Weaponizing ordinary devices violates international law, United Nations rights chief says
https://apnews.com/article/un-lebanon-explosions-pagers-international-law-rights-9059b1c1af5da062fa214a1d5a3d7454Open linkView original on slrpnk.net783
Comments221
Do something about it, then.
"This letter is so VIBRANT with EXTREME ANGER that it will explode... but only metaphorically."
Respectfullysubmitted,United Nations
I bet they're gonna BLAST them! In a literary sense
this is the ultimate test of these institutions and their letters just shows they failed.
What is the UN human rights chief supposed to do about it?
He did all that was in his power:
They could all say they are going to disband if Israel doesn't stop. Why even have the UN if they can't do anything
Or better yet expel isreal
First of all, that's also not in his power.
Secondly, how would disbanding the part of the UN that investigates human rights abuses help Palestinians?
Edit: Wait, you think the entire UN should be disbanded over this?
The UN is the only reason we haven't had a nuclear war yet. Otherwise, countries wouldn't have a neutral world forum.
No I think the un is mostly useless.
They are united about nothing
That's not what the UN is for... it's not a military force... it's a round table for nations to work their differences out via words and not nuking each other.
We need something more than the UN that has real power to stop Israel's terror and genocide. The UN can fuck off and prevent it's theoretical events elsewhere.
How would you react if the UN becomes the world government, so that they would finally have the power to stop wars and hunger that people always complain about?
Precisely.
I may be ok with that depending on the governing structure they came up with for a world government. Like would it be a democracy? Socialism? It really depends lol
But right now it seems very ineffective if America or Israel does something horrible they can just veto or whatever and nothing gets done.
As an American myself I would love it if the UN actually had powers to keep my government in line. they sure as hell don't listen to the will of the people.
There is no reason why the UN as a world government could not be a democracy. After all, the institution has always been parroting about the rule of law; ending world hunger and poverty; and the UN General Assembly rightfully called out blatant violations of international laws. The WHO is the most successful organisation by containing and eradicating many diseases including smallpox and COVID.
People complain of the UN being powerless, and yet distrustful of giving it more power. Either it has to remain powerless or furnish it with actual power. The doublethink should end and people have to make up their minds.
Edit: grammar
The UN should disband for not stopping Israel, something the US (Biden right now) would stop yet when Biden was criticized you defended him as 'there was nothing he could do'.
Love Americans and their hypocrisy.
They are...
They've had arrest warrants out for a while, but they do t have their own police force to enforce it
It relies on member states arresting them when they enter their country. It why Bibi hasn't been going anywhere besides America. Biden is one of the few leaders willing to side with Israel over the UN
The US will veto any action.
It's them you should be criticizing. It's always them or Russia/China for the other team.
You won't be so smug when people stop buying iPhones.
Honestly, the real question to me is how many innocent people were maimed, injured, or killed in this attack. This is incredibly indiscriminate, even though the idea is that only the bad guys are holding the pages or walkie-talkies, but if they're in a cafe they're not the only ones getting hurt. Think of it as attaching an explosive to a thousand Hezbollah people, and then exploding them as they wander through a city. That's the true crime, the potentially disproportionate massacre of innocent civilians.
Agree, I am incredibly disturbed by the nature of this attack and the implications for how other countries might use this idea.
Quite a bit fewer than 0.1% of the individual detonations appear to have harmed anyone except the Hezbollah operative assigned to the pager, so this doesn’t actually appear to be a question. The attack was extremely discriminate and targeted.
In every case in which one of these went off in a cafe, the intended target was the only one hurt.
But that isn’t what happened. The opposite happened.
Several of the victims were children. They went off in crowds. There was no way they could control that many devices with precision when they set them off all at once like that.
At least it was somewhat targeted, unlike Gaza.
https://x.com/osint613/status/1837614316335648888?s=46
Here’s an example of how targeted the strike was, despite literally going off in a crowd - nobody hurt but the intended target, no harm whatsoever beyond two feet. Doesn’t even bruise an apple
That particular pager was in a bag, against a person, pointed away from anyone or anything else. Not to mention anything of the second attack, which used much larger charges and started fires and blew out windows across Lebanon.
