And those Hezbollah operatives can lose their pagers

And you can lose your car keys. But if someone asked you where they were, you wouldn’t say “Oh, they’re in a random place”.

or they themselves can move randomly through populated areas with the hidden bomb strapped to their hip

The explosive charge was small enough to seriously harm only those who are in direct contact with it. There’s a video of one charge going off in the middle of grocery shopping (speaking of your next point) with a person standing maybe 20 cm next to the explosion. That person was able to run away without apparent harm.

They never go to buy groceries, or stop at a hospital or school, or have their devices stolen or lost in some random location

There’s no method of warfare that would never harm civilians.

a manner that has absolutely no mechanism by which to control where they actually are and who else is in proximity to them when detonated.

The pagers being bought by Hezbollah is the mechanism. Did you mean a real-time mechanism? Is this what it boils down to? Edit: Sorry, I misread what you said. Changing my reply to: As you can see from the video, where they are and who is next to them isn’t really a factor. I would agree that if they are in very close proximity to another person (hugging them of maybe riding in a crowded public transport), the explosion will probably harm the other person. Once again, relative to other methods aimed against targets operating among civilian population, this seems more selective, not less.

No one is forcing to to reply. I’m continuing it because to me the operation was extremely selective in which people it targets relative to modern warfare among civilian infrastructure, and I’m trying to understand the counter argument.

I did

OK, it took me a while to understand this, and I’m assuming you meant “I do have some criteria”. If you meant something else, I can’t even guess what it was.

after the bit you cherrypicked.

Ah, my bad. I mistook the “pagers that will randomly move around a populated area” part as a purely rhetorical statement and my brain kinda swept it aside. Sorry. The explosives weren’t planted in a random batch of pagers. It was in a batch specifically meant for Hezbollah operatives. You could make the argument that some of the pagers got into non-Hezbollah hands (and obviously they did), but what you said is a gross and unfair exaggeration. Your criteria doesn’t apply here.

I don’t care in the least if anyone thinks I’m in cahoots with anyone; it won’t change that I’m in cahoots with no one.

Sorry, I was trying to say - Please don’t imply I might be willingly misunderstanding you when you’re not communicating clearly. Even your edit is somewhat unclear, as it isn’t evident if the part before the edit is still relevant.

how absolutely heartless and tragic […]

Wait, what? The prevalent criticism against the exploding pagers (both on Lemmy and other places) is that they’re akin to mines and are essentially terrorist attacks. Both of these thing are (at least somewhat) specific and objective, and that’s where we started the conversation. Going from that to “It’s heartless”, which is a very subjective description, seems to me like moving the goalpost.

Yes, of course it’s heartless and tragic. War is heartless and tragic. How else would you describe taking a kid who was in high school a few months ago, putting a rifle in his hand and telling him “See that other kid who’s just like you? go shoot him because he happen to be living on the other side of an imaginary line”?

Saying “Well, this heartless and tragic thing is acceptable but I don’t like that heartless and tragic thing” is arbitrary unless there’s an actual criteria. Either way you’re entitled to your own opinion, it’s just that earlier I thought you have some criteria or test.

You: So the pagers were ordered by Hezbollah…

Me: “The pagers were used by Hezbollah, not Hamas.”

You: “I realize that, I was drawing a parallel between the two circumstances.”

Me: asking for clarification.

You: “you seem not to (or have chosen not to) understand [the parallel?] the first two times […] Edite: I see I typed Hamas when I meant to type Hezbollah in one place”

It seems you’ve mistyped, then misunderstood me when I fixed it (though I attributed it to a lack of knowledge) and now you’re insinuating I might be misunderstanding you willfully? If that’s the case, you’re making it so easy for me other people might think we’re in cahoots[1].

Anyway, Just because I don’t agree with you doesn’t mean I didn’t understand the argument. And I’m pretty sure I did understand at least one of your points. I’ve explained why the pagers aren’t like landmines and why the rational behind the treaty to ban landmines seems to agree with me. If that’s the only argument you made (“It’s been one argument the entire time”), you can simply reply to what I said instead of reframing anything.

