Exploding pagers

When I went through Israel 'security' at heathrow back in the late 90's, they put my video camera in a 'sniffer chamber' ( for want of a better word)...presumably to sniff for explosives.

It's assumed that the Israelis booby-trapped the batch of pagers that were bought by Hezbollah. Fiendishly clever.

I'm surprised that anybody still makes or uses pagers.

I heard that Hezbollah had decreed cell phones were too easily compromised so thought lower tech would be better. Presumably the explosive material was somehow embedded within the battery assembly as that is the only largish object inside suitable for concealment?

They probably got a few militants among the thousands of civilians injured, only credulous Americans would believe there was any kind of highly rigorous methodology as to how they were distributed.

Well, after it became widely believed that Israel was targeting residents of Gaza based on smartphone data..

I understand that Hezbollah bought the pagers for their own use for secure communications, so Hezbollah people mostly got them.

Collateral damage is to some extent inevitable in war, but the Israelis are not terrorists. Hamas and Hezbollah are.

That makes sense. Most governments find bad guys that way.

Israel is fighting its war on terror about the same way the US lost our own; bomb and shoot anything that moves and if someone gets hit rely on the mainstream media to dutifully report that one more dangerous terrorist has been eliminated.

Rinse and repeat until the act is no longer politically expedient and retreat in disgrace.

The current Middle East conflict continues beyond all rational proportion or benefit with respect to the inciting incident, mainly because one Netanyahu and cronies find it politically expedient to continue it, similar to how Bush II found a multi-front war politically expedient.

Yes all the latest high-tech toys the US and Israeli surveillance state can come up with are getting a good work-out and break in period over there, you'd think that might give the average Trumper facing down the prospect of the better part of a decade of life under "Queen Kamala" pause..

The difference is that they are fighting for their survival, against barbarian creeps who want them all dead.

Retreat into the sea?

Isn't retreat into the sea what the Gazan's are facing now? Where the hell are they supposed to go? Isn't Gaza their homeland?

I'm sorry, when a nation is attacked and loses just under 2,000 people, and then starts a conflict that kills 40,000 or more and shows no sign of ending I have to ask who are the terrorists. You may recall hearing of attacks by the invading party in WW2 where a town would be executed for the act of a band of fighters...All they both are doing is setting up the next generation of terrorists on both sides.

What ever happened to Truth and Reconciliation? It worked in South Africa and Northern Ireland. Time to get it going in Israel and Gaza before the fools turn the conflagration nuclear.

John

Their insensitivity to collateral damage makes them look like decidedly barbarian creeps too.

That's not the only option. If Israel negotiated a good enough deal with the non-barbarian majority in occupied Palestine, that majority might reject Hamas. Killing off dozens of the non-barbarian majority for every Hamas member eliminated isn't a route to that kind of solution.

The US is the last country anyone takes seriously as mediator of any kind of "peace process."

Imagine if some country like North Korea ever injured 2,000 Americans with exploding pagers, would there still be a "peace process"?

Any country that did that, the US would go there and shoot them and bomb them and bomb them and shoot them and bomb them and bomb them and bomb them until the end of time. The US has been bombing Iraq at least monthly for the better part of 40 years, when in living memory has the US ever "made peace" with anyone!

Amusingly, Donald Trump likely did somewhat more for world peace in practice than any president in the 50 years prior. Not really intentionally mind you but mainly because he likes the easy wins and is so pretty selective about his wars, and even he's smart enough (so far) to not to get embroiled in land wars in Asia against people who didn't do s*it to us directly.

But no doubt if something like 9/11 happened on his watch he'd want to glassify half the middle east immediately, and there were likely people in positions of power over there who believed he'd do it too. Like Reagan's tenure, having millions of people one senile washed-up TV personality away from incineration is what the right-wing media tends to refer to as "geopolitical stability."

The US is mostly "smart" enough to ensure its wars create massive humanitarian, infrastructure, and sanitation crises in countries thousands of miles away from Washington, but creating one 42 miles from your nation's capital is ah...well it's an "interesting strategy" to say the least.

Israelis invented terrorism when they planted a bomb in the King David Hotel

How safe do you feel buying on Ebay and Amazon right now? Now among the fake eclipse glasses and replacement batteries that catch fire and other cheap Chinese fakes, we also have to worry about terrorism. Let's open up a new front on supply chain terrorism. Israel only hit military targets. Explain that to people who strap bombs on to themselves and blow up rooms full of people. How do you protect against supply chain terrorism? How do you keep Gaza protesters from selling on ebay? I remember Tylenol tampering and whole industries had to adopt tamper proof products. What now, cradle to grave tracking on all products.

Don't judge, as i'm not there and the truth is the first casualty in war. The way I read it is: Release all the hostages and stop trying to destroy Israel, and then they might talk. Horrendous suffering on both sides, but how else to deal with murdering savages ?...

Nobody wants the gazan Palestinians. Not Jordan, not Egypt, nobody.

Israel would be a peaceful ally and a serious asset to that part of the world, but the shiites want the Jews all dead.

Israel is sending a message: we value our citizens, and not all of those citizens are Jews.

There are few terrorists on the Israeli side.

"Judiasism is the religion of life and Islam is the religion of death."

The islamic crazies won't have it. They must kill the Jews and islamize Israel. The Koran demands it.

This is a battle for civilization, the path from The Ten Commandments through the Enlightment and the Constitution and universal human rights.

Israel has citizens, and elected officials, who are Muslims and Christians and women and gays and all sorts of stuff. It's a modern democracy. Gays and uppity women get stoned to death in some places.

Israel is also a major electronics and biotech center. And Gal Godot is awfully cute.

Only savages take - and murder - innocent hostages.

No pager battery has that sort of explosive power, or can be detonated with precise timing.

Not to mention Ukraine/Russia!