All: before commenting here, please verify that you're feeling something different—quite different—from anger and a desire to fight this war. That is not what HN is for, and destroys what it is for.
This site is for curious, thoughtful, respectful, and kind interaction—most of all with those you may disagree with, regardless of how bad they are or you feel they are.
If that's not possible, it's ok not to post. We'd rather have a thread with no comments than a thread with aggressive comments, let alone nationalistic or religious flamewar. There is far too much aggression in the thread below, which is is understandable, but please don't add more. It provides a fleeting sensation of relief, but then it just makes everything worse.
So, what exactly did Palantir provide? I'm staying out of commenting whether or not this was legal/justified and asking strictly what service this was that was sold.
Is this like, live location information provided from social media/carriers/etc? Is it AI guessing who might be a target based on collected data?
EDIT: I ask because this sort of claim could just be marketing on Panantir's end and the quotes and this post never actually explained what it was other than saying their software was used.
I believe 972mag.com have reported on Palentir tech involved in the "AI target selection" programs that the Israeli military has used in Gaza. My recollection is they use a logic similar to the subprime ratings agency scandal: collate info on individuals (cell tower proximity, movement patterns, social media leanings), and find the top 5% of target candidates, call those "high quality" regardless of any absolute metric of quality, and then rubber-stamp approve air strikes on their homes by the human lawyers "in the loop" -- then repeat with the next top 5% and call those "high quality" again. The implication was that Palentir worked on the ranking system itself. (The 5% is arbitrary here, a stand-in for whatever top slice they do use)
There are a couple such systems, and I am speaking without the ability to take the time right now to find those articles to confirm/counter my recollections, so consider this a prompt for a proper review -- ironic.
Most likely as a data lakehouse, but the Palantir angle is most likely overstated - Palantir has a tiny presence in Israel, and has had a history of overstating it's intel and defense credentials (eg. A three letter agency that churned Palantir was named for years after before they stopped calling them out).
That said, I have heard some positive feedback about Palantir's data integration capabilities - most other vendors don't provide bespoke professional services to build niche integrations for even low ACV customers.
The era of microservices and micro teams gives all "company X uses us" claims a different vibe. Maybe it used to actually mean "this is the thing Facebook uses to power its website on millions of servers" but now it's usually like "the team of 6 that runs the analytics platform for Apple Fitness+ uses this on 5 servers"
Thanks for attempting to answer what I was asking about. I have had difficulty finding out more about it, the alleged ex-Palantir commenter said this would be part of their Gotham product, but most of what I could find on that was buzzword data visualization stuff. If their old post history and what you're saying is accurate, then it's really just a database integration tool with a nice interface?
Their association with defense comes from the fact they got their start in industry thanks to in-q-tel which literally has the purpose of funding technology for the CIA and intelligence agencies. So it would not be surprising if they were heavily intertwined in that world.
“The tech was used” but how, specifically, in regards to Operation Grim Reaper? The implication is that it was used to select targets but if that it true then does that mean there are still unexploded pagers in use?
I actually consider the pager attack to be legal. There's obviously criticism of it, but I'm fairly sure you're allowed to do this kind of thing by laws of war.
Obviously this creates a huge problem for pretty much everyone though, since we can imagine that our ordinary consumer products from all sorts countries could similarly explode if we ended up at war with the manufacturers.
I don't know if it's "legal" or not and by who's laws, but it certainly seems like terrorism to me (i.e. intentionally creating a state of terror).
I think if Lebanon found a clever way to assassinate the top 45 military commanders in Israel the same people who are defending this wouldn't be calling it a "Legal act of war".
Targeted attacks against military/militia leadership is not terrorism - almost by definition.
If it was just random devices exploding, then sure, that could be considered terrorism. But it wasn't random devices, it was communication devices procured by Hezbollah and directly given by Hezbollah to their own members for their own purposes.
Firstly, generals, like anybody else can be terrorized.
Secondly, even if you only kill generals, that doesn't mean you didn't cause terror for everybody else. Imagine for example that Hezbollah found a way to poison the food for Israel's top X military personnel. It would cause a state of emotional terror for many people in Israel about their food safety for decades most likely, even if they weren't in the military themselves.
When Ukraine assassinates a Russian general with a car bomb, is that "terrorism" or is that just a targeted killing of a military leader during a war? Do you think this is somehow morally problematic beyond the typical standards of war?
Do you think that "normal" means of military action, like dropping a 500lb bomb, is less "terroristic" than essentially setting off a firecracker in their face/hands/pocket? Because, like, that's the alternative. If your position is that all forms of war are illegal, then you have the right to that opinion, but it's not a realistic position.
>When Ukraine assassinates a Russian general with a car bomb, is that "terrorism" or is that just a targeted killing of a military leader during a war?
That depends on when the car detonates. If the car detonates when he and his guard enter it at 6 am near the defense ministry sure. If the car detonates when it is parked in the middle of Moscow at noon and 100 people are around then by pre-2022 standards it would be terrorism.
I think instead of these fake whataboutisms we should just admit that there is no universal bar and if it's "our team" then we are willing to change the standard.
In this case, we know that when Israel set off these pagers some innocent bystanders got hurt. No need to "whatabout".
No it wouldn't, as long as the target is military and you didn't have opportunity to killed him in base it is fine. At most you could complain it is violates proportionality however no car bomb would kill 100 people. Not to mention your analogy is flawed - hezobllah doesn't have any marked bases.
So let me just understand your position here. Suppose the US declares war on Venezuela. Suppose a venezuelan living in America just looks up a bunch of US generals addresses online, and then sets all their houses on fire killing them in their sleep in their McMansions in suburbia.
Are you saying that's a valid military strike, and therefore can't possibly be terrorism? Suppose this person is so successful he kills 1,000 and generals and numerous quit their jobs and move in fear for their life, just to really clarify what you're arguing here.
I think it is a valid military strike if a Venezuelan soldier does it on an order. Military targets where a strike are in danger of killing civilians are a hard judgment call. Generally one should never risk targeting civilians. Military law is a complex subject and officers spend quite a lot of time being educated in it. Here is a Swedish defence college course on it. https://www.fhs.se/en/swedish-defence-university/courses/int...
> Suppose a venezuelan living in America just looks up a bunch of US generals addresses online, and then sets all their houses on fire killing them in their sleep in their McMansions in suburbia.
I don't think the analogy is apt. Members of Hezbollah do not occupy a positions of similar relationship to Lebanon as US generals does to the US. As far as I've heard, flag officers and others are escorted by personal security for an attack of any sort, such as the 2009 Ft Hood shooting. [0]
Moving past that, a civilian citizen of Venezuela in the US who performed actions against US military targets would not be a valid military strike since that person would not be an identifiable member or Venezuela's military. It would more akin to a spy or assassin. Below is an excerpt from an article representing a US-centric view of history [1].
But the right to kill one’s enemy during war was not considered wholly
unregulated. During the 16th century, Balthazar Ayala agreed with Saint
Augustine’s contention that it “is indifferent from the standpoint of justice
whether trickery be used” in killing the enemy, but then distinguished
trickery from “fraud and snares” (The Law and Duties of War and Military
Discipline). Similarly, Alberico Gentili, writing in the next century, found
treachery “so contrary to the law of God and of Nature, that although I may
kill a man, I may not do so by treachery.” He warned that treacherous killing
would invite reprisal (Three Books on the Law of War). And Hugo Grotius
likewise explained that “a distinction must be made between assassins who
violate an express or tacit obligation of good faith, as subjects resorting
to violence against a king, vassals against a lord, soldiers against him whom
they serve, those also who have been received as suppliants or strangers or
deserters, against those who have received them; and such as are held by no
bond of good faith” (On the Law of War and Peace).