[1] Speaking of other people, are people downvoting me as a dislike button, or is there a specific reason? I don’t mind the downvotes, just wondering if they’re because people don’t agree with me or because they think there’s something wrong/harmful with my messages.

I realize that, I was drawing a parallel between the two circumstances.

Err… what circumstances? What was the purpose of drawing a parallel between Hamas and Hezbollah? What insight was I to gain by it? Asking seriously.

And again - when you drop a bomb, you can credibly have made an attempt to ensure no one is in the vicinity who you don’t intend to bomb. (Not that israel seems to do this) - this is especially true with modern technology.

Sorry, were you making two arguments or one? You asked about the difference between landmines and what Israel did. I thought the rest of what you said was to show how planting bombs in pagers is like landmines, not a new argument. If there were two arguments, you didn’t respond to my answer regarding landmines.

I can talk about the difference, and you’ll respond with a counter argument etc. Ultimately, it’ll come down to me saying Israel is able to reasonably predict who’ll carry the explosive and you saying they can’t. The bottom line for me is this:

Some weapons have been banned from warfare while others haven’t. The banned weapons follow certain criteria for being banned. exploda-pagers don’t follow the criteria under which landmines have been banned. If you know of other weapons or tactics that are banned and are akin to exploda-pagers, we can discuss that. Otherwise, I’m left with the conclusion what Israel did falls within the bounds of a legitimate military operation. You can, of course, think differently.

The pagers were used by Hezbollah, not Hamas. They are two different entities, and while it doesn’t make any difference in the narrow context I’m replying to, it’s really a basic detail that anyone voicing an opinion on the matter should know.

How is this argument different than defending the use of landmines?

From the Wikipedia entry about landmines: “The use of land mines is controversial because they are indiscriminate weapons, harming soldier and civilian alike. They remain dangerous after the conflict in which they were deployed has ended, killing and injuring civilians and rendering land impassable and unusable for decades. To make matters worse, many factions have not kept accurate records (or any at all) of the exact locations of their minefields, making removal efforts painstakingly slow.”

Planting bombs inside pagers specifically used by Hezbollah isn’t indiscriminate (unless by “indiscriminate” you mean “when they go off, they harm anyone in the proximity”, but going by that definition everything with an exploding charge is “indiscriminate”, yet only mines are banned). And obviously exploded bombs don’t remain dangerous and aren’t difficult to remove.

First off, I think we should contextualize what happened - according to some news sources, the bombs were supposed to go off in the first days of an Israeli attack that would probably start an all out war (Some Hezbollah operatives became suspicious). The operation wasn’t intended to create an “escalation where Hezbollah will answer”, rather opening a full out attack against Hezbollah to force them to stop firing missiles at Israeli civilians and abide by the UN resolution.

Israel didn’t send “thousands of bombs God knows where they land”. They planted bombs in hardware that is used exclusively by Hezbollah operatives and their accomplices to evade gathering sigint. Yes, civilians got hurt. That’s the nature of war, and what makes it so horrible - people who might hold no malice nor pose any threat to the other side get hurt and die. The modern rules of warfare aren’t designed to eliminate civilian casualties, rather mainly to deter the warring parties from using civilians as a tool of war. That’s why an army can’t hide behind civilian population, but given an army that’s hiding behind civilian population, it’s acceptable for the other army to fire at them as long as they take proper measures to minimize civilian casualties (this in meant only as an example, not directly relating to Hezbollah or Hamas). If any act that results in civilian casualties is not “proper defense” I don’t think there has been a single case of “proper defense” in large scale armed conflict in modern history. People in the west might not realize it because for the last decades wars are fought away form their boarders, so it’s easier to view civilian casualties as optional.

And you know what? I’d WISH all civilian casualties in war would be confined to people who are in direct proximity to enemy personnel. If I could press a button and replace all Hezbollah attacks against civilian targets with bombs sent to IDF personnel, I’d do so in a heartbeat.