And anyway, a single example isn't going to assuage anyone who has been reading reports of women and children dying from the attack.
They're also ignoring the literal terror being experienced by civilians who witnessed people's legs and faces being blown off in public.
That's terrorism.
Where else would you carry a pager? You have to feel it when it vibrates.
Well, I’m sorry to hear that Lebanon’s glazers just got several months of guaranteed work, I guess, but I’m otherwise not sure why this is relevant.
What reports?
Because you were claiming the explosions were too small to "bruise and apple"
Literally any reports on the subject
ok, and how is that refuted by the physical description of an ambulance?
The mental gymnastics people will do to defend literal state sponsored terrorism.
And don't waste your time, I actually know what those words mean.
Yes, it’s pretty shocking how people have come out in support of an Iranian-funded terrorist group that has killed women, children, and a hundred Americans
Oh look, it is time for round two: Strawman Boogaloo.
As opposed to the American-funded terrorist state that has killed women, children and a couple thousands of Palestinian civilians?
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Try harder.
The fathers of these dead children will simply have to live with the terrible consequences of their involvement with antisemitic terror (who are we kidding, they don’t care.)
In every such case only the agent was harmed. You’re proving how targeted the attack was.
So the children have to pay for their father's crimes? This isn't really a justification, and they don't not care, now they have a real reason for retaliation—starting the cycle of hate all over again.
No, they don’t have to. But they will when their fathers deliberately put them in danger.
Again, he’ll just have to live with the tragic consequences (just kidding, we know he doesn’t care.)
And you complain about pro Israel accounts getting banned. Literally justifying the murder of children should be banable no matter what county you're supporting. Despicable behavior that everyone now sadly expects from rabid genocide supporters.
The kid's blood is still on whoever triggered the devices hands. The child didn't do anything.
Do you have a source stating that no bystanders were harmed? I can't find anything making that claim.
But they have a video of a single incident!
First article I pulled up:
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/20/g-s1-23812/lebanon-israel-exploding-pagers-hezbollah-international-law
Not to mention that Hezbollah is an actual political party in Lebanon, not just a resistance group.
Ok, and what does this refute? I haven’t claimed there to be zero civilian casualties, but it’s currently fewer than one in one thousand.
Again, I’ve posted video. Why would I believe that could harm anyone but the bearer?
Says who?
Says Hezbollah, and all reporting from Lebanon.
Source? Not being shitty but serious
Hezbollah publicly announces their war casualties so they’re the source
I don’t know how to explain that any more clearly. If you’re still puzzled, I recommend asking a question instead of posting a single word
They are asking for the source of your statement that less then 0.1% of the victims where valid targets. Since most have seen evidence to the exact opposite of that statement.
Oh and although I can put links to back that statement up, I will not. (Since that is the presiding fashion here apparently)
Hezbollah is the source. That’s three times I’ve said so. What about that is still unclear?
Ok, I'm sure it's all as you say. 5 days old account that is totally not suspicious.
Defending Israel on Lenny leads to banning, it’s happened several times
lol good
All numbers to you eh?
I can’t have sympathy for murderous antisemites
Not murder, by your logic.
https://a.lemmy.world/lemmy.world/comment/12495954
They’ve targeted civilians, including 40 people at a US Embassy.
Both sides have.
Looks like murders of innocent civilians were done by semites... As it's most often the case.
A collateral civilian death during a military action has never been considered “murder.” It can’t be, since it’s unintentional.
Just completely ignore the concept of proportional response and the Principle of Proportionality.
If you're going to pretend to be an expert on international law...
1000 militants per civilian meets every definition of proportionate
There has been quite a lot of collateral civilian casualties, how many more people must die and how many more people must suffer under poverty in the name of the great American empire?
None, if Israel’s enemies surrender and end the war. That’s how war works.