The Geneva Convention ought to have something to say about how a general may and may not be attacked.
If I remember correctly, the assailant must be dressed in some sort of military uniform to be considered a prisoner of war if captured. Lacking the uniform, it would be espionage and no Geneva Convention rights.
Obviously, neither side in the conflict is adhering to these rules.
For example, when the Allies tried to assassinate Hitler with a smuggled briefcase bomb during WW2, that wasn't terrorism: that was just regular warfare. Hitler was the leader of Germany and directed its military.
Similarly, smuggling pager bombs to members of Hezbollah generally wouldn't qualify as terrorism, since Hezbollah a) is a militia (famously it's the largest non-state militia in the world), and b) was actively fighting a war against Israel — a war that Hezbollah themselves initiated.
I can’t reply to zugzug underneath (is there a maximum comment depth), but it feels pretty obvious that the US President is a very legitimate target in any war with the US. Maybe the most legitimate target.
So you're arguing if the US declared war on Venezuela, that Venezuela could just use a drone to blow up the US president and that's just how war should work from now on?
Because it's only a matter of years until drones get small and stealthy enough that nobody is safe; exploding pagers are a clear first step in this direction.
While I'm only adding to the choir of people telling you "of course," since I'm directly the person you're responding to it still feels worth saying: yes, of course, if America and Venezuela went to war, it's completely legal for Venezuela to attempt to kill the U.S. President.
As an American, I certainly hope they would fail. But do I think it's legal? Yes: it's a targeted strike on the leader of an enemy country they'd theoretically be at war with. Do I think it's wise? Well — no, Venezuela has a much smaller military, and assassinating the U.S. President would trigger a massive war that would devastate Venezuela for decades while modestly inconveniencing American taxpayers. But legal? Yes.
They could do that now and it might be legal under international laws of war.
We've massed forces for an attack, attacked their ships, violated their airspace with combat aircraft (that's today), and extensively and publicly threatened them. They'd be in their legal rights to strike preemptively, including possibly a decapitation strike (this is why the Dubya administration kept repeating the term "preemptive strike", even though it was obviously nowhere near applying in the case of Iraq—it was a way of asserting its legal basis)
[edit] As thereisnospork points out in a sibling comment, however, this doesn't mean it'd be a good idea.
I mean of course they could, and should[0] how is that a question?
[0] Shouldn't - classic example of a tactical win being a strategic blunder. Killing the American president and would solidify American public support for the war - which would probably be undesirable in the balance.
> Targeted attacks against military/militia leadership is not terrorism - almost by definition.
I mean, you're not wrong: the State seeks monopoly on violence; the kind of damages it can inflict, where, when and however it wants. Everyone else is ... a terrorist, and whatever they do is ... terrorism.
> communication devices procured by Hezbollah and directly given by Hezbollah
Replace "Hezbollah" with "the US Govt" and you'll arrive at some answer.
Btw, off-duty / non-combat personnel aren't deemed to be "at war".
I don't whether something is terrorism as something that's relevant for whether it's allowed by the laws of war.
Instead what we have is IHL, i.e. the Geneva and Hague conventions etc., and if you are targeting military personnel or other targets of military importance, without any extra cruelty or attacks on civilians, what does it matter if it looks like terror-bombing?
If it's allowed by IHL but is terrorism by British or French of German law or whatever, it's allowed. IHL is the actual binding thing.
I think this was a brilliant operation and perfectly lawful. I also think that if Lebanon (not Hezbollah) were in a state of war with Israel, yes, that would (depending on proportionality and target discrimination) be perfectly legal, too.
I don't see how. It was intended to paralyze and undermine a militia which it did. A lot of war actions create terror that doesn't make most war terrorism
The intended targets of the exploding papers weren't civilians. Very few actual civilians ended up hurt by the detonations, much fewer than attacks by conventional weapons. It's about as targeted an attack as one can achieve from a distance.
As an act of warfare, Israel did a splendid job on this. Thoroughly impressive work.
> Very few actual civilians ended up hurt by the detonations, much fewer than attacks by conventional weapons.
The reports are 4,000 wounded and 12 killed unintended targets in order to kill 42 targets.
On what planet is that “very few actual civilians”? I think you knew full well before posting that’s a ridiculous claim which is why you did it anonymously.
"The reports" are that 12 were killed total, not that 12 civilians were killed. Only 2 of the killed were civilians as far as I can tell. Several of those who people on Twitter tried to claim were civilians, including a doctor, were admitted by Hezbollah to be Hezbollah members and given Hezbollah funerals.
I've never heard of "42 targets", and given 12 people died total, obviously 42 targets were not killed.
You should provide some sourcing for your numbers.
Fair enough, 12 total only includes the original pager attack, not the subsequent radio one. However, you seem to have made the same mistake. 42 people were killed total, but that does not mean that there were 42 targets.
In any case, if Hezbollah themselves admit that 1500 of their fighters were injured by the attack (according to your own source), it seems extremely dishonest to claim that all 4000 were civilians or that there were only 42 targets.
>42 people were killed total, but that does not mean that there were 42 targets.
So they only managed to hit 30 targets with 12 misfires… that makes it even worse.
> In any case, if Hezbollah themselves admit that 1500 of their fighters were injured by the attack (according to your own source)
That’s 1500 in addition to the 4,000 civilians. The fact they managed to wound 2.5x+ as many civilians as targets isn’t exactly making them look better…
The report is 4,000 civilians injured (which means they just didn't die -- people lost fingers, limbs, eyes, etc.)
Presumably if you have thousands of Hezbola people walking around within their homes, businesses, hopistals, shops, etc. it makes sense you'd have many civilian injuries when these went off. There wasn't a geo fence around them and if someone was in an NICU or preschool the explosions were indiscriminate.
So while there was some element of precision in placement of who had these pagers, there was zero awareness (by design) to where they actually were when they all exploded.
I haven't seen a report of 4000 civilians injured. I have seen a report of 4000 people injured across the two attacks, but presumably some fraction of these are targets.
42 killed, of whom Hezbollah said 12 were civilians (later admitting some of the 12 were fighters).
Historical average is about half of the wounded or killed in conflicts to be civilians. < 12/42 would be a relatively "good" ratio.
You didn’t see 4,000 because you didn’t look for it. It’s literally in the wikipedia article linked in the thread you’re responding to with multiple associated citations.
but we have the benefit of seeing live videos from actual shops where these hezbollah members were, and you can see the explosion was small enough to not hurt anyone in the vicinity
even if very close, one of the videos shows a supermarket line, and no one around is hurt
For the IDF, a 28.6% civilian death rate is actually quite good. Their own classified data reveals an 83% civilian casualty rate in Gaza—nearly three times worse.
The Lebanon pager attack: 12 civilians (including 2 children) killed out of 42 total deaths (28.6% civilian casualty rate).
Gaza genocide: Leaked IDF intelligence documents show 8,900 militants killed out of 53,000 total deaths as of May 2025 (83% civilian casualty rate).