Regarding Netanyahu - right now, he’s slowly climbing in the polls. His plan is to keep his coalition from falling apart till the next election. Anything that disturbs the current situation is not in his interests (and, on the whole, the last time Netanyahu was proactive in anything other than a political capacity was about 2 decades ago). If Netanyahu wanted a war, he would have the public’s support for it months ago (in fact, the public very much supports a large scale conflict in order to stop Hezbollah targeting Israeli cities). His hand is being forced by other parties in the coalition. The obvious “culprit” are the far-right parties, but I personally think the main catalyst are the ultra-orthodox parties. This gets a bit complicated, but bear with me: The ultra-orthodox parties need to pass a law that’ll exempt their constituents from military service (long story short - they were exempt for years but due to court rulings, need a new law to keep that privilege). Galant (the minister of defense) is the one stopping the law from passing. Netanyahu was about to replace him and sell it to the public as Galant being the one who was against a war against Hezbollah. Actually, I’ll go as far as saying Israel being forced to activate the bombs prematurely, thus stopping Galant from being fired, makes  a war a bit less likely (Though obviously other factors have also been put in play, so the government can’t just do a U turn).

During the last month there were not 1, not 10, not 100 but 807 alerts in Israel for missile attacks. Some of them weren’t fired by Hezbollah, and some might have been the same alert in different areas, but that’s still about 7 missile PER DAY even if we assume only 1 in 4 alerts was due to an attack by Hezbollah (side note: during the entire war, about 2,000 missile were launched from Lebanon to Israel, that’s an average of about 6 per day). In addition to this, there were 452 aircraft intrusion alerts. Most of these attacks are against civilian targets.

Right now, there are about 79 thousand people (around 0.8% of total population) who are still evicted for nearly a year from northern Israel.

And just in case it needs to be said - the first attack was made by Hezbollah (on Oct. 8th) and without any provocation by Israel.

Not only is this a situation no sovereign country can stand, but it’s also a violation of the Lebanon-approved UN Security Council’s resolution 1701, that was the basis for ending the 2006 Lebanon War. Hell, just having missiles in the area is by itself a violation of the resolution.

Regarding political reasoning - A war in Lebanon is actually bad for Netanyahu. His interest is a slow-burning war so he can prolong the current situation as much as possible (once the war is over, the pubic will demand an election). In fact, that’s probably the main reason you had “a missile here and a bomb there” and not an actual war.

It’s not necessarily a matter of subjective vs. objective. There’s a difference between appreciating art and enjoying watching something. IMO, Tommy Wiseau’s “The Room” is utter garbage, but it was extremely enjoyable to watch.

I’ve ordered some household items (door stoppers, tools etc.). The prices were somewhat cheaper than AE, the quality was fine (some things were better than expected. Some very cheap items were… Let’s say they were priced according to their quality. Thought other very cheap items turned out good, so it’s a gamble) and shipping was OK. Never tried the app for privacy reasons, but the site seems ok-ish (it’s a bit janky, but I suspect it’s due in part to some privacy addon I use. In short:

1. Don’t use the app.
2. Don’t buy very cheap stuff unless you’re willing to chance it.
3. The “prizes” either appear only in the app or can be disabled via ad blockers and/or privacy addons.

No no, they meant first of many unfulfilled promises.

Yeah, there’s a similar issue from the other side (at least in my country) - Men will usually apply for a job if they don’t meet all the requirements, while women won’t tend to do so.

Going on a tangent off “The traits that people typically associate with success in leadership, such as assertiveness and strength" (from the article), that almost sounds like something form the 50s - “Look here Johnson, I need those forms, and I need them yesterday, now get moving!”. Traits I associate with leadership (at least in high-skill modern work place) are good communication and motivation skills, ability to plan ahead and multi-tasking/ability to prioritize. Sure, once in a while a manager has to bang their fist against the table, but the real skill isn’t in banging on the table as hard as you can, it’s the ability get what you want without needing to do so in the first place. Point being that, if anything, women are better managers.

Thing is, There are less women in STEM, there are less women in management position etc. Therefor, either women are less interested/worse at these things (which is the conservative view) or society itself treats women differently than men. The rational behind affirmative action and programs geared towards women isn’t that women are less skilled and therefore need more help, rather that society makes it harder for a woman achieve the same as a similarly skilled man. By treating women differently we can help level the playing field.

