Yes, seemingly so. I guess we'd have to wait for full investigations to conclude before saying for sure, but sure looks like it.
> “To the extent that international humanitarian law applies, at the time of the attacks there was no way of knowing who possessed each device and who was nearby,” the experts said. “Simultaneous attacks by thousands of devices would inevitably violate humanitarian law, by failing to verify each target, and distinguish between protected civilians and those who could potentially be attacked for taking a direct part in hostilities."
> “Such attacks could constitute war crimes of murder, attacking civilians, and launching indiscriminate attacks, in addition to violating the right to life,” the experts said.
I mean, who else is using a pager in Lebanon? That's not a tool a normal consumer uses, it's only used by people to evade phone surveillance. I think it sounds like a high probability that anyone receiving one of these pages in Lebanon is part of Hezbollah.
But they can impossibly actually know who physically has the pager next to them, when they're triggering them. This is the "failing to verify each target" part.
Maybe that's the wrong way to think about it? Maybe these "wartime covert operations" need to read up on Human Rights and figure out a way to work within it?
Yes, seemingly so. I guess we'd have to wait for full investigations to conclude before saying for sure, but sure looks like it.
> “To the extent that international humanitarian law applies, at the time of the attacks there was no way of knowing who possessed each device and who was nearby,” the experts said. “Simultaneous attacks by thousands of devices would inevitably violate humanitarian law, by failing to verify each target, and distinguish between protected civilians and those who could potentially be attacked for taking a direct part in hostilities."
> “Such attacks could constitute war crimes of murder, attacking civilians, and launching indiscriminate attacks, in addition to violating the right to life,” the experts said.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/09/exploding-pa...
I mean, who else is using a pager in Lebanon? That's not a tool a normal consumer uses, it's only used by people to evade phone surveillance. I think it sounds like a high probability that anyone receiving one of these pages in Lebanon is part of Hezbollah.
> I mean, who else is using a pager in Lebanon?
But they can impossibly actually know who physically has the pager next to them, when they're triggering them. This is the "failing to verify each target" part.
That's not a very realistic standard for a wartime covert operation.
Maybe that's the wrong way to think about it? Maybe these "wartime covert operations" need to read up on Human Rights and figure out a way to work within it?
Sounds like a unilateral disarmament, which is not how to win a war. Hamas and the like have no concern with human rights of course.
Is this a SoP in wartime?
I mean in the case in Lebanon they knew. They sold those pagers to Hezbollah.
They only discriminated to the extent to which the specific product they went after correlated with the people they actually wanted to kill.
The locations of the detonations were indiscriminate, the intended targets were not.