According to Hezbollah sources 1500 of their terrorists were taken out of commission due to this attack. Making the death ratio 42/1500 or 3% while if only taking the civilian ratio that's even lower.
Even the 12 civilian count is probably higher than reality because it is doubtful that 12 civilians had access to a military clandestine communication device
Regarding the leaked IDF document this was leaked to a minor blog yet cannot be seen anywhere.
But let's entertain it as real, these are 8000 named Hamas terrorists known for certain by one intelligence unit in the IDF to be dead. This only means the minimum amount of Hamas terrorists, this doesn't take into account the other armed groups in Gaza that had a prewar strength of 10,000s of terrorists or the Hamas members who are only known by uncertain intelligence to have been killed.
Taking that number and reducing it from the Hamas published death count (an organization that kidnapped babies for political goals, but is incapable of lying, and was caught faking death counts before) to get the civilian death count is very unscientific to be extremely mild
there is no classified idf data of 83% civilian casualty rate. there is data that idf can identify by name 17% of casualties as hamas/etc member. if there are 10 people with machine guns and rpg and you blow them up with a bomb, they don't become civilians just because you don't know their names
The numbers you state are from the Lebanese government and Hizbollah. So I don't think we can assume they are accurate. I don't have any better numbers, though.
You specific argument though misuses even those numbers. 42 is the number of people actually killed. I couldn't figure out how many were targeted (how many pagers did explode), but I'd assume the number could be much higher than the number of deaths. Without that number we cannot determine how well targeted this was. I also don't think it is plausible that for every target you injure 100 bystanders. So I would assume the number of targets was at least an order of magnitude higher.
There's also another number from Hizbollah, that 1500 of their people were injured. But no idea it those would be included in the 4000 wounded number.
People tend to easily forget that the civilian casualty ratio for conventional warfare is around 50%
These attacks killed and maimed children, but firing JDAMs kills and maims even more children.
Not excusing the Israeli military here... they definitely dropped a lot of JDAMs, unguided artillery, and indiscriminate autocannon munitions on Gaza.
But the specific point on the pager attacks being against civilians is not a great argument.
Another thing I will note is that a lot of Palestinian groups also use similar reasoning towards targeting the Israeli population on the basis of the fact there is mass conscription in place.
You're telling me that the 2,800 injured were mostly Hezbollah operatives? Was this sourced and verified anywhere? What is the rate of combatant to non-combatant casualties is this instance compared to "conventional weapons"?
These pagers weren't purchased in stores by civilians. You see, Hezbollah had a problem: Their phone network was totally compromised. Israel was using operatives' phones as tracking beacons. So Hezbollah purchased a few thousand pagers through specialty channels (which we now know had been compromised by Israel) to distribute to their commanders. They believed this would improve their security, because unlike the two-way radios in cell phones, pagers use a one-way broadcast radio, and there is no need to know or report the pager radio's location.
Given this context: A limited number of specialty electronics, acquired and distributed by Hezbollah as a means of military command and control, and subsequent to this operation Hezbollah's C2 was demonstrably neutered--you believe that the majority of injuries were innocent civilians?
Basic logic indicates that the vast majority of those killed and injured were, in fact, nodes in Hezbollah's command and control structure.
Not to you specifically, but it is astounding how indiscriminate terrorism is lauded as “brilliant”. Is it because the victims were not of the white Judeo-Christian variety? Seriously trying to understand the mental gymnastics here.
Doctors don't use pagers anymore, just like tech on calls used to and don't anymore. Mobile phones are far superior for that, and are very available anywhere in the world, and especially to doctors
Regarding whether that's brilliant, that is not my wording, but generally it was quite mild compared to the methods of Hezbollah and was highly successful in ending a war with very little bloodshed. The other alternative was tried in 2006 and in Gaza, and fighting a terror organization entrenched in an urban setting means bombings and killing civilians in the process. This was not the end result as Hezbollah fell apart relatively quickly afterwards, so I think it was good compared to any alternative for Lebanese and Israelis
Doctors still use pagers. I don’t know about Lebanon in particular, but I would wager they still use them there too.
The rest is a bunch of hypotheticals. I am also unsure where the conclusion that Hezbollah is dead is coming from. Was their operational capability degraded? Of course. Is the group dead? Absolutely not.
The IDF is only able to kill 17 people they classify as "Hamas" for every 100 people they kill in Gaza (per their own internal reports). They have a self assessed 83% civilian kill rate.
Not all Israelis (or most) are reservists and most of the civilians were murdered by Hamas death squads execution style, not by the fabled Hannibal directive
While Hamas does not wear uniform in combat and publishes its dead as civilians, so no, my logic holds
Not true. The "classification" is combatants killed and identified by the IDF with first & last name. There's a larger un-identified group of combatants due to Hamas fighting in civilian clothes, and falsely claiming all deaths are civilian
Most sides in most wars aren't expected to classify every person they killed. Identifying certain people as Hamas(and they could be wrong about some of them) doesn't mean that every single other person is not a member of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or other millitant
The issue is using civil infrastructure as weapon, that could arguably be an act of terror. As pagers are rarely used in non-criminal settings, i guess this is somewhat okay in my opinion, but the callousness and overall reactions (proudness, smugness) of israelis and most of the west on this near-terror attack is in my opinion another proof of a lack of empathy that is starting to be pervasive in our societies.
I know people talk about the "entitlement epidemic", but entitlement is just another name from narcissism, in essence a lack of empathy. Which seems to be more and more socially acceptable and even rewarded (with internet points mostly), like your comment show (i'm not jumping on you, you are tamer than many, so i think it's a better exemple for my point than more violent ones).
And since that's the example we show our kids today, i'm now officially more worried about our society ability to handle social media than climate change.
Pagers are used by more then just criminals(see doctors) and targeting random criminals as opposed to millitants wouldn't be justifiable. But these particular pager that were wired up were specifically intended only for Hezbollah internal use and were sold to Hezbollah by Israel through a third party front.
Anyway sadly even if they did start attacking civilians, say Palestinian civilians as a random example, who is going to enforce the penalty for war crimes. These days its seems they're more of a suggestion than a rule of engaging in war.
Huh? Lebanon is not being held to war crime laws, and is the poorer nation. They bombed Northern Israel for over 2 years, including a soccer field full of children that weren't their targets but are very much dead.
Targeting here goes beyond reasonable expectation from a military at war. Compare that to the russian terror of lobbing 500kg bombs at random housing blocks.
That's like planting a bomb in front of a military camp. You might have a target, but in the end you just kill whoever was nearby at that time. In the case of the pager attack, that includes children aged 11 and 12, as well as a nurse.
That's much closer to a terrorist attack than to legal warfare.
"planting a bomb in front of a military camp" is like the textbook goal for bomb-planting devices (airplanes, artillery, MRLs), its one of the most normal scenarios out of all of normal war scenarios.
Planting a bomb on each soldier would be even better.
There might be some potential legal defense in terms of proportionality of collateral damage but it's so thin here as to be absurd.
Regardless, given the number of war crimes this army has been found guilty of, this is somewhat moot. What's another war crime in the grand scheme of things.
There's no central enforcement of international war crime law, so this thread on legal technicalities isn't particularly relevant in real terms, but there is at least an arrest warrant out for the (former) Minister for Defence & Prime Minister in 124 countries, so there's not a lot of room for ambiguity here.
