Israel under attack from hamas, war declared.

[Udon Map]

The problem is that the only individual news reporters allowed in by Hamas are those who agree to, and actually do, play by Hamas' rules, namely reporting what Hamas wants them to report. I don't believe that there are any totally independent reporters in Gaza.

Seems that Hamas is not the only barrier to independent reporting.

https://archive.ph/Vwz0z

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/analysis/expla ... ar/3227314

Unfortunately, Jack, neither of your sources has credibility in my book. The first link is to Haaretz, a far left pulication described by a writer for The Atlantic in this way: “I like a lot of the people at Haaretz, and many of its positions, but the cartoonish anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism can be grating.”

The second is to the Anadolu Agency, a state-run news agency from Turkey. According to Wikipedia, "However, Anadolu Agency is frequently described as a mouthpiece of the Turkish government that engages in propaganda, owing to its state-run status."

Before the current war, Hamas restricted journalists. Since the war started, Israel (the IDF) has done the same. I'm more sympathetic to current restrictions as Gaza is an active war zone. There were similar restrictions by the U.S. on journalists during the Vietnam war, and by the Allies during World War 2. The IDF can at least use the excuse that journalists' activity in an active war zone must be restricted for safety of the journalists as well as keeping IDF strategy from the public.

From what I've read, Hamas restrictions before the current war were quite severe. Again, based on what I've read, current IDF restrictions are more severe than necessary.

[jackspratt]

[Redacted]

. . . To the contrary,I am quite happy when someone provides evidence. [Redacted]

In this instance, the point of my comment to UM was that Israel is also restricting access to independent journalists - I'm sure most perceptive people would have recognised that. I just happened to pick the first two googled articles to link - there are many others if you google - which confirm my point, despite UM's reservations about Haaretz and Anadolu Agency.

[Redacted]

[AlexO]

You just cannot help yourself Pratty.
Always a deflection or calling untruths about anything that does not agree with your absolute certainty that you are totally correct in all you post.
Your point is not confirmed and neither is your slavish belief in everything the Hamas propaganda machine states.
Grow up.
Come up with something original.

[Udon Map]

To be clear, all viewpoints on this topic are welcome. Ad hominem comments or attacks are not. The Mods will take further action if people cannot adhere to this relatively mild restriction. Please, gentlemen, attack the idea or comment, not the poster.

[Udon Map]

In this instance, the point of my comment to UM was that Israel is also restricting access to independent journalists - I'm sure most perceptive people would have recognised that. I just happened to pick the first two googled articles to link - there are many others if you google - which confirm my point, despite UM's reservations about Haaretz and Anadolu Agency.

Yes, there is no question that the IDF has been restricting journalists' access to Gaza since the Hamas attack last October. It is true, however, that I try to limit my serious news sources to those which at least make a reasonable attempt to be impartial. I used to count the BBC in that group, but no longer. In my book, Reuters still meets my test.

[Udon Map]

3 Hostages Likely Killed by Israeli Strike Last Fall, I.D.F. Says
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/15/worl ... trike.html

So Israel apparently does investigate itself and accepts blame where the evidence so indicates. What it doesn't do, much to the chagrin of the Hamas apologists, is simply take Hamas' word for what happened.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

Gwynne Dyer usually has something interesting to read, and so he does here about the exploding pagers.

Exploding Pagers: What Was the Point?

By Gwynne Dyer

The exploding pagers that killed at least twelve people and injured 2,800 others in Lebanon and some adjacent places on Tuesday were mostly just a new wrinkle on the exploding cellphones that Israel has used to assassinate its opponents in the past, but there was one major innovation.

You expect competence and ingenuity from Israel’s Mossad spy agency, so it’s no surprise that it knew Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Islamist organisation, was planning to replace the mobile phones of its planners and commanders with old-fashioned pagers. (One-way pagers cannot transmit, so do not reveal the holder’s location.)

More impressively, Mossad found the information early enough to use it. Its operatives quickly turned to an obscure Hungarian firm called BAC Consulting that manufactures pagers under license from a Taiwan company called Gold Apollo.

