Did exploding pagers break international law?
The attack on Hezbollah’s communications network has enormously damaged the group, but was the attack, believed to be by Israel, legal under international law? The Middle East is once again on the brink of all-out war, with the Israeli government heralding new battle plans have been confirmed for so...
Citing American and other officials briefed on the operation, the New York Times reported Tuesday that Israel hid explosives inside a batch of pagers ordered from Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo and destined for Hezbollah. A switch was embedded to detonate them remotely, it added.
Is there a law that covers indiscriminate killing?
The United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW or CCWC), concluded at Geneva on October 10, 1980, and entered into force in December 1983, seeks to prohibit or restrict the use of certain conventional weapons which are considered excessively injurious or whose effects are indiscriminate.
Yup, looks like a war crime to me.
Edit: On further thinking, do they know that none of the modified pagers made it into other markets? They likely changed hands more than once between installing the explosives and distributing them to Hezbollah members allowing for inventory 'shrinkage.' I'll bet this is going to end up like Project Eldest Son were exploding pagers show up for ages after they were meant to be set off.
Yup, looks like a war crime to me.
How is directly targeting Hezbollah indiscriminate? It's literally the opposite. It would be indiscriminate if they prepared general pagers / whatever that may or may not be used by Hezbollah, but also countless other people. But as far as we can tell the collateral damage was comparatively low, since they targeted shipments directly meant for Hezbollah itself, meaning this was a highly efficient strike.
I so looking into it. It looks like few of the pagers are given to actual militants. They were given out to any who they needed to be in contact to, which includes civilians. I can’t get any percentages or counts other than 12 dead and 2700 injured. But the fact that the US indicates that Isreal made the bombs, and even they can’t give any estimate how effective it was… yes it was a war crime akin to disguising a bomb as a harmless object. Your claim that this was a “targeted strike” Is an assumption unfounded by any evidence.
Indiscriminate because you can’t know who is holding/around the pager at the time of detonation
Maybe, though if they’re not getting punished for the whole, y’know, genocide thing, I think they’re not going to get punished over weaponized pagers either.
I just think that morally it means it's okay to break international law against Israel.
If it's Israel ... no
If it's any other country .... yes