You can have a reasonable expectation secure military pagers are only going to be used by soldiers. Given how few collateral deaths there were this was a reasonable assumption.
The principle of proportionality is explicitly about expectations, i.e. expected military advantage vs expected collateral damage.
You seem to be holding Israel to an impossible standard of guaranteeing zero collateral damage, which IHL does not require because no military is capable of that.
The latitude you wankers expect is absolutely incredible ... talking of impossible standards around "zero collateral damage" after what Israel has done in Gaza et al ...
Hezbollah was actively launching thousands of missiles at Israel when these pagers blew up. They stopped launching missiles at Israel en masse soon after these pagers blew up. What a odd coincidence.
All of the arguments I've seen supporting this attack focus on the idea that it's fine to kill and maim civilians including children as long as you will probably get some combatants. It's a little bit open to interpretation, I guess, and I'm not a legal expert so fine, ok.
But booby trapping mundane daily objects accessible to non-combatants is a clear violation of international law. No real room for leeway or interpretation on that one either.
The prohibitions on booby-traps are that they're indiscriminant, not that they involve mundane objects.
I totally get the instinct to condemn the attack, since it's truly, deeply viscerally horrifying (not to mention terrifying!), but most of the rules about how you're supposed to conduct war basically boil down to
1. Make a reasonable effort to avoid disproportionately harming civilians
2. Don't go out of your way to inflict pain and suffering on your enemy beyond what's a necessary part of trying to kill or neutralize them
3. If your enemy is completely at your mercy, you have an extra duty to uphold 1 and 2.
Again, the pager attack is new, unusual, and just very upsetting. But it harmed civilians at a remarkably low rate, and the method of harm wasn't meaningfully more painful than just shooting someone. It compares very favorably with just bombing people on every metric other than maybe how scary it is if you're a combatant.
Given the apparently-terrible injury-to-death ratio, another angle to attack the legality of the action might be that the weapons were first and foremost effective at maiming, not killing, which is generally frowned upon by the laws of war (if they were intended as lethal, their success on that front was so bad it might fall into "guilty through incompetence" sort of territory)
(I agree the targeting per se seems to have been remarkably good for the world of asynchronous warfare—or even conventional warfare)
It's not really a "mundane daily object" though. It's a communications device that's issued to people on the Hezbollah private communications network. It's only accessible to non-combatants if they are (1) in the Hezbollah hierarchy in a non-combatant role, or (2) the person with the pager was exercising poor operational security and letting someone else handle their pager.
> the person with the pager was exercising poor operational security and letting someone else handle their pager.
So? You aren't off the hook because someone did something unexpected or "was exercising poor operational security."
You can do this to anything lol this logic goes wherever you need it to. A car bomb is simply an attack on hezbollah movement capabilities. Anything used by a hezbollah member is no longer a mundane object and so can be booby trapped. A terrorist is a person we treat like a terrorist, our killing you is proof of your guilt.
> So? You aren't off the hook because someone did something unexpected or "was exercising poor operational security."
You might be. If it was Hezbollah's guns that exploded and not their pagers, I would expect most people to agree that you would be "off the hook" if someone else was handling that gun.
Not saying pagers = guns, but it's a spectrum surely.
The laws of war don't expect a military to attack a target only if there was no risk to civilians. That would be so unrealistic that nobody would even attempt to follow the laws of war. There has to be some consideration of relative risk and proportionality.
Where you draw the line is complicated. If you look at what the allies did in WWII for instance, there are some decisions that are highly problematic (firebombing wooden Japanese cities or the RAF deliberately bombing German civilian populations) but there are also some decisions that I think were reasonable even with a very high civilian death toll (e.g. the US Eight Air Force conducting bombing raids on German industry with limited precision, leading to high civilian casualties).
I think this specific incident was lawful. Hezbollah was the aggressor here, and it spent the war launching attacks that were far less justifiable than this one (much more limited targeting). I think this was a reasonable act of self-defense. That doesn't mean that I think that everything Israel did in the war was lawful.
you are right, however I was never a member of an organization that killed and kidnapped journalists/politicians/diplomats/ordinary civilians, is a regular part of the international drug trade, killed hundreds of american and french soldiers and just started a war with its very pissed technologically advanced neighbor
If I would choose a career in an international terror organization, I'd might quit it once I had children
Well, I guess we disagree on this, but I think it's a shit move to blow up a bunch of any object that is normally benign and which could logically be sitting next to or in the hands of an innocent. I'll die on that hill. I know it goes against most people's opinions on HN but I don't mind that. As you can see, I have some points to spare so feel free to downvote me to oblivion, even though that downvote button is meant for people who go against the rules; I don't believe I have in any of my posts in this thread, but I am willing to apologize if so.
Also, I have a thought for you: what would you call it if a foreign nation which your country had poor relations with, possibly open hostility, had blown up the work laptops (which they might take home) of a bunch of high ranking military members in your country? Would that be terrorism or a legal attack to you? What would you think of the innocent lives lost to such an attack?
It's quite clearly a war crime. You're putting booby trapped devices into supply chains where civilians will foreseeably get them and be injured or killed by them. This includes medical professionals and their families, who were both victims [1].
It's the equivalent of blowing up a commercial plane or bus because there's a military commander on it. Or, you know, levelling a residential apartment building [2].
If anyone else had done this we'd (correctly) be calling it a terrorist attack.
The idea that it's a war crime is ridiculous. They specifically inserted it into the Hezbollah supply chain specifically Hezbollah internal use. They didn't just sell them at Lebanons markets they specifically sold the entire special order to Hezbollah directly. I think if any one other then Israel pulled it off a lot fewer people would be baselessly claiming it was a war crime
Indiscriminate bombing is not legal, and it should not be legal, and you're a bad person for promoting the view that this is somehow likely to be legal.
It is an obvious war crime on this alone, and even more so when one considers that the israeli decision makers know that Hezbollah is a group of mainly civilian organisations and still went through with this project.
You don't have to imagine, powerful israelis have claimed that they absolutely have prepared such consumer products in the same way in "all sorts of countries".
> I actually consider the pager attack to be legal.
If it was done to "israelis", I bet you'd be singing a different tune. Imagine if iran or saudi arabia or anyone else did this to "israelis", some whiny people would be calling it terrorism.
It's disheartening to see so many Hacker News readers supporting terrorism. I hope the FBI is monitoring them. I agree with you completely. It was legal, targeted, effective. It saved lives by shortening the Lebanon engagement.
So rather than point us at more Palantir marketing and YouTuber conspiracy theories, why not be a little more specific (if you can) and just tell us a bit more about that since you are allegedly an ex-Palantir?
> Palantir ended up having to rent a second-floor building that housed its Tel Aviv office, to accommodate the intelligence analysts who needed tutorials
Has anyone here tried using their software? It's salesforce-level fucked. They did a great job spewing lofty concepts, with their ontologies and their kinetic layers, but in the end it all ends up being a giant wormy ERP. There might be one good idea in there (articulating the schemas and transformations in separate layers) but overall it's a perfect vibe match for orwellian bureaucracies.
I second that. My company is really changing its point of view on data at scale thanks to their tools.
[note: SAP announces DataSphere for 2026, and their stack is surprisingly similar :)]
An ERP where instead of investing in building up your in-house domain experts, your pay consulting fees to train another company's staff on the knowledge, then pay to access it.