Gold Apollo’s founder, Hsu Ching-kuang, denies it made the pagers used by Hezbollah, claiming that BAC Consulting had bought the rights to manufacture its pagers in Europe. “The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it,” Hsu said. “We are a responsible company. This is very embarrassing.” Indeed.

Now come the speculative bits. Was BAC Consulting a front organisation set up in Budapest by Mossad? That seems likely, because sabotaging 5,000 pagers is an industrial-scale operation, not easily hidden. It is not something that can be done by three spooks working in a garage.

And how on Earth did Mossad persuade some senior Hezbollah officials to order five thousand Gold Apollo Model AR-924 pagers from a dubious Hungarian company? Hezbollah will be tearing itself to shreds today as it frantically hunts for the traitors, and some of its senior officials will be facing ruthless interrogations and probably even torture.

Speculations aside, the rigged pagers were all delivered to Hezbollah a couple of months ago and have been in daily use ever since. The obvious question is: what was it all for? The answer to that lies in another question: why so many?

Normal Mossad assassinations target one or two key figures in militant Arab organisations. There seems little point in targeting thousands of mid- and low-level officials, all of whom will automatically be replaced by their immediate subordinates. Unless, of course, you want to take out as many as possible of them on a single designated day.

The technical brilliance of the Mossad operation was not in how the pagers were manufactured nor in the way the explosive was disguised or concealed. It was in the fact that all 5,000 pagers, widely dispersed across Lebanon and nearby countries, could be detonated simultaneously by a single coded signal.

That is exactly what the Israeli government would want to do on the day it finally launched its long-threatened invasion of Lebanon to ‘destroy’ Hezbollah.

True, such an operation is unlikely ever to succeed. After eleven months of fighting, the Israel Defence Force (IDF) has not even managed to destroy Hamas, a far weaker foe. But for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahus’s government, which cannot think of anything else to do, attacking Hezbollah is an almost irresistible displacement activity.

If he finally decides to go down that road, then thousands of pagers exploding and killing or maiming thousands of Hezbollah’s key cadres on the first day of the attack would make perfectly good sense.

So why have the Israelis jumped the gun? According to their own leaked explanation, it was because they thought Hezbollah was about to discover that its pagers had been sabotaged. Use them or lose them, even if using them without an accompanying invasion is a far less effective action resulting only in a few thousand shredded hands, faces and groins.

To maximise the damage, Mossad reportedly sent a message alert to the pagers less than a minute before the actual ‘explode’ command in order to ensure that as many Hezbollah commanders as possible would be looking at their pagers at just the right time. However, the pagers that stayed in trouser pockets did almost as much damage to stomachs and genitalia.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Israelis blew up several thousand Hezbollah walkie-talkies that it had also rigged to explode on command in a separate, probably much earlier operation. Most walkie-talkies were in storage and would only have been issued if Israel actually invaded, so there were few casualties from those explosions.

The whole thing is just a footnote in history, really, though a fascinating one. Most of the victims were actual combatants, for once, and the only message it sends is that Israel is not yet ready to invade Lebanon. Whether it ever will be ready remains to be seen, but doing so without crippling Hezbollah’s communications first would be a very big mistake.

_____________________________

To shorten to 700 words, omit paragraphs 4 and 15. (“Gold…indeed”; and “On Wednesday…explosion”)

https://gwynnedyer.com/2024/exploding-p ... the-point/

[AlexO]

Unusually good article from Dyer. Good that he recognised it was aimed at combatants and has severely hampered Hezbollah's combat abilities.
Totally different from the handwringing UN complaints that Israel had weaponised civilian electronic devices. Used by terrorists therefor terrorist weapons.

[tamada]

...the only message it sends is that Israel is not yet ready to invade Lebanon. ...

but thinks it is.

