events being "silenced". Because plainly they're not. The reason they don't get more column inches or newsroom chatter is because, by any level-headed analysis -- they just don't deserve any.
And attempting to describe the state of affairs that way, when clearly it isn't, is well -- manipulative.
> Western media has full control over information and if Ukrainians would do something like this, no one would even know
I'm not inclined to believe that, but even so Russia would scream it off the rooftops if there were the slightest chance that it would affect anything. Unfortunately it'd be lost in the flood of lies that they spout daily. At least western media seems to be mostly silent on things they can't be at least marginally truthful on (presumably because they have no need to be, I guess media in Ukraine is a bit more biased).
I think the one thing that I think completely turns me off this logic is that it’s only proponents seem to be the ones that feel like it’s fine for Russia to keep what it’s unlawfully taken.
Sure, there’s a bunch of drone footage of Ukraine dropping shit on barely moving Russian soldiers, but I’m not sure if that’s an indictment of Russia or Ukraine.
which has now escalated into 1 million dead in Ukraine
So mere hours after appearing in the WSJ, "1M are now dead or injured (but actually about 80k Ukrainian, 200k Russian dead)"[0] is being misquoted as simply "1M dead", and not so coincidentally in tandem with another misconception (that gets repeated on HN almost daily it seems):
when it could have been resolved w Minsk Accords or anything negotiated in Normandy or Turkey since then.
"Could have been resolved", that is, by granting to Putin permanent sovereignty over whatever territories he happened to be sitting on at the time, if not then some, and other non-viable concessions (with no guarantees that they would even work to stop him from simply grabbing more land and/or just keep bombing Ukrainian cities whenever it might suit his fancy):
Fair enough, I was inaccurate in saying 1M dead, should have said “dead or injured”.
However, you are WILDLY inaccurate suggesting that the Minsk agreements would have ”granted to Putin permanent sovereingty over” Donbas. He was not “sitting over it”. The entire Donbas would have been an autonomous part of Ukraine. Kyiv officials didnt want to grant this autonomy, but more importantly, Angela Merkel admitted the West cynically “used the peace agreemnys to buy time and arm Ukraine!”
Now you may say that “Russia would have kept Crimea and that is why Ukraine must fight to the last Ukrainian to return it” but you don’t know the history of Crimea.
The vast majority (94%) voted to be independent of Ukraine every chance they got, starting in 1991, 1992, etc
and they only agreed to be part of Ukraine if guaranteed autonomy (and Russia agreed to recognize it on that basis). After that, though, Ukraine broke the agreement, invaded Crimea with 4000 troops in the 90s, arrested their leaders, forced them to change their constitution, etc. But they got to keep Crimea anyway with not a peep from the “democratic West” (cause the West is biased):
Crimea has been an unwilling hostage to Ukraine but if Ukraine is doing it then it’s OK because the West never reports on it…
I mean heck, NATO integration was wildly unpopular among the Ukrainian public, it was only happening because Yuschenko was an unpopular stooge who was ramming it through anyway, since Bush vowed that Ukraine and Georgia would be in NATO:
This came to a head in 2008 with Georgia when Medvedev - not Putin - was president. The war had the same EXACT elements: two breakaway Georgian republics (Abhazia and Ossetia) being shelled by Mikhail Saaakashvili hoping to be in NATO. They asked Russia for help. Russia invaded with tanks going to the capitol.
The difference is that it was over in a week because Nikolas Sarkozy (the French President at the time) negotiated a peace agreement. Georgia is fine now, I’ve been there. (Saakashvili is in Georgian jail now btw.) Abhazia and Ossetia are not just fine, they’re happy to not be under Georgian hegemony. Imagine that. The matreshka doll of self determination can go more than 1 level deep, which the West and NATO knows really well in the case of Kosovo. (But it’s an “exception” of course, cause it’s them doing it.)
Anyway, that is the outcome you are told to “fear”. Russia didn’t go on to annex Georgia, or further, emboldened. They reacted to stated NATO expansion, and shelling of people on their border who asked them for help. They asked the government to cut it out, then intimidated them with tanks. If they backed down and stopped oppressing the two breakaway republics (same as Serbia and Kosovar Albanians) then they stopped also. It’s a valid approach and results in more peace for everyone.
And in fact, in the 2022 invasion, the role of Nikolas Sarkozy was played to the T by Israeli PM Naftali Bennett. He says in a tell-all interview that he was negotiating with Putin and Zelensky directly and could have had the war halted a mere 1-2 weeks in. But he was specifically told by the Western leaders to stand down and let it play out. That “Putin was not to be negotiated with, he was to be defeated.”