Also, making gender “as unimportant as eye color in most things in life” is a completely unrealistic goal in the near future even in the most liberal countries in the world. We can (and do) strive to reach it, but that’s not a viable solution for issues we have right now.

And you know what? Legally changing your gender SHOULD be harder than filling a form. Someone who’s transgender should have no problem showing that’s what they are. The thing is to make sure the legal process is done respectfully, without making the person feel like they’re being interrogated.

Gaza was a part of Egypt and the west bank was a part of Jordan until 67. Israeli Arabs (not saying “Israeli Palestinians” as some of them don’t identify as such) were under martial law till the 60s, but still had many rights deprived from other Palestinians and even some minorities in western countries (for example, they had the right to vote).

To help the people caught in the middle, from both sides, one has to understand the interests of the Israeli government and Hamas. I think the last actions Biden did have the best chance of stopping the war.

Hamas’s interests are a full retreat of Israeli forces and keeping as many hostages. They don’t really care what happens to the general population. The “political” leaders in Qatar also have an interest of staying there. They are also OK with keeping the war going since as time goes by the public opinion turns more and more against Israel. The latter part can be dealt with by not letting Hamas of the hook for what’s going on in Gaza (if you want to say “But no one is saying they’re not to blame!” - yes, but most aren’t stating clearly the ARE to blame. In practical terms, that’s about the same). Also, pressure can be put on Qatar so they can put pressure on the political leadership, as Biden has reportedly done.

The Israeli government is a bit more complex, as it’s a coalition with three “legs” - Netanyahu/Likud, that mainly want to stay in power and nothing else (the war is good for them, since they don’t have to answer for their part in how it started), the far right that want to take over Gaza (and therefor welcome international sanctions, as it “proves” that the whole world hates Israel and therefore the only solution is to disregard what the world thinks), and the ultra orthodox parties that want to keep certain privileges for their voters.

The international arrest warrants, while not desirable on Netanyahu’s part, actually increase his power. He spins them as warrants against “the entire country”. And in fact, right after they were issued Likud rose in the polls.

So what can be done regarding the Israeli government? Well, Netanyahu is playing all sides against the middle, telling everyone different things while trying to change the situation, no matter what the situation actually is, as little as possible (since any change can result in him losing power). Biden, by stating the offer currently on the table came from Israel tore the mask from Netanyahu’s double speak and makes it harder for him to keep the current situation.

Err… Yes?

I mean, if the cops can’t actually come into your city, having them waiting outside the city limits with signs saying “if you’ll come out we’ll arrest you!” probably isn’t the best course of action for you.

No, what I’m saying is:

a. The immediate goal shouldn’t be to punish Netanyahu for war crimes, rather solve (at least improve) the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

b. Arrest warrants against Netanyahu will not help improve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, if anything they’ll make the situation worse (There are already calls from far-right members of Knesset to stop all humanitarian aid to Gaza as a response).

Therefor, this is uplifting news for anyone who hates Netanyahu/Israel more than they want to help Palestinians.

Right, so it’s not “smart”, it’s just, you know, what he should have done regardless.

Preferably even before asking for warrants against Netanyahu and Galant. That way it won’t look like the warrants against Hamas leaders are to justify the warrants against Netanyahu and Galant, like the person I replied to seems to imply.

No, this is not uplifting for anyone (except maybe people who hate Netanyahu and/or Israel and don’t really care about Palestinians).

Right now there is some humanitarian aid going into Gaza, despite objections from the far-far-right Israeli coalition parties. The excuse Netanyahu used to get their (semi-)cooperation is by saying “Well, this is the bare minimum so Israel won’t get hit by sanctions”. The warrants, if granted, will create motivation for Netanyahu to give in and reduce humanitarian aid (he cares much more about personal sanctions than sanctions against the country).

Also, Netanyahu will use the warrants and Israel’s isolation to strengthen his own position in the government, fortify his position and lower the chances for his government to implode.

If that’s the reason behind the arrest warrens for Hamas, doesn’t it make the ICC’s chief request in bad faith? Like “I really want to issue warrants only for Netanyahu, but I know this will be unfair, so I’ll issue warrants for both sides, so I’ll seem balanced”?