[tamada]

UN turns blind eye to terrorism

https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opi ... -terrorism

Orna Sagiv is the Ambassador of Israel to Thailand and Cambodia

[FrazeeDK]

how did the Isralies do it?? Here's my thoughts. Reports say Nasrallah and senior Hezbollah leadership banned cellphone use and came up with the replacement plan to use pagers. No doubt the Hezbollah procurement arm put out some type of request for bids on the devices. Mossad, using a front company likely put in a decent bid with the appropriate brown envelopes to seal the deal. I imagine those procurement officials have been terminated by now. Mossad had the devices booby-trapped at some facility in Israel then shipped to the front company in Hungary for further shipment to the "customer" - Hezbollah in Lebanon. Then, wait for destribution and training on the devices (4-5 months) then for the appropriate time to "push da button." I can see the Mossad head handing a remote button to Netanyahu and saying, "at your pleasure Mr. Prime Minister...."

The radio procurement probably went through a similar process although I imagine most radios were in the hands of Hebollah security elements..

Hezbollah's motto these days, "Can you give me a hand??"

[AlexO]

how did the Isralies do it?? Here's my thoughts. Reports say Nasrallah and senior Hezbollah leadership banned cellphone use and came up with the replacement plan to use pagers. No doubt the Hezbollah procurement arm put out some type of request for bids on the devices. Mossad, using a front company likely put in a decent bid with the appropriate brown envelopes to seal the deal. I imagine those procurement officials have been terminated by now. Mossad had the devices booby-trapped at some facility in Israel then shipped to the front company in Hungary for further shipment to the "customer" - Hezbollah in Lebanon. Then, wait for destribution and training on the devices (4-5 months) then for the appropriate time to "push da button." I can see the Mossad head handing a remote button to Netanyahu and saying, "at your pleasure Mr. Prime Minister...."

The radio procurement probably went through a similar process although I imagine most radios were in the hands of Hebollah security elements..

Hezbollah's motto these days, "Can you give me a hand??"

Hard to disagree with anything in your post Fraz but there must have been a plan sitting on a shelf somewhere. Perhaps the drip feed of how compromised mobile phone traffic is were a guide to the terror organisation to push for more basic electronic tools. Whatever happened it was a very clever solution to taking out specific terrorists without giving the handwringers a chance to claim 70% of casualties are innocent women and children.

[tamada]

If it was a "very clever solution to taking out specific terrorists", why wasn't it used to do precisely that? There's speculation that it did have this capability but that its existence was about to be compromised, hence the "detonate all" signals issued to the pagers and the 2-way radios the following day.

I don't argue that had it been used in a targeted way, the damage to Hezbollah would have been hugely significant, including "taking out" the Iranians and others that are actively involved. I argue that the way it was used didn't do Israel any favors at all. Unless of course they hold an opinion that they're ALL terrorists anyway or were ALL born to be terrorists so it's better just kill or maim as many as possible.

[AlexO]

If it was a "very clever solution to taking out specific terrorists", why wasn't it used to do precisely that? There's speculation that it did have this capability but that its existence was about to be compromised, hence the "detonate all" signals issued to the pagers and the 2-way radios the following day.

I don't argue that had it been used in a targeted way, the damage to Hezbollah would have been hugely significant, including "taking out" the Iranians and others that are actively involved. I argue that the way it was used didn't do Israel any favors at all. Unless of course they hold an opinion that they're ALL terrorists anyway or were ALL born to be terrorists so it's better just kill or maim as many as possible.

[Redacted]
1/ Do normal law abiding citizens go buy and carry around PAGERS that are linked to the Hezbollah terrorist organisation?
2/ Do peaceful non terrorist citizens go and buy short range specific bandwidth PRR's (Personal role radios) just to hear the football results?
3/ Taking 3k+ murdering terrorists out of the picture is a win in anybody's language unless you believe the UN is not biased or left wing press always state the truth.
Sorry for pissing on Your parade.

[jackspratt]

Jon Stewart shares more unfiltered thoughts about war in the Middle East
"Do you even hear yourself?"

Jon Stewart called out the “cognitive dissonance and language calisthenics” used when describing Israel‘s attacks against Hezbollah. On Monday’s episode, the Daily Show host offered a “golden soundbite” to explain how “flucking convoluted this has to be.”

Escalate to de-escalate - FFS

[rick]

As stated under the Hezbollah entry on Wikipedia, labelling them as terrorists is disputed

'Hezbollah's status as a legitimate political party, a terrorist group, a resistance movement, or some combination thereof is a contentious issue.'