Crazy how modern companies want to be McFranchise level of capable. What are you adding as a company if you outsource everything that can make your company a differentiator and your company is just plug and play cogs?
You forget that the whole idea that public companies sell on the stock market is that any management, any idiot with an MBA, could just come in and take it over, making roughly the same profit as the people that sold.
If you don't believe that, you shouldn't be investing.
If you're going to make this argument, it'll only apply to private companies in founders' hands, maybe to family businesses, but certainly not to public companies.
Based on the rules of international humanitarian law and the predictable harm to civilians, Israel’s pager attack was a highly unlawful and unacceptable method of warfare: it used booby-trapped everyday civilian objects, made civilian injury and widespread fear foreseeable (literal definition of terrorism), violated the principles of distinction and precautions, and was described by UN experts as constituting war crimes. Even if the intended targets were Hezbollah members, the method chosen inherently endangered civilians, undermined civilian safety, and produced terror among the populationc, making the operation indefensible under humanitarian law.
Everyone defending it are out of their mind. They‘d be crying foul immediately when Israel‘s opponents did the same.
When Israel kills thousands of civilians to free three soldiers (hostages), then for them it’s ok. If Palestinians did the same, to free one of many thousand illegally detained civilians they‘d call it terrorism.
1. If any other state had done this, we'd be correctly calling this a terrorist attack and there wouldn't be any question about it; and
2. Palantir was a partner in developing several AI systems used for targeting missile strikes in Gaza. Collectively these tend to be called Lavender [1][2]. Another of these systems is called "Where's Daddy". What does it do? It targets alleged militants at home so their families with be collateral damage [3]; and
3. These systems could not exist without the labor of the humans who create them so it raises questions about the ethics of everything we do as software engineers and tech people. This is not a new debate. For example, there were debates about who should be culpable for the German death machine in WW2. Guards at the camp? Absolutely. Civilians at IG Farben who are making Zyklon-B? Do they know what it's being used for? Do they have any choice in the matter?
My personal opinion is that anyone continuing to work for Palantir can no longer plead ignorance. You're actively contributing to profiting from killing, starving and torturing civilians. Do with that what you will. In a just world, you'd have to answer for your actions at The Hague or Nuremberg 2.0, ultimately.
If any other country handed out explosive pagers to terrorists and had them blow up in their faces and balls we'd consider it terrorism? Really? I thought terrorism was targeting civilians. Are you arguing that Hezbollah's top brass were civilians?
So the indiscriminate mass detonation of explosive devices is not terrorism? Are you aware of how many civilian casualties there were as a result of this attack? Would this be acceptable if Hezbollah did this to Israeli military officers?
The attack was by definition discriminate. I don't think there's an attack in modern history that was more targeted and had less collateral damage. The attack targeted hundreds Hezbollah leaders, who bought and used those pagers. There was minimal collateral damage among civilians amounting to unverified allegations that a child of a Hezbollah member was maimed, and some minor other damage. The explosives in the pagers were measured in grams, and the explosions were relatively small, specifically to minimize collateral damage.
It was indiscriminate in timing, location, and device possession.
Unless you’re saying that the country behind a self-evaluated >80% civilian to combatant kill ratio in Gaza went through rigorous protocols to minimize harm in this attack?
… and it’s not just that Israel woke up one morning and decided to take Hezbollah to the cleaners, either. Hezbollah started a military campaign against Israel on October 8th, 2023, one day after the most horrific attack Jews have experienced since the holocaust.
I don’t think this attack could have been more moral or justified than it was. It didn’t even kill on large numbers, instead it was just enough to neutralize Hezbollahs command and control structures.
One of the most sucessful integelligence operations ever, absolutely brilliant.
And the brilliance in my opinion is that the targeting was not your regular Hizbollah terrorists but only higher ranking members the one who were given the beepers. So basically cutting the head of the snake.
I doubt Palantir had any involvement, just trying to get some credit. The operation to attack the supply chain was started long before Palantir had grown and could offer something.
The brilliance in the targeting was in doing pagers, which are disproportionately carried by doctors and other medical workers. One of the most effective acts of terrorism in history.
You seem to be under the impression that they targeted pagers that were distributed through civilian channels. These were pagers that were purchased BY Hezbollah to be used on Hezbollah's private, secure network, not on a public network. These were not pagers used by a hospital for normal healthcare work. Healthcare workers were carrying these pagers because Hezbollah effectively serves as a shadow state in Lebanon. So if a healthcare worker had one of these pagers, it was because they were part of that hierarchy.
Again, so what? You aren't off the hook because of the actions of your enemies. It was obvious these would be going off around civilians, in homes and public spaces, including hospitals, and they chose to go through with the attack knowing this. That the civilians who would be around them would have no particular reason to fear or suspect this attack, because the vector was a common daily object.
It was an attack on civilians in pursuit of a non-military political goal. Terrorism. I think it was pretty successful on the terms of the people who carried it out but call it what it is.
We literally have videos of these going off in public spaces. The explosions were weak enough that people literally inches away were unharmed. The only way to be seriously injured is to be holding it in your hands or against your body.
You cannot seriously call it an attack "on civilians" - you especially cannot say that it's in pursuit of a non-military goal when it kicked off a literal military operation by crippling Hezbollah communications and (literally crippling) hundreds/thousands of their fighters before a land invasion of the southern border areas of Lebanon. And in any case, all war is politics.
Such amazingly precise bombs that they can kill Hezbollah leadership with effectiveness while "people literally inches away were unharmed". Maybe tone down the rhetoric some.
I didn't claim that they were particularly lethal. In fact, they were not particularly lethal. Thousands of pagers exploded and only 12 people were killed despite these devices being held directly up to the face or against the skin (pockets).
They were as close to non-lethal incapacitation, even against targets, as it is possible to get in war. When even the targets are rarely killed by the explosion, obviously that results in fewer unintended victims being hurt/killed.
It wasn't a non-military political goal. It had a military purpose of taking out the communications network and personnel of a group that was actively engaged in combat.
This reads like an ad for the geriatrics in power. They don't even mention what the hell they contributed but did mention that whatever it was was "AI powered" rofl.
This conversation already has comments on one side flagged to invisibility. If you are going to allow these conversations, but only allow one side, then Hacker News is not about discussion but about what?
If there are flagged comments which are not breaking the site guidelines, I'd like links to take a look at.
The moderation intention is for comments which break the site guidelines to be flagged, regardless of which side they are or aren't on. It's not possible to reach this state perfectly, of course.
The point isn't so much to litigate each flagged comment, just to highlight how pervasive the flag abuse problem is. And of course, when the flag abusers 'defect' and gain some utility, it is only rational for the 'victims' to themselves defect from the civil conversation and start to abuse flags.
In threads that are, unfortunately, adversarial, abusing the flag button is a stable Nash equilibrium. I think it's a shitty equilibrium, though, and makes real, substantive conversations--ostensibly the goal on this forum--harder to achieve.
I think it's high time to reconsider the current 'flag' mechanics. At the very least I think we would all be better off if flags were simply disabled on highly controversial topics.
Hi @dang. Here is a factual comment of mine that does not break the rules which, along with many other comments on one side of the Israel/Palestine issue, was unnecessarily and unjustifiably flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45832233
Dude, your flag function is abused to no end, and you don't really do anything about it. One of the earliest comments I've made was one on semi-recent X11 history, and got flagged for it, because apparently everything is political now.
