Ok, I believe and understand what you say, but then that makes the AP story a little stranger. If no foreign, independent reporters are allowed into Gaza, then how does the AP know that Abed Bardini “…unloaded the stretcher with practiced professionalism, squinting into the late afternoon sun…”

I’ve noticed one peculiar paragraph in the AP story: “Abed Bardini was in one of two ambulances dispatched to the scene. Back at the hospital, he unloaded the stretcher with practiced professionalism, squinting into the late afternoon sun as he wheeled the body across the hospital courtyard. Inside, medical staff pulled back the blanket to check for signs of life, and Bardini’s strength collapsed.”

So the AP reporter just happened to be standing right next to Abed Bardini, performing his duties with practiced professionalsim while squinting into the afternoon sun?

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He doesn’t have $270 billion dollars. He has $270 billion dollars worth of assets.

You are mistaking the Catholic practice of Lent (not eating meat on Friday) with the Jewish Kosher practice of not mixing dairy with meat (possible cross contamination?).

IIRC, the only problem with asbestos is when you tear up/demolish a building. Injested asbestos particles cause the health problems. If the building doesn’t suffer any damage, the asbestos remains inert and doesn’t cause any harm.

I myself asked “What time of year was the lower photograph taken?” Then I realized I was being dumb, because if either photo was taken in winter time, we would see at least some ice in the water, if not a very large ice sheet.

I’ll quibble with you on ‘booby trap’. Booby traps are like what Russian is doing in Ukraine when they retreat: putting primed grenades next to doors that will be opened when Ukrainian troops come through. Or maybe later if the Ukrainian troops don’t find the booby traps: civilians who come back to the ‘cleared’ areas. This is why booby trapping is prohibited. The enemy might miss it and later on a civilian might come across it.

The Israelis modified devices meant for military purposes by a para-military organization. These pagers weren’t being sold in local markets to anyone who would buy them.

From what I have read elsewhere, batteries don’t explode. They can heat up and catch fire, but not explode. From what I have read online, a small amount of explosives were added to the pagers plus a very small detonator.

That is absolutely not true. An easy example to disprove your argument would be the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. The American Navy was caught completely by surprise. At the end of the war, there were some Japanese tried for war crimes, but not for the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.

Agreed. Hezbollah started firing rockets in support of Hamas months ago and we all know what Hamas did last October.

From the videos I have seen, very few truly innocent bystanders are being hurt. These are very small explosive charges. In one video, a Hiz dude looks at his pager while he is in the produce section of a market. There are about 4 - 5 people within 10 feet of him. The pager explodes, Hiz dude goes down, no one else is hurt. In a second video, Hezbollah member is paying for something. He is within arm’s reach of the clerk he is giving the money to. The pager goes off, he goes down. The clerk runs away unscathed.

In the history of warfare, this operation may be the most surgical of strikes ever in regards to intended targets hit vs innocent civilians hit.

It’s a sad fact of modern warfare that if a militant group doesn’t wear uniforms and tries to hide amongst civilians, it opponents will eventually go after them and there will be civilian casualties.

Here are the videos I was talking about. Be warned, they are a little rough to watch. There isn’t any blood, but the audio is quite disturbing. You may want to mute them.

Here is the market video I was talking about. https://funker530.com/video/hezbollah-operatives-getting-wrecked-by-exploding-pagers

Here is the payment video: https://funker530.com/video/another-hezbollah-pager-explodes-on-camera

I don’t care about hizbollah.

And Hezbollah doesn’t care about any civilians that get killed near them. ‘Involuntary Martyrs’ is the term I believe they used. According to reports, only 14 people have died, which is an extraordinarily low number considering that Israel went after thousands of targets that don’t wear uniforms and deliberately intermix freely amongst civilians.

I’m going to guess she was very close to her father when the bomb went off. According to reports, a message (phone number?) was sent to all of the intercepted Hezbollah pagers at 3pm local time (IIRC), after a couple of seconds, the bomb went off. So a likely scenario is the father had the girl on his lap, the pager starts buzzing/ringing, dad reaches into his pocket and pulls out the pager to read the message. Proximity to the pager killed the girl while only injuring dad since he has a much greater body mass. Or, perhaps the pager was laying on a table and the girl picked it up? It’s sad, either way.

Hezbollah fighter could choose to live normal life and not be a member of Hezbollah. Lay down with dogs, wake up with fleas…

If there were an anti-Russian militia that set up shop in America and occasionally attacked Russia and Russia figured out a way to target many members of this militia and a few innocent bystanders were also injured or killed, the rest of the world would say “yeah… that is what you get” and Americans would say “Why are we allowing these armed assholes to set up shop in America and attack Russia?”

I doubt if Hezbollah would attack the IDF directly. The IDF is armed and would shoot back immediatley.

Israel learned that Hezbollah was ordering new pagers to be given to members of Hezbollah and no one else. Every member of Hezbollah is a sworn enemy of Israel. These pagers were to be used for secure communications between members of Hezbollah. It was highly likely that nearly every one of these pagers would be carried by members of Hezbollah at the time they went off (IIRC 3pm local time).

Hezbollah has been saying for a while it ‘might’ escalate its actions against Israel. Now… that does not seem as likely.

They thought the pagers were secure communication devices. Now they know they are not. Hezbollah was maybe planning to escalate its attacks on Israel, without good, secure communications, they probably can’t. On the flip side, if Israel decides to invade Southern Lebanon to escalate things with Hezbollah, Hezbollah is going to have a much tougher time coordinating its defense since its supposed ‘secure’ communication system has just been blown up, the previous system (cell phones) what already suspected of being compromised, and now today, walkie-talkies used by the senior Hezbollah leadership have also exploded.