Hezbollah came into existence to fight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Apart from Jews and Israel, they have no great issues with other countries. As stated by one Hezbollah person

In The New Yorker's July 22, 2024 issue, Dexter Filkins, in his report on the border fight between Israel and the organization, quoted a commander of Hezbollah, who had been active in its operations outside Lebanon, stating that the war between the "Zionist state" and the "party of God" would be "very simply" resolved, "when [the Jews] leave on the same boat they came on."[

If you want to actually read about Hezbollah, their origins and aims, wikipedia is as good as any.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah ... zbollah%20(/%20%CB%8C%20h%20%C9%9B%20z%20b%20%C9%99%20%CB%88%20l#:~:text=Hezbollah%20(/%20%CB%8C%20h%20%C9%9B%20z%20b%20%C9%99%20%CB%88%20l

[Laan Yaa Mo]

As stated under the Hezbollah entry on Wikipedia, labelling them as terrorists is disputed

'Hezbollah's status as a legitimate political party, a terrorist group, a resistance movement, or some combination thereof is a contentious issue.'

Hezbollah came into existence to fight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Apart from Jews and Israel, they have no great issues with other countries. As stated by one Hezbollah person

In The New Yorker's July 22, 2024 issue, Dexter Filkins, in his report on the border fight between Israel and the organization, quoted a commander of Hezbollah, who had been active in its operations outside Lebanon, stating that the war between the "Zionist state" and the "party of God" would be "very simply" resolved, "when [the Jews] leave on the same boat they came on."[

If you want to actually read about Hezbollah, their origins and aims, wikipedia is as good as any.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah ... zbollah%20(/%20%CB%8C%20h%20%C9%9B%20z%20b%20%C9%99%20%CB%88%20l#:~:text=Hezbollah%20(/%20%CB%8C%20h%20%C9%9B%20z%20b%20%C9%99%20%CB%88%20l

What is the connexion, if any, between the Hezbollah terrorist organisation and Iran?

[rick]

Read the wikipedia link.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

Why? I have little to no interest in the 'Party of God' and its sponsor in Iran. I'll leave it to the fans of Hezbollah to do the research and to reveal its niceties to the rest of us. You are doing a swell job so far. Don't forget the rockets the Hezbollah terrorists fire into Israel, which I am sure is condemned by the U.N. and other peace-loving organisations.

[tamada]

Jon Stewart shares more unfiltered thoughts about war in the Middle East
"Do you even hear yourself?"

Jon Stewart called out the “cognitive dissonance and language calisthenics” used when describing Israel‘s attacks against Hezbollah. On Monday’s episode, the Daily Show host offered a “golden soundbite” to explain how “flucking convoluted this has to be.”

Escalate to de-escalate - FFS

Escalation in order to de-escalate has just been implemented in Beirut, successfully delivering another black eye to Iran.

From what's being shown, the Lebanese civilians are following the warnings from Israel and evacuating to open spaces where it's impossible for Hezbollah militia to infiltrate and thus be targeted. If they chose to stay in tower blocks with deep basements that can be used as Hezbollah war rooms, then sorry if some dishes get broken when a bunker bomb is dropped. It appears that the militant's offence is limited to their diminishing stock of missiles while IDF forces mass on the border.

This in contrast to Gaza where the locals repeatedly "evacuate" from one hospital to the next school or UN facility, where the militants can easily blend in and guess what? Shock and horror when innocent women and children are killed. There's this idea that there are no safe and open spaces in Gaza but when foreign media is banned, who can argue with the claims that the population is forced by Hamas, under all sorts if threats and retribution, to be their human shield.

Of course Hamas's and Hezbollah's armed forces are structured differently with the former embedding themselves within the population whereas the latter have been allowed to create a regular army that's far bigger and better armed than the Lebanese armed forces. An open state within a state.

Hezbollah claims to be fighting for the restoration of Lebanese land which, if I am not mistaken, Israel did not create but only inherited from an unresolved border dispute between Lebanon and Syria, a situation that was created before any Israeli incursions and "occupation".

As much as I like Jon Stewart, yes it is "flucking convoluted" but it has been already been that for a very, very long time.