Danoff
Premium
- 34,009
- Mile High City
The crux of the disagreement seems to be in what Israel knew and when. If you assume that Israel was completely confident that Hezbollah ordered them and that all Hezbollah operatives are terrorists or otherwise combatants against Israel, then you might call this a targeted attack against terrorists or against an Israeli military foe with random casualties nearby. I'm sure Israel assumes that whoever is nearby is bad too.
For what it's worth, at least one report I read suggested that metal balls were packed around the explosives to maximize blast impact.
I personally do not give Israel the benefit of the doubt on these finer points. I do not assume they were confident that the pagers went to Hezbollah, I do not assume that Hezbollah is entirely terrorist or even Israel combatants, I do not assume a single use for the pagers, and I do not assume that bystanders are guilty by association. I can see how there is some disagreement on how these events are interpreted, it circles around how you fill in the gaps in information. But I do think that it is somewhat inescapable that the primary focus is to create terrorism around a mode of communication and to play statistics for killing terrorists/combatants with expected casualties.
For what it's worth, at least one report I read suggested that metal balls were packed around the explosives to maximize blast impact.
I personally do not give Israel the benefit of the doubt on these finer points. I do not assume they were confident that the pagers went to Hezbollah, I do not assume that Hezbollah is entirely terrorist or even Israel combatants, I do not assume a single use for the pagers, and I do not assume that bystanders are guilty by association. I can see how there is some disagreement on how these events are interpreted, it circles around how you fill in the gaps in information. But I do think that it is somewhat inescapable that the primary focus is to create terrorism around a mode of communication and to play statistics for killing terrorists/combatants with expected casualties.