95% of flagged comments don't break guidelines in any given discussion. flagging been used forever to silence "inconvenient facts" and "dissenting opinions"
as example, just below there is reply to you saying that flagging been abused, been flagged
> 95% of flagged comments don't break guidelines in any given discussion
That number is much too high IMO, so I assume we interpret the site guidelines very differently.
> as example, just below there is reply to you saying that flagging been abused, been flagged
I assume you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221396? No, you'd see "[flagged]" if that were the case. The comment is [dead], but it was killed by software, not flagged by users. I'll restore it.
>That number is much too high IMO, so I assume we interpret the site guidelines very differently.
looks like it. going through entire conversations there is a bunch of comments of comments saying that israel is terrorist nation/engages in terrorism not flagged, and many comments saying that hezbollah members are valid military target/collateral damage was minimal/etc are flagged.
from this (and many similar topics) it looks like official guidelines that are followed on this site as follows
- throwing any criticism and accusations at israel in line with guidelines
- presenting counter arguments and facts against guidelines.
it will be much easier if you will codify it into official guidelines.
if you think that it's not the case, can you please fix flagging abuse. like give ability to flag comment only if it reached -20 or something. or just remove ability to flag comments in general - i don't think this contributes to quality of discussion here
I don't agree, and there are many counterexamples in this thread alone.
People who are passionate about a divisive topic often feel like the site/moderators/community are hopelessly biased against their view. The people with opposing views feel exactly the same way—which, ironically, becomes the one thing they can agree about, although they disagree about the direction.
This is ultimately a function of how the passions work, so I don't believe there's much we can do about it.
Thank you (even though it's not my comment). I feel like if people are free to say the pager attack was "brilliant", then saying it was an act of terrorism (which obviously I agree with) is the equivalent on the other side.
There are no useful discussion to be had on such topics as war in Isreal, Donald Trump (be it "stolen elections", or foreign politics), or Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Nobody will ever think "That was a well-reasoned argument I now believe war crimes were, or were not, committed".
The best thing to do on posts like this is avoid reading them, or flag them.
It feels like there's an obviously correct side to most of these issues, the problem is half the audience here believes their side is correct and yours is wrong.
> There are no useful discussion to be had on such topics
I think there are useful discussions to be had on these topics, and in fact, we must have those discussions. The issue is that, if we want to do so productively and a comment section is the only venue for us to speak to each other, then we must be extremely patient with others and ourselves and reflect on what they say and what we say (i.e., discuss in good faith).
That burden may be too high for most people, but collectively, we don't have a better forum anymore, and we need to have these discussions and come to consensus before the world is engulfed in authoritarianism or war (which is not hyperbole).
You might believe there are useful discussions to be had, but when a faction of readers like the GP flag or downvote every thread they don’t like, then it’s impossible to have any conversation, no matter how much good faith is brought to bear.
Manually appealing to dang for unflagging is not a workable solution either.
This really is an entirely unsuitable forum for this discussion.
It shouldn't be the case that people acting in bad faith can disrupt meaningful discussion between people acting in good faith. I am at a loss to suggest a better forum. Town halls, protests, talking to people on the street, Congress, etc, are not able to have these discussions either.
Maybe this is not the forum, but then what is? A philosophy class you took ten years ago?
> I advocate concerning yourself with the things you can control, which do not include this forum’s idiosyncratic moderation style.
I can control my comments, which are a part of this forum's moderation style, and I can advocate in those comments for people to act in good faith, and appeal for help in figuring out how to make it more common.
If we can't discuss important topics in good faith on a nerd website, what hope do we have of discussing them elsewhere? It's not hyperbole anymore to say that if we don't come to some consensus we are going to end up in authoritarianism or war.
The pager attack is where Israel intentionally put civilian devices in the civilian supply chain, and blew them up indiscriminately. Thousands were injured including hundreds of children. Apart from being a very obvious Crimes Against Humanity, it is also exposing some absolute psychopaths on this site, who think somehow targeting civilians in order to get to military leaders is OK.
This is why Grim Beeper was so enlightening for me. It proved that Israel could go above and beyond to limit collateral damage with some brilliant attack no one has even contemplated before and there would still be people online saying it was a war crime.
> The pager attack is where Israel intentionally put civilian devices in the civilian supply chain
That is not true. They targeted devices acquired by Hezbollah and distributed by Hezbollah to their commanders. These devices had a military purpose and never entered the civilian supply chain.
I’ve said this before and cannot be said enough. Palantir is a data platform. I think they optimize for knowledge graphs (ontology). It has several uses. It’s seems to be fashionable to blame Palantir these days. But then wouldn’t you also blame other things - Java and database open source, Python, Linux foundation, etc. for all this.
I think people just want to blame without analyzing what else could be blamed to. Really it’s most of the free software community too.
Disclaimer: I don’t consider what Israel did unlawful. They were under attack by hezb and Hamas. They were within rights to retaliate. And no, hezb and Hamas don’t care about civilian casualties.
Why is it inappropriate to be outraged that international humanitarian laws are actively being violated by Israel, in Gaza? Can someone help me understand?
All: before commenting here, please verify that you're feeling something different—quite different—from anger and a desire to fight this war. That is not what HN is for, and destroys what it is for.
This site is for curious, thoughtful, respectful, and kind interaction—most of all with those you may disagree with, regardless of how bad they are or you feel they are.
If that's not possible, it's ok not to post. We'd rather have a thread with no comments than a thread with aggressive comments, let alone nationalistic or religious flamewar. There is far too much aggression in the thread below, which is is understandable, but please don't add more. It provides a fleeting sensation of relief, but then it just makes everything worse.
Note this, from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
So, what exactly did Palantir provide? I'm staying out of commenting whether or not this was legal/justified and asking strictly what service this was that was sold.
Is this like, live location information provided from social media/carriers/etc? Is it AI guessing who might be a target based on collected data?
EDIT: I ask because this sort of claim could just be marketing on Panantir's end and the quotes and this post never actually explained what it was other than saying their software was used.
I believe 972mag.com have reported on Palentir tech involved in the "AI target selection" programs that the Israeli military has used in Gaza. My recollection is they use a logic similar to the subprime ratings agency scandal: collate info on individuals (cell tower proximity, movement patterns, social media leanings), and find the top 5% of target candidates, call those "high quality" regardless of any absolute metric of quality, and then rubber-stamp approve air strikes on their homes by the human lawyers "in the loop" -- then repeat with the next top 5% and call those "high quality" again. The implication was that Palentir worked on the ranking system itself. (The 5% is arbitrary here, a stand-in for whatever top slice they do use)
There are a couple such systems, and I am speaking without the ability to take the time right now to find those articles to confirm/counter my recollections, so consider this a prompt for a proper review -- ironic.
This comment may be a good stepping stone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46222724
Most likely as a data lakehouse, but the Palantir angle is most likely overstated - Palantir has a tiny presence in Israel, and has had a history of overstating it's intel and defense credentials (eg. A three letter agency that churned Palantir was named for years after before they stopped calling them out).
That said, I have heard some positive feedback about Palantir's data integration capabilities - most other vendors don't provide bespoke professional services to build niche integrations for even low ACV customers.