In one sense this is much worse, and more terrifying than the run-of-the-mill IED's used by militant groups. Having to be suspicious of everything around you would be maddening. It's indiscriminate mass psychological warfare, where the collateral damage goes way beyond the people actually carrying the devices.
OK, I’m gonna tell a little story that we used to tell in my part of the country. In my part of the country they grow a lot of watermelons.
So there was this watermelon farmer who got upset that everybody kept sneaking into his fields at night and taking watermelons.
So he came up with his great idea that he put a sign at the edge of the field that said one of these watermelons is poison. Now he knew that no one could take a watermelon cause they wouldn’t know which one was poisoned. He was quite proud of this idea.
So we came back in the morning to see how his sign worked. And sure enough no watermelons have been taken overnight.
However, he noticed the number one on his sign had been crossed out and somebody had put two.
That is both genius and a total Bond villain origin story.
Imagine if China, Taiwan or Korea would start doing this shit. Or maybe they already have! Maybe the device you are reading this on would explode in the event of war!
In another thread I was also performing that thought experiment, specifically related to the possibility of Chinese hobby drones being banned for national security purposes, while at the same time possibly allowing Chinese made EVs to be sold in America. It's inconsistent if nothing else. A car would be a much more terrifying IED than a pager. Shame on Israel for showing the world that acts like this are not immediately condemned as acts of terrorism and unanimously rejected as being a bridge too far.
Edit: actually it looks like there may be consistency: https://www.newsnationnow.com/world/china/us-to-propose-ban-on-chinese-software-hardware-in-connected-vehicles/
Don't you just have to watch out for your Hezbollah-supplied devices?
Also, fat chance they could pull the same thing off again
Yeah, Hezbollah absolutely fired their IT guy after the second time it happened.
It's Hezbollah. They likely killed him thinking he's a mole.
People here really have forgotten Hezbollah is also a monstrous group. One monster existing (Israeli government) doesn't negate the other one existing too (Hezbollah).
How is it “indiscriminate” if solely Hezbollah operatives were targeted?
A booby-trapped baby stroller is indiscriminate - it goes off when anyone touches it, friend, foe, or child. Israel attacked the communications of its enemy and literally nothing else. That’s inherently discriminating between friend and foe.
It's indiscriminate because Israel doesn't know who is in proximity of the device when it explodes, or even if the target is nearby. It's no stretch to think one of the targets could have been frisking a journalist or aid worker when their device detonated.
That being said, the "indiscriminate mass psychological warfare" comment I made was about how the effect of blowing up common devices as an act of war will have negative psychological effects on everybody who was nearby and probably even those in Lebanon who were not nearby, and potentially even Lebanese people who were in other countries who have family back in Lebanon.
But they do know. They know that it’s an agent of Hezbollah, or else they would not have been issued a pager by Hezbollah.
Ok, but that didn’t happen, so clearly it is a stretch. You’re asserting that Mossad achieved better than 99% target accuracy by accident, but the fact that it’s better than 99% proves it was no accident at all. It was a deliberate and discriminate attack on a terror network responsible for more than 8000 indiscriminate attacks on Israel in this year alone.
Alleged agent of Hezbollah receives the pager. Alleged agent places it on a table at home. Alleged agent's innocent daughter picks it off the table and uses it as a toy prop. Signal is sent, pager explodes, and kills the daughter.
There's an plethora of situations that could occur that result in an explosive pager being deployed while in the hands of someone not a Hezbollah agent, and that's if we take it at face value that Mossad can identify who is and isn't a Hezbollah agent. Wouldn't be the first time they've been overzealous and killed an innocent person. May they be judged accordingly by their Maker.
Anybody with access to secure coms knows that they’re not permitted to allow others to access the device, including family members. So your situation is inherently implausible and ultimately comes down to the agent themselves not following the rules, with devastating consequences to their family.
But they didn't occur. So they couldn’t have occurred.
No, we just have to take it at face value that Hezbollah can identify who is and isn’t a Hezbollah agent. So that they give them a secure pager. Why wouldn’t that be the case?
Bullshit, unless you're privy to the internal workings of alleged Hezbollah agents. Where's your documented proof?
