The glee that Mr. Donegan indulges in about the remote detonations of pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon requires a certain amount of ignorance or negligence, if not arrogance and sadism (“In fight against terrorists, pagers are more targeted than bombs and bullets,” Sept, 26). It’s not funny.
Leon Panetta, former head of the CIA and Pentagon, on Sept. 22, told CBS regarding the pager attack, “I don’t think there’s any question that it’s a form of terrorism.” Additionally, Article 7(2) of the Amended Protocol II of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons prohibits the use of booby traps. That treaty, to which Israel is a signatory, prohibits the use of booby-traps or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects that are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material.
Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said, that “the fear and terror unleashed” was “profound” and that “simultaneous targeting of thousands of individuals, whether civilians or members of armed groups, without knowledge as to who was in possession of the targeted devices, their location, and their surroundings at the time of the attack, violates international human rights law and, to the extent applicable, international humanitarian law.”
In addition to the few Hezbollah operatives killed, at least 3,000 innocent civilians, including women, children, health workers, storekeepers, diplomats, and politicians were killed or injured, causing blindness, loss of limbs, and organ damage in the attacks on supermarkets, cars, and apartments, and hospitals were overwhelmed. The explosions caused widespread panic among the Lebanese public, the precise objective of terrorist attacks and the definition of a war crime. This has opened a new phase of warfare and terrorism in which the weapons include computers, smartphones, cars, and all electronic devices.
This is no accident, no “surgical strike,” and the civilians are not “collateral damage.” The Dahiya Doctrine is fundamental to Israel’s war-making strategy, named after the suburb of Beirut it destroyed in its disastrous and unsuccessful war against Hezbollah in 2006. The goal is to inflict collective and long-lasting punishment to cripple the economy and the ability to recover and rebuild, while humiliating and terrorizing the whole population, regardless of the civilian consequences.
Tactically, the Dahiya Doctrine calls for disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks on government and civilian infrastructure, schools, and religious institutions. The doctrine defines them as military bases and civilians as enemies. It’s been enacted in Gaza for a year, and now in Lebanon. While some extolled the remote explosions as technically sophisticated and ingenious, they were definitely not “precisely targeted,” nor were they intended to be.
Donegan’s claims that the bombs, “exclusively targeted enemy combatants and minimized the threat to noncombatants,” that only a “small number of civilians [were] reportedly hurt,” that the “vast majority of casualties were Hezbollah personnel,” that they were deployed “under all recognized international conventions,” and that these attacks were “moral” and “ethical” are all false.
Donegan asserts those who support and advocate for adherence to the laws of war, international treaties, and humanitarian laws are “supposed [fake] ‘humanitarians'” who are motivated by “tribalism.” Slanderously, he smears them as, “just upset that ‘their side’ suffered a big setback,” as if anyone who opposes war crimes sides with terrorists. He accuses those who object to these attacks based on principles and laws as being identical to Hamas because, “they view the civilian population of Gaza just as Hamas does—as expendable public relations tools to be exploited in conducting the war.” Such reprehensible and repulsive personal attacks, all too common in the current atmosphere, have no place in rational dialogue and deserve to be condemned.
Perhaps, Mr. Donegan would benefit from paying less attention to the Three Stooges and the Roadrunner’s Wiley Coyote, and more to the global consequences of this new method of killing and accurate news about the escalating regional war in the Middle East. Δ
David Broadwater writes to New Times from Atascadero. Send an opinion of your own for publication to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Oct 3-13, 2024.
David Broadwater helps make my point about tribalism motivating the objections to the pager strategy. Nowhere in his piece is there any mention of the frequent Hezbollah missile attacks on Israel which have killed civilians, including the attack on a playground a few weeks ago which killed Druze children. Murdering children counts as sadistic to most decent people, yet his outrage over “war crimes” somehow overlooks these killings, and the fact that these hostilities can cease anytime that Hezbollah is willing to abandon their efforts to kill Israelis and to destroy Israel. It is pretty clear that Mr. Broadwater is cheering for Hezbollah and the Palestinian cause.
I am curious about the claim that 3000 innocent civilians, and a “few operatives” were killed. Where did these numbers come from? Why would 3000 civilians be carrying Hezbollah issued pagers, but only a “few” operatives were? In real life, who carries another’s pager, since the purpose of the device is to immediately contact the owner? Anyone carrying one of the pagers was serving Hezbollah, whether you want to admit they were operatives or not. Most of us have seen the video in which a pager explodes in a terrorist’s pocket, injuring him but only startling the other people standing only a few feet away, leaving them uninjured. There is not a significant blast radius which can injure others.
I take the indignation of the UN officials with a grain of salt, observing how at least 8 of the 10/7 attackers were UN staff members. The UN has long since abandoned any pretense of neutrality.
@johndonegan – As I’ve pointed out several times in previous comments, just because you condemn the reckless and exacerbating actions of Israel in Lebanon does not mean you are de facto supporting Hezbollah or Hamas. One can condemn the antisemitism and violence of Israel’s sworn enemies while still holding Israel to account for killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza and Lebanon. Holding both parties to moral account only becomes difficult to contemplate if you see the world in black vs. white terms and can’t reason beyond elementary school “good guys v. bad guys” logic.
Shanti – The gun-to-the-head reference doesn’t make any sense in this context. If taken to its logical conclusion, your analogy would mean that if someone is holding a gun to your head, you kill the gunmen, his entire family, and then tens of thousands of innocent children living in the town where the gunman lived. Also, you commit war crimes. I don’t think this is what you mean to say.
I don’t follow your suggestion that I’m being morally relativistic, since the entire point of my previous comment was about moral clarity and the importance of being flexible in condemning moral atrocities on both sides. You clearly didn’t read the comment or missed the point entirely.
The suggestion that future Israeli generations will thank the current Israeli government is an absolutely ludicrous statement that shows no awareness of what’s currently happening in the Middle East. It isn’t clear to me why future generations would be thankful for a government that has managed to turn the entire world against it, has further radicalized Gazans (creating future terrorists) through its indiscriminate bombing and permanent occupation, has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, and has shown its own military apparatus to be woefully unprepared for a future attack. So much to be thankful for!
It isn’t just that the current Israeli policy is morally bankrupt (it is), but also that it is strategically naive. In short, this sort of counter-terrorism strategy simply does not work (see the U.S.’s War on Terror). Indiscriminate shelling, mayhem, destruction, and the killing of tens of thousands of innocent children does nothing to help further a two state solution of lasting peace, creates scores of future terrorists (in fact, Hezbollah was founded in 1982 after Israel invaded Lebanon), and will bring about decades of continued, unabated violence. I don’t think this is the future any of us want.