The era of microservices and micro teams gives all "company X uses us" claims a different vibe. Maybe it used to actually mean "this is the thing Facebook uses to power its website on millions of servers" but now it's usually like "the team of 6 that runs the analytics platform for Apple Fitness+ uses this on 5 servers"
Thanks for attempting to answer what I was asking about. I have had difficulty finding out more about it, the alleged ex-Palantir commenter said this would be part of their Gotham product, but most of what I could find on that was buzzword data visualization stuff. If their old post history and what you're saying is accurate, then it's really just a database integration tool with a nice interface?
Their association with defense comes from the fact they got their start in industry thanks to in-q-tel which literally has the purpose of funding technology for the CIA and intelligence agencies. So it would not be surprising if they were heavily intertwined in that world.
> thanks to in-q-tel
IQT has invested in hundreds of rounds, and in the cases I have dealt with personally, has been very hands-off.
“The tech was used” but how, specifically, in regards to Operation Grim Reaper? The implication is that it was used to select targets but if that it true then does that mean there are still unexploded pagers in use?
I actually consider the pager attack to be legal. There's obviously criticism of it, but I'm fairly sure you're allowed to do this kind of thing by laws of war.
Obviously this creates a huge problem for pretty much everyone though, since we can imagine that our ordinary consumer products from all sorts countries could similarly explode if we ended up at war with the manufacturers.
I don't know if it's "legal" or not and by who's laws, but it certainly seems like terrorism to me (i.e. intentionally creating a state of terror).
I think if Lebanon found a clever way to assassinate the top 45 military commanders in Israel the same people who are defending this wouldn't be calling it a "Legal act of war".
Targeted attacks against military/militia leadership is not terrorism - almost by definition.
If it was just random devices exploding, then sure, that could be considered terrorism. But it wasn't random devices, it was communication devices procured by Hezbollah and directly given by Hezbollah to their own members for their own purposes.
Two things
Firstly, generals, like anybody else can be terrorized.
Secondly, even if you only kill generals, that doesn't mean you didn't cause terror for everybody else. Imagine for example that Hezbollah found a way to poison the food for Israel's top X military personnel. It would cause a state of emotional terror for many people in Israel about their food safety for decades most likely, even if they weren't in the military themselves.
When Ukraine assassinates a Russian general with a car bomb, is that "terrorism" or is that just a targeted killing of a military leader during a war? Do you think this is somehow morally problematic beyond the typical standards of war?
Do you think that "normal" means of military action, like dropping a 500lb bomb, is less "terroristic" than essentially setting off a firecracker in their face/hands/pocket? Because, like, that's the alternative. If your position is that all forms of war are illegal, then you have the right to that opinion, but it's not a realistic position.
>When Ukraine assassinates a Russian general with a car bomb, is that "terrorism" or is that just a targeted killing of a military leader during a war?
That depends on when the car detonates. If the car detonates when he and his guard enter it at 6 am near the defense ministry sure. If the car detonates when it is parked in the middle of Moscow at noon and 100 people are around then by pre-2022 standards it would be terrorism.
I think instead of these fake whataboutisms we should just admit that there is no universal bar and if it's "our team" then we are willing to change the standard.
In this case, we know that when Israel set off these pagers some innocent bystanders got hurt. No need to "whatabout".
No it wouldn't, as long as the target is military and you didn't have opportunity to killed him in base it is fine. At most you could complain it is violates proportionality however no car bomb would kill 100 people. Not to mention your analogy is flawed - hezobllah doesn't have any marked bases.
No. Generals are always legitimate military targets.
So let me just understand your position here. Suppose the US declares war on Venezuela. Suppose a venezuelan living in America just looks up a bunch of US generals addresses online, and then sets all their houses on fire killing them in their sleep in their McMansions in suburbia.
Are you saying that's a valid military strike, and therefore can't possibly be terrorism? Suppose this person is so successful he kills 1,000 and generals and numerous quit their jobs and move in fear for their life, just to really clarify what you're arguing here.
I think it is a valid military strike if a Venezuelan soldier does it on an order. Military targets where a strike are in danger of killing civilians are a hard judgment call. Generally one should never risk targeting civilians. Military law is a complex subject and officers spend quite a lot of time being educated in it. Here is a Swedish defence college course on it. https://www.fhs.se/en/swedish-defence-university/courses/int...
That would be fine, it's war, and Venzeula would have to deal with the consequences also
I'm pretty sure even that is allowed, yes.
Obviously he must wear a uniform while actually conducting the attack though.
> Suppose a venezuelan living in America just looks up a bunch of US generals addresses online, and then sets all their houses on fire killing them in their sleep in their McMansions in suburbia.
I don't think the analogy is apt. Members of Hezbollah do not occupy a positions of similar relationship to Lebanon as US generals does to the US. As far as I've heard, flag officers and others are escorted by personal security for an attack of any sort, such as the 2009 Ft Hood shooting. [0]
Moving past that, a civilian citizen of Venezuela in the US who performed actions against US military targets would not be a valid military strike since that person would not be an identifiable member or Venezuela's military. It would more akin to a spy or assassin. Below is an excerpt from an article representing a US-centric view of history [1].
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Fort_Hood_shooting1. https://lieber.westpoint.edu/assassination-law-of-war/
Edit: /Hamas/Hezbollah/
The Geneva Convention ought to have something to say about how a general may and may not be attacked.
If I remember correctly, the assailant must be dressed in some sort of military uniform to be considered a prisoner of war if captured. Lacking the uniform, it would be espionage and no Geneva Convention rights.
Obviously, neither side in the conflict is adhering to these rules.
I should give this a read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions
Terrorism doesn't mean "anything that makes someone scared," or else all wars would be acts of terrorism.
There isn't a universally agreed upon definition, but generally it refers to targeting non-combatants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism
For example, when the Allies tried to assassinate Hitler with a smuggled briefcase bomb during WW2, that wasn't terrorism: that was just regular warfare. Hitler was the leader of Germany and directed its military.
Similarly, smuggling pager bombs to members of Hezbollah generally wouldn't qualify as terrorism, since Hezbollah a) is a militia (famously it's the largest non-state militia in the world), and b) was actively fighting a war against Israel — a war that Hezbollah themselves initiated.
I can’t reply to zugzug underneath (is there a maximum comment depth), but it feels pretty obvious that the US President is a very legitimate target in any war with the US. Maybe the most legitimate target.
Good luck trying to get them though.
So you're arguing if the US declared war on Venezuela, that Venezuela could just use a drone to blow up the US president and that's just how war should work from now on?
Because it's only a matter of years until drones get small and stealthy enough that nobody is safe; exploding pagers are a clear first step in this direction.
While I'm only adding to the choir of people telling you "of course," since I'm directly the person you're responding to it still feels worth saying: yes, of course, if America and Venezuela went to war, it's completely legal for Venezuela to attempt to kill the U.S. President.
As an American, I certainly hope they would fail. But do I think it's legal? Yes: it's a targeted strike on the leader of an enemy country they'd theoretically be at war with. Do I think it's wise? Well — no, Venezuela has a much smaller military, and assassinating the U.S. President would trigger a massive war that would devastate Venezuela for decades while modestly inconveniencing American taxpayers. But legal? Yes.
They could do that now and it might be legal under international laws of war.