So you claim that 10 year old girl who died was a Hezbollah agent? I'd sooner think you're spewing more bullshit.
See #2.
I'll also propose a counterargument: Mossad, the IDF, and Israeli gov't in general doesn't give two shits about collateral damage, how many innocent civilians they kill, and whether or not the intended target is a Hezbollah agent (or Hamas, for that matter). If they kill a thousand innocents for every genuine terrorist, that's a good day in their book. "Innocent before proven guilty" doesn't exist in their world view. Guilty by association is.
If that's not true, they've got a lot of work ahead of them to improve their public image. The whole lot of them are no better than the terrorists they claim to be fighting against
But that’s false. You’re just imagining that.
There wouldn’t still be a war in Gaza if that were the case.
Why one? Why not zero?
Because said operatives were often within exploding distance of civilians when the pagers were detonated. Shrapnel, even from a small explosion, can be deadly and has a fairly large range. Especially if you don't have line-of-sight to your target before detonating the device; you have no idea what or who is nearby when it goes off.
"Explosive" and "targeted" generally don't go hand-in-hand.
Israel:
seen ✓✓
puts a minigun on my dryer
come and take it, I dare you
My ied is gonna make me billions. Improvised explosive dildo
moans seductively
explodes
Explosion! Bukkake?
I'm on mobile and can't hover a mouse. I'm scared to click that.
Lol oh!
All you have to do to realize that this is a terrorist attack is to close your eyes and imagine the media response if Hezbolah did this to the IDF.
If they did it to the IDF, I doubt many would have an issue with it. Military is always a valid target in war.
If it was done to random civilians, then most would.
It all hinges on just how targeted the attack is, and how much you believe Mossad's claims that it was all Hezbollah. We've seen their claims on bombing Hamas militants, and I doubt everyone in those 8 floor residential buildings were all Hamas members.
Doubt.
If they had snuck explosives into cell phones of IDF soldiers and then detonated them in mass while the soldiers were at home with their families it would not be acceptable.
I totally agree that this attack was indiscriminate. I think part of the point was the psychological impact of being attacked that way. How could you ever feel safe again after knowing anything around you could be a small explosive device.
It is a huge escalation that will undoubtedly created another huge wave of terrorism. Israel has always been its own worst enemy.
From my cold, dead hands!
BattleBots? Is that DoomBot?
Doomba
Damnit I knew it was Doom something was trying to recall purely from memory
We're talking double secret probation. Super cereal shit man.
Constantly wringing my hands at the lack of adults in leadership. Accountability ends atrocity.
Attacking a civilian population of a country you're not at war with is a violation of international law.
And Isreal has done it at least nine times in the last year.
A different analysis from an expert in international law. https://lieber.westpoint.edu/exploding-pagers-law/
Thanks for sharing this. My gut reaction is that that these attacks were unreasonable and careless in who they impacted and should be criminal. But it’s very interesting to read an analysis of the actual law - even if I don’t agree with it
It comes to the same conclusion regarding the illegality of the weapons, even if it's pretty lenient in its interpretation of how thousands of devices can be "reasonably expected" to all end up in the hands of combatants.
As if Israel suddenly is going to care about international law. They have been committing war crimes and crimes against humanity for a long time now. This is telling nazis "hey, what you are doing is bad mkay?" like they would give a fuck.
absolutely. i mean it is not as shitty as cutting of the breasts of women who attended that festival back then. but I do not understand how pagers are "ordinary devices". what a joke. and why does iranian ambassador have one?
Just because terrorists are doing horrible acts, doesn't mean you are free to do whatever you want. Crimes against humanity and war crimes do not have an asterisk saying "except when the enemy commits crimes too".
About the pagers, are they specifically made for the military? Or are they commercially available? Just because terrorists use them doesn't mean no one else does. There are still many hospitals for example using pagers. Does that make doctors terrorists or military?
Feels like increasingly that is the new reality for all of us, everything is a potential attack vector, even if it's much less lethal attacks. Data grabs, money grabs, attention grabs. Show me something weaponizable that isn't being exploited as one in one way or another.