So much for “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine”. Actually, the war must go on, so we can weaken Russia. Ukraine is the new Afghanistan (mujahideen, stinger missiles, a decade leaving 2 million dead civilians).
====
Speaking of the casualties:
If you want to go by official UN casualty numbers, this war has the SMALLEST civilian-to-combatant casualty ratios I have ever seen (something like 20 militants to 1 civilian!). Both sides want to avoid killing civilians, likely because 11 million Russians have relatives in Ukraine and vice versa.
By contrast, the urban warfare in Gaza has (in my estimation) a 4 civilians to 1 militant ratio, while the worldwide historica average is 9 civilians to 1 militant.
But militants are people too, especially if they are regular men being grabbed off the street and conscripted against their will. As a man, I understand that men are expendable in war, but as a libertarian, I have to count those deaths as involuntary in most cases.
The longer this goes on, the longer the Ukrainian nation is decimated. The women are abroad, the men can’t leave. The young women end up marrying successful foreigners. I know, I see them all over the place in USA, Canada etc. The children are half-Ukrainian. It’s not only that the men are being killed, but Zelensky’s war and policies of forcing the men to fight are reducing the Ukrainian nation as a while. If he allowed the men of Ukraine a choice, most would opt out of this war, even preferring to leave Ukraine than be drafted.
That’s why I am against wars as a libertarian. It’s politicians deliberately failing to avert a conflict, and the plebs have to pay the price while the politicians get rich and give speeches about how “we must all sacrifice”. Somehow the talking heads on TV never get drafted either!
However, you are WILDLY inaccurate suggesting that the Minsk agreements would have ”granted to Putin permanent sovereignty over” Donbas.
You are WILDLY misquoting me already in the very first sentence of your riposte. I never said that that's what the Minks Protocols said. I can understand how it might sort of seem like I said that -- that is, if you're hastily skimming, but not actually reading. Just read my words again, carefully this time please.
He was not “sitting over it”.
"Sitting on it" I said. Either way, it's just another way of saying "occupying" it, which of course he was and still is.
As to the other stuff you're saying -- look, you're going off on way too many tangents here (many not even about Ukraine), and presenting way too many twisted mischaracterizations of the historical record along the way (including even more WILDLY inflated body counts, this time in Afghanistan). Like any other contorted, vituperative, ideology-driven libertarian rant.
Not something I have time for, or see any purpose in. You're free to make of the world what you want, though.
So if the WP article for the Soviet Afghan war quotes a broad range of estimates, ranging from 562k to 3M, with most in the range of 800k-1.2M -- how is it that you came to believe 2M is the "right" number?
Without going back to check the article -- I just want to know what's in your head right now -- can you actually tell me which estimate it was that gave you the 2M figure, and why you decided to go with that estimate and not the others? Did you ever get to the section in the article where it lays out all the conflicting estimates, in that big huge sprawling pile of footnotes?
Or was it more like -- you scanned the little Infobox at the top, saw 3 estimates in the range 1M-3M (including 2 conflicting estimates from the same author) and thought to yourself "Hmm, I know, I'll just average them!"
Something like that?
No judgements here. I just want to understand your thought process.
> by granting to Putin permanent sovereignty over whatever territories he happened to be sitting on at the time
I think the one thing I can agree with is that it’s debatable whether it’s ultimately worth it. Is Putin’s Russia so much worse that it’s worth 80k deaths to prevent it becoming reality in those regions currently occupied?
I guess it depends on whether you think it's OK to be forced at gunpoint to abandon your culture and language and adopt your invader's, and to live in a totalitarian autocracy rather than a very imperfect democracy.
I don't think anyone would enjoy that, but they'd probably enjoy the war even less. I'm inclined to believe that for most people not all that much would change. You still go to work every day, you still go to school, you still get paid.
Like, I feel like the war has value for not allowing Putin (or any other leader) to just walk all over another country, but whether a specific place is called Russia or Ukraine, Germany or France? Maybe not so much. It just feels weird we're essentially fighting a war more for an ideology than a physical location/group of people. I guess that's always been the case though.
I mean, that’s literally what has happeneed throughout history everywhere?
Lots of groups currently live as part of a larger country - Basques, Catalonians, Kurds, Tibetans etc. does this mean they have to lose millions of people fighting for total independence and sovereignty?
