CerealKiller01

And those Hezbollah operatives can lose their pagers

And you can lose your car keys. But if someone asked you where they were, you wouldn't say "Oh, they're in a random place".

or they themselves can move randomly through populated areas with the hidden bomb strapped to their hip

The explosive charge was small enough to seriously harm only those who are in direct contact with it. There's a video of one charge going off in the middle of grocery shopping (speaking of your next point) with a person standing maybe 20 cm next to the explosion. That person was able to run away without apparent harm.

They never go to buy groceries, or stop at a hospital or school, or have their devices stolen or lost in some random location

There's no method of warfare that would never harm civilians.

a manner that has absolutely no mechanism by which to control where they actually are and who else is in proximity to them when detonated.

~~The pagers being bought by Hezbollah is the mechanism. Did you mean a real-time mechanism? Is this what it boils down to?~~ Edit: Sorry, I misread what you said. Changing my reply to: As you can see from the video, where they are and who is next to them isn't really a factor. I would agree that if they are in very close proximity to another person (hugging them of maybe riding in a crowded public transport), the explosion will probably harm the other person. Once again, relative to other methods aimed against targets operating among civilian population, this seems more selective, not less.

No one is forcing to to reply. I'm continuing it because to me the operation was extremely selective in which people it targets relative to modern warfare among civilian infrastructure, and I'm trying to understand the counter argument.

I did

OK, it took me a while to understand this, and I'm assuming you meant "I do have some criteria". If you meant something else, I can't even guess what it was.

after the bit you cherrypicked.

Ah, my bad. I mistook the "pagers that will randomly move around a populated area" part as a purely rhetorical statement and my brain kinda swept it aside. Sorry. The explosives weren't planted in a random batch of pagers. It was in a batch specifically meant for Hezbollah operatives. You could make the argument that some of the pagers got into non-Hezbollah hands (and obviously they did), but what you said is a gross and unfair exaggeration. Your criteria doesn't apply here.

I don’t care in the least if anyone thinks I’m in cahoots with anyone; it won’t change that I’m in cahoots with no one.

Sorry, I was trying to say - Please don't imply I might be willingly misunderstanding you when you're not communicating clearly. Even your edit is somewhat unclear, as it isn't evident if the part before the edit is still relevant.

how absolutely heartless and tragic [...]

Wait, what? The prevalent criticism against the exploding pagers (both on Lemmy and other places) is that they're akin to mines and are essentially terrorist attacks. Both of these thing are (at least somewhat) specific and objective, and that's where we started the conversation. Going from that to "It's heartless", which is a very subjective description, seems to me like moving the goalpost.

Yes, of course it's heartless and tragic. War is heartless and tragic. How else would you describe taking a kid who was in high school a few months ago, putting a rifle in his hand and telling him "See that other kid who's just like you? go shoot him because he happen to be living on the other side of an imaginary line"?

Saying "Well, this heartless and tragic thing is acceptable but I don't like that heartless and tragic thing" is arbitrary unless there's an actual criteria. Either way you're entitled to your own opinion, it's just that earlier I thought you have some criteria or test.

You: So the pagers were ordered by Hezbollah...

Me: "The pagers were used by Hezbollah, not Hamas."

You: "I realize that, I was drawing a parallel between the two circumstances."

Me: asking for clarification.

You: "you seem not to (or have chosen not to) understand [the parallel?] the first two times [...] Edite: I see I typed Hamas when I meant to type Hezbollah in one place"

It seems you've mistyped, then misunderstood me when I fixed it (though I attributed it to a lack of knowledge) and now you're insinuating I might be misunderstanding you willfully? If that's the case, you're making it so easy for me other people might think we're in cahoots[1].

Anyway, Just because I don't agree with you doesn't mean I didn't understand the argument. And I'm pretty sure I did understand at least one of your points. I've explained why the pagers aren't like landmines and why the rational behind the treaty to ban landmines seems to agree with me. If that's the only argument you made ("It’s been one argument the entire time"), you can simply reply to what I said instead of reframing anything.

[1] Speaking of other people, are people downvoting me as a dislike button, or is there a specific reason? I don't mind the downvotes, just wondering if they're because people don't agree with me or because they think there's something wrong/harmful with my messages.

I realize that, I was drawing a parallel between the two circumstances.

Err... what circumstances? What was the purpose of drawing a parallel between Hamas and Hezbollah? What insight was I to gain by it? Asking seriously.

And again - when you drop a bomb, you can credibly have made an attempt to ensure no one is in the vicinity who you don’t intend to bomb. (Not that israel seems to do this) - this is especially true with modern technology.

Sorry, were you making two arguments or one? You asked about the difference between landmines and what Israel did. I thought the rest of what you said was to show how planting bombs in pagers is like landmines, not a new argument. If there were two arguments, you didn't respond to my answer regarding landmines.

I can talk about the difference, and you'll respond with a counter argument etc. Ultimately, it'll come down to me saying Israel is able to reasonably predict who'll carry the explosive and you saying they can't. The bottom line for me is this:

Some weapons have been banned from warfare while others haven't. The banned weapons follow certain criteria for being banned. exploda-pagers don't follow the criteria under which landmines have been banned. If you know of other weapons or tactics that are banned and are akin to exploda-pagers, we can discuss that. Otherwise, I'm left with the conclusion what Israel did falls within the bounds of a legitimate military operation. You can, of course, think differently.