Fucking this is not hard.
Either that is illegal, or the Unibomber was just.
Yes. But do pants! That would be fun....
ok sir your shoes go in this bin. We want your pants, underwear and belt in that other one. Those will be returned to you after the flight reaches Michigan.....
Oh. We're sorry sir, your luggage is here, but your pants, belt and underwear were flown to Michoacan. Very common occurrence. You may take this pair of paper pants with our Logo while we wait for several connection flights for your belongings...
Well yeah just add another war crime to the list.
I find this a far more compelling view. Trapping the equipment of enemy paramilitaries seems a very strange hill to die on to paint as a war crime. On the other hand, the haphazard distribution of the pagers and the lack of care taken to minimize civilian casualties absolutely suggests this was a war crime - just not for the reason of trapping communications devices.
Weaponry is a human right.
Uhm, drones? Hello?
A drone made for warfare is not the same as a dji 3 or whatever. Now if you put a bomb in that dji and sold it to people...
They literally use DJIs in Ukraine...
They don't put bombs in them and then sell them to Russians
Not to mention the tens of thousands of rockets Hamas made from water pipes, lamp posts, etc.
I'm pretty sure the meaning isn't that you aren't allowed to turn an ordinary item into a weapon. It's that you can weaponize ordinary items. If you make a pipe bomb, for example, it's pretty obviously a bomb now, and not an ordinary pipe. Basically, making it so people have to fear using ordinary items is what we typically call terrorism.
I don't like that word, because it's usually just used as a weapon against less conventional forces by states with more power, meanwhile the states typically still use fear to enforce a political agenda. In this case it's unarguably the bad kind of terrorism, and they should be held responsible for it.
Are those rockets sold as a water pipe to Israel?
No, they're indiscriminately fired on civilian populations.
UN is totally irrelevant. Next.
Many were not used by the military and the explosions happened during the day in uncontrolled circumstances. Many civilians got hurt.
I think this means that if an Israeli sells you a phone, they become a valid target for military strikes.
They weren’t “ordinary devices”, they were encrypted pagers manufactured specifically at Hezbollah’s request for their own use.
"Ordinary device" in this context means anything that does not immediately resemble an instrument of war.
Yup, and it seems like more and more that it wasn't explosives, but regular pagers tampered with to explode using parts they already contain as to not arouse suspicion.
It will be interesting to see how this impacts the reputation of Western electronics. There's already unverified reports of Middle East markets abandoning western built phones end masse for Chinese ones.
Also wait until this technique gets into other malicious actors hands and we start seeing this attack happen everywhere. I don't think Westerners understand what a Pandora's box they've opened.
"Yup, and it seems like more and more that it wasn't explosives, but regular pagers tampered with to explode using parts they already contain as to not arouse suspicion."
There's no way this can be the case. Regular pager batteries do not explode. At most they can catch fire, but they don't explode. There's no way there wasn't a high-grade explosive in each of the pages. The electronics may have been normal and triggered with regular software, but there had to be an explosive and a detonator in the pager.
Totally false.
What is a western-built phone? Practically all portable electronics are manufactured in Asia.
If it was possible for terrorists to explode cell phones in the US they would have already done so.
No one knew it was possible until now. Now every government on earth is going to put in overtime to figure out how it was done and id they're vulnerable.
I don’t get this. It’s war, there isn’t much law. You can have agreements between countries, but is it really law if it’s not enforceable?
It’s enforceable. A war between two countries does not exist in a vacuum. The whole rest of the world can impose sanctions against the violator.
Whether they will in this case is another matter entirely.
Problem with sanctions is they haven't proved Israel did this. Its plausible deniability
Part of plausible deniability is that it has to be plausible. There has been no plausible argument presented that Israel did not do the pager and walkie talkie attack. For that matter, there hasn't even been a denial about it.
Then again a denial would also not be plausible. Either way, saying nothing is their best course of action.
Is that law though? No one is going to jail. Sounds more a contract or agreement.
Law between nation states is different than for citizens.