In Ukraine, for instance, Crimea was an unwilling particpant, ever since 1991 we know 94% voted to break away from Ukraine. Ukraine invaded them in the 90s, arrested their leaders and changed their constitution.
Going further back, Galicia was part of Poland, but then Ukrainian communists took it. And Poland used to rule Ukraine, which Ukrainians chafed under (Bogdan Khmelnitsky revolt).
Ukraine has been a tinderbox of many cultures, incouding Kossacks, Orthodox Christians, Greeks, Russians, Catholic Poles, religious and secular Jews, Red athiest Communists, and more.
In 1919 it was briefly a Cossack Hetmanate, if you can believe that!
Actually, communist Bolsheviks (except for Stalin) are the ones responsible for reviving Ukrainian language and culture, as part of their program of “korenizatziya” throughout the USSR. The opposite of what you’d expect:
The culture of “hating Russians” was there among some nationalists, such as Petliura, Bandera and Schuhevych, who took the opportunities around world wars to try to fight for independence. But they were also deeply wrapped up with hatred of Jews, Poles etc. The two guys I mentioned are responsible for killing many Jews, Poles, etc.
After WW2, the Soviet Union had lost 30 million people but emerged a victor over nazis. The USA in a few scant years had made NATO with formerly-nazi Germany as a founding member, against USSR. In 1954 USSR formally asked to join, before starting the Warsaw Pact. Incidentally that same year Khrustchev’s Presidium unilaterally gifted Crimea from Russian SSR to Ukrainian SSR “in a spirit of deep friendship”.
USA and CIA preferreed to work with literal nazis against the eastern bloc. (Operation paperclip, Pinochet in Chile, etc etc.) Radio Liberty was a CIA-funded program to keep the opposition to USSR alive in Ukraine, usually among the far-right elements who sympathized more with the nazis who had lost, and whose grandfathers fought on that side. It didn’t matter to USA, because USSR was their geopolitical rival now.
Same as it didn’t matter about sponsoring jihadists (which is what “mujahideen” means in Arabic) in Afghanistan and getting 2 million civilians killed in a needless civil war, spending billions radicalizing and arming people together with Saudis and leading to the explosion of Wahhabist Islam around the world, ending up later ravaging Iraq, Syria, Nigeria etc.
It’s not about “preserving culture”. That’s the cynical explanation. It’s about proxy wars and weakening the rivals throuh endless quagmires. USA and its architects of proxy wars do not actually care about the people on the ground:
I guess wikipedia and all mainstream news are Kremlin propagandists?
What did I say that was a lie? I try to be as accurate as possible.
You think US doesn’t have propaganda? “They hate us for our freedoms”… “weapons of mass destruction”… “unprovoked and unjustified”… whenever you hear the same line repeated over and over verbatim, it is propaganda
Who is doing the debating? The Ukrainians will have to decide for themselves how many deaths they're willing to accept for national survival.
But as long as they're willing to fight we should give them everything they ask for. The Russian empire is bleeding to death in Donetsk. That suits our interests regardless of the ultimate outcome.
>as a country and a people they only exist as long as we're their benefactor
Why do so many people think this? If the US stopped "giving" them "military aid" which is actually just disney dollars to spend in the US military industrial complex they would be out a small percentage of their defense budget.
This is probably the biggest impact tbh. I wonder if the US public would support these actions if it knew it was going to come back on them with longer TSA lines.
To a point, but it's spot checks at best; a state actor has full access to the wide range of explosive compounds, surely there's some that wouldn't be detected (or that can be handled and packaged in such a way that it doesn't get detected)?
The explosive scanning is the thing where they pull some people out of line and run a wand over you and your gear, then put it into a machine and wait a few seconds for the analysis.
Just like everything else 90s the transparent iMac G3 look is going to be coming back only in the non-ironic prison use for having everything in a clear case (to check for contraband).
When you don't treat people who are brutally uncivilized with civility, it isn't long before people forget who the bad guy is and where it all started. If you are a civilized society, you have to treat the uncivil with civility. You have to set an example.
I was trying to bridge a communication gap by offering an interpretion. In truth I don't understand your comment at all, but I never go to stack overflow empty handed for example.
"Israel orchestrating an attack against the terrorists they're at war with makes me think less of them" is certainly an opinion. A batshit fucking stupid opinion, but you're entitled to it nonetheless.
you should really take a rigorous look into the history of early Israel and the ideologies of its founding members like Hertzl and Jabotinsky. They have always been terrorists.