The pagers were used by Hezbollah, not Hamas. They are two different entities, and while it doesn't make any difference in the narrow context I'm replying to, it's really a basic detail that anyone voicing an opinion on the matter should know.

How is this argument different than defending the use of landmines?

From the Wikipedia entry about landmines: "The use of land mines is controversial because they are indiscriminate weapons, harming soldier and civilian alike. They remain dangerous after the conflict in which they were deployed has ended, killing and injuring civilians and rendering land impassable and unusable for decades. To make matters worse, many factions have not kept accurate records (or any at all) of the exact locations of their minefields, making removal efforts painstakingly slow."

Planting bombs inside pagers specifically used by Hezbollah isn't indiscriminate (unless by "indiscriminate" you mean "when they go off, they harm anyone in the proximity", but going by that definition everything with an exploding charge is "indiscriminate", yet only mines are banned). And obviously exploded bombs don't remain dangerous and aren't difficult to remove.

During the last month there were not 1, not 10, not 100 but 807 alerts in Israel for missile attacks. Some of them weren't fired by Hezbollah, and some might have been the same alert in different areas, but that's still about 7 missile PER DAY even if we assume only 1 in 4 alerts was due to an attack by Hezbollah (side note: during the entire war, about 2,000 missile were launched from Lebanon to Israel, that's an average of about 6 per day). In addition to this, there were 452 aircraft intrusion alerts. Most of these attacks are against civilian targets.

Right now, there are about 79 thousand people (around 0.8% of total population) who are still evicted for nearly a year from northern Israel.

And just in case it needs to be said - the first attack was made by Hezbollah (on Oct. 8th) and without any provocation by Israel.

Not only is this a situation no sovereign country can stand, but it's also a violation of the Lebanon-approved UN Security Council's resolution 1701, that was the basis for ending the 2006 Lebanon War. Hell, just having missiles in the area is by itself a violation of the resolution.

Regarding political reasoning - A war in Lebanon is actually bad for Netanyahu. His interest is a slow-burning war so he can prolong the current situation as much as possible (once the war is over, the pubic will demand an election). In fact, that's probably the main reason you had "a missile here and a bomb there" and not an actual war.

I have two main moral guidelines by which I try to live:

A. Try to leave everything better than it was before, or at least avoid making it worse. It doesn't have to be by much, but if every person makes things just one tiny bit better, the culminating effect will be great. Do your part.

B. The difference between a moral person and an immoral one usually doesn't lie in the ability/inability to know right from wrong, rather in the ability to rationalize their immoral actions. Therefore:

• Doing bad things once in a while does not make you a bad person, it makes you human.
• Avoiding doing bad things 100% of the time will make you a bad person, as you'll inevitably fail and will be forced to rationalize your actions, making it easier to do more bad things.
• What makes you a good person is the ability to know when you're acting wrong.

From there, there are a few rules that help me along the way:

1. Everyone are wrong. Assume you're wrong about some important things/core beliefs, you've just yet to discover which ones. Don't hesitate to act according to what you think is right, but understand you're probably doing something wrong somewhere. Look for signs that show that's the case.

2. Making mistakes is fine and inevitable. Reflect on your mistakes and try not to make the same mistake twice.

3. Use everything as an opportunity to learn. The best way to learn is from other people's mistakes - it provides a visceral lesson without you having to pay the price.

4. People's opinions of you are their business, not yours. Though you should choose to use them to improve yourself when applicable.

5. Admitting being wrong or admitting a mistake will not only improve things, but is a sign of strength. Not doing so is a sign of weakness. This is true both for yourself and for other people.

6. Give people the benefit of the doubt and don't be quick to judge them. Wait until you have enough data and then come to conclusions.

7. No rule is correct in all situations.

8. External rules (and laws) exist for a reason. If you're going to break one of them, first understand why it's there in the first place and why it should be ignored. Do not assume you know better than the people who came up with it.

9. Blanket statements can be correct or incorrect for the most part, but they can't be used to solely justify an action or an opinion.

You can use LLMs to, well, do what they're designed to do - generate text. Need to write a marketing text? Summersie a meeting or make a summery more readable? Rewrite an "about" page to incorporate something new? Just be sure to read through the generated text and make sure it's correct.

I've ordered some household items (door stoppers, tools etc.). The prices were somewhat cheaper than AE, the quality was fine (some things were better than expected. Some very cheap items were... Let's say they were priced according to their quality. Thought other very cheap items turned out good, so it's a gamble) and shipping was OK. Never tried the app for privacy reasons, but the site seems ok-ish (it's a bit janky, but I suspect it's due in part to some privacy addon I use. In short:

1. Don't use the app.
2. Don't buy very cheap stuff unless you're willing to chance it.
3. The "prizes" either appear only in the app or can be disabled via ad blockers and/or privacy addons.

No no, they meant first of many unfulfilled promises.