The difference is enforcement capabilities. Geopolitical enforcement is not impossible it just gets murky quick. So many different priorities.
There's plenty of law of war.
But you're right, laws are worth northing if they're not followed or enforced.
If no-one is going to stop Hezbollah, why would they stop Israel?
There is international law and there are international war crimes. This could very well be a war crime. It needs to be investigated.
Well, that’s up to debate.
In war there are still rules of engagement and expectations about things like “child soldiers” and “civilian casualties” and “collective punishments” etc….
But also, how much to those rules actually stop people?
Which rules are worth breaking if they prevent open war and millions of deaths?
No idea. Some deep philosophising and rationalisations around all of it is required regardless of your stance
Yeah right...
Ukraine using publicly available camera Drones to drop grenades on russian invaders?
Bravo Ukraine! Very creative self-defending!!
Mossad putting explosives in items terrorists ordered to specifically to coordinate their terrorrism?
Booh! Not allowed, bad Israel!!
I don't think they're talking about buying something normal and turning it into a weapon. But buying something normal and getting a weapon instead.
And also, the drone allows you to pick your target.
You don’t know who’s holding or near the walkie talkie.
I’m not for or against it, I don’t feel qualified to make a judgement, but I can see the differences.
Exactly. If your drone shows children and you still Boom, you've chosen to commit a war crime. But with this plus the indiscriminate bombing of humanitarian centers in Gaza, it's all war crimes all day every day. The numbers of dead children are exponentially higher than the numbers of dead Hamas, and once the critically injured innocents in Lebanon die the same may be true for Hezbollah.
You do know that Israel is not fighting against an invading force, right? That might be a slight difference when it comes to morality.
Men with tactical coordination, trained and armed with automatic weapons, crossed an internationally recognized border by land, sea, and air. They launched thousands of ballistic missiles, killed, captured and held territory, and have repeatedly given assurances that they will do the same again and again.
If that's not an invasion then we are just arguing semantics.
I think you missed an important qualifier in the statement you're responding to. I feel if you reread the statement you'd find you're probably both on the same page of this book.
I can't tell if you're talking about Israel...
Hamas invaded Israel last October 7 by land, sea, and air. They captured territory, however briefly. Hezbollah has been a part of the military campaign against Israel since Oct 8, weeks before Israeli troops entered Gaza (Oct 27). 60,000 Israelis have been displaced by Hezbollah attacks, and dozens killed or injured.
You do realize Hezbollah even having possession of those rockets was in violation of UN resolutions. The fact they've been launching them for nearly a year now is also a violation. Israel's actions here are far more justifiable than Gaza.
That is in no way relevant to my point. Let me know when Hezbollah invades Israel.
Hezbollah has invaded Israel's space with their rockets
That is not an invasion and you know it.
They've been bombing Israel for nearly a year - since Oct 8, well before Israel went into Gaza. Actually, even before Israel completely recaptured the areas captured by Hamas in southern Israel.
What choice does Israel have other than to give up on 60,000 of their own citizens permanently displaced by Hezbollah?
I think they have a choice to not use exploding pagers regardless of any bombing.
Also, their citizens are almost never even at risk of being injured by those bombs, unlike what happened in Lebanon.
You've only described an inaction as Israel's choice. Do you believe Israel should do nothing? Or do you believe that this attack was particularly egregious? The question stands. What choice of action does Israel have?
By all accounts, this was an incredibly precise attack, harming thousands of terrorists and very few civilians who likely chose knowingly to be in the immediate vicinity of terrorists. It has caused a major interruption in their ability to coordinate future terror attacks.
I believe this attack is particularly egregious.
That is absolutely not what I read. Furthermore, it is not a crime to live near bad people and expecting people to just leave their homes, which may have been in their family for generations, because of who their neighbors are is unreasonable. On top of that, how could they have possibly guaranteed every person with an exploding pager would be away from innocent people?
It also normalizes this sort of attack. That is not a good thing for the world.
Oh goody, more genocide apologist scum to block!
Israelis are the terrorists.