We've massed forces for an attack, attacked their ships, violated their airspace with combat aircraft (that's today), and extensively and publicly threatened them. They'd be in their legal rights to strike preemptively, including possibly a decapitation strike (this is why the Dubya administration kept repeating the term "preemptive strike", even though it was obviously nowhere near applying in the case of Iraq—it was a way of asserting its legal basis)
[edit] As thereisnospork points out in a sibling comment, however, this doesn't mean it'd be a good idea.
If US and Venezuela are in a state of war, then the head of the US Armed Forces is a legitimate target.
Not sure why you have doubts about this.
The US and Israel do the equivalent of that and have been for years. An assassination is an assassination. The weapon makes little difference.
I mean of course they could, and should[0] how is that a question?
[0] Shouldn't - classic example of a tactical win being a strategic blunder. Killing the American president and would solidify American public support for the war - which would probably be undesirable in the balance.
> Firstly, generals, like anybody else can be terrorized.
You know terrorism doesn't mean people were terrorized, right? Surely you understand that.
> Targeted attacks against military/militia leadership is not terrorism - almost by definition.
I mean, you're not wrong: the State seeks monopoly on violence; the kind of damages it can inflict, where, when and however it wants. Everyone else is ... a terrorist, and whatever they do is ... terrorism.
> communication devices procured by Hezbollah and directly given by Hezbollah
Replace "Hezbollah" with "the US Govt" and you'll arrive at some answer.
Btw, off-duty / non-combat personnel aren't deemed to be "at war".
The issue is that Israel has no idea where those pagers were at the time of the attack, civilians were directly hurt by the explosions: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/survivors-of-israels-page...
You think you are not allowed to do a military strike if civilians may be hurt?
I don't whether something is terrorism as something that's relevant for whether it's allowed by the laws of war.
Instead what we have is IHL, i.e. the Geneva and Hague conventions etc., and if you are targeting military personnel or other targets of military importance, without any extra cruelty or attacks on civilians, what does it matter if it looks like terror-bombing?
If it's allowed by IHL but is terrorism by British or French of German law or whatever, it's allowed. IHL is the actual binding thing.
I think this was a brilliant operation and perfectly lawful. I also think that if Lebanon (not Hezbollah) were in a state of war with Israel, yes, that would (depending on proportionality and target discrimination) be perfectly legal, too.
> perfectly lawful
Are you a lawyer / expert in conflicts? If not, curious how you arrived at this conclusion.
[delayed]
I don't see how. It was intended to paralyze and undermine a militia which it did. A lot of war actions create terror that doesn't make most war terrorism
How are all acts of war not “intentionally creating a state of terror?”
Attacking a civilian population is a war crime.
The intended targets of the exploding papers weren't civilians. Very few actual civilians ended up hurt by the detonations, much fewer than attacks by conventional weapons. It's about as targeted an attack as one can achieve from a distance.
As an act of warfare, Israel did a splendid job on this. Thoroughly impressive work.
> Very few actual civilians ended up hurt by the detonations, much fewer than attacks by conventional weapons.
The reports are 4,000 wounded and 12 killed unintended targets in order to kill 42 targets.
On what planet is that “very few actual civilians”? I think you knew full well before posting that’s a ridiculous claim which is why you did it anonymously.
"The reports" are that 12 were killed total, not that 12 civilians were killed. Only 2 of the killed were civilians as far as I can tell. Several of those who people on Twitter tried to claim were civilians, including a doctor, were admitted by Hezbollah to be Hezbollah members and given Hezbollah funerals.
I've never heard of "42 targets", and given 12 people died total, obviously 42 targets were not killed.
You should provide some sourcing for your numbers.
Incorrect. The reports are 42 total killed, 12 civilians including 2 children.
"Operation Grim Beeper" (seriously) on Wikipedia cites these numbers from Lebanese government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device...
Fair enough, 12 total only includes the original pager attack, not the subsequent radio one. However, you seem to have made the same mistake. 42 people were killed total, but that does not mean that there were 42 targets.
In any case, if Hezbollah themselves admit that 1500 of their fighters were injured by the attack (according to your own source), it seems extremely dishonest to claim that all 4000 were civilians or that there were only 42 targets.
>42 people were killed total, but that does not mean that there were 42 targets.
So they only managed to hit 30 targets with 12 misfires… that makes it even worse.
> In any case, if Hezbollah themselves admit that 1500 of their fighters were injured by the attack (according to your own source)
That’s 1500 in addition to the 4,000 civilians. The fact they managed to wound 2.5x+ as many civilians as targets isn’t exactly making them look better…
I didn't say 42 targets.
Per the report: 42 dead, 12 of which were civilians. It follows that 30 were considered Hezbollah.
Several of those initially claimed to be civilians were later acknowledged by Hezbollah, so that number is still a bit fuzzy.
I'm not claiming absolute knowledge of numbers, just going off the public reports which are all we can go on.
The report is 4,000 civilians injured (which means they just didn't die -- people lost fingers, limbs, eyes, etc.)
Presumably if you have thousands of Hezbola people walking around within their homes, businesses, hopistals, shops, etc. it makes sense you'd have many civilian injuries when these went off. There wasn't a geo fence around them and if someone was in an NICU or preschool the explosions were indiscriminate.
So while there was some element of precision in placement of who had these pagers, there was zero awareness (by design) to where they actually were when they all exploded.
I haven't seen a report of 4000 civilians injured. I have seen a report of 4000 people injured across the two attacks, but presumably some fraction of these are targets.
42 killed, of whom Hezbollah said 12 were civilians (later admitting some of the 12 were fighters).
Historical average is about half of the wounded or killed in conflicts to be civilians. < 12/42 would be a relatively "good" ratio.
You didn’t see 4,000 because you didn’t look for it. It’s literally in the wikipedia article linked in the thread you’re responding to with multiple associated citations.
but we have the benefit of seeing live videos from actual shops where these hezbollah members were, and you can see the explosion was small enough to not hurt anyone in the vicinity
even if very close, one of the videos shows a supermarket line, and no one around is hurt
For the IDF, a 28.6% civilian death rate is actually quite good. Their own classified data reveals an 83% civilian casualty rate in Gaza—nearly three times worse.
The Lebanon pager attack: 12 civilians (including 2 children) killed out of 42 total deaths (28.6% civilian casualty rate).
Gaza genocide: Leaked IDF intelligence documents show 8,900 militants killed out of 53,000 total deaths as of May 2025 (83% civilian casualty rate).
According to Hezbollah sources 1500 of their terrorists were taken out of commission due to this attack. Making the death ratio 42/1500 or 3% while if only taking the civilian ratio that's even lower.
Even the 12 civilian count is probably higher than reality because it is doubtful that 12 civilians had access to a military clandestine communication device
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hezbollahs-tunnels...
Regarding the leaked IDF document this was leaked to a minor blog yet cannot be seen anywhere.
But let's entertain it as real, these are 8000 named Hamas terrorists known for certain by one intelligence unit in the IDF to be dead. This only means the minimum amount of Hamas terrorists, this doesn't take into account the other armed groups in Gaza that had a prewar strength of 10,000s of terrorists or the Hamas members who are only known by uncertain intelligence to have been killed.
Taking that number and reducing it from the Hamas published death count (an organization that kidnapped babies for political goals, but is incapable of lying, and was caught faking death counts before) to get the civilian death count is very unscientific to be extremely mild
> an organization that kidnapped babies for political goals
Oy vey, kidnappings is where we draw the line?
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/oct/08...
- https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2024/israel-war-on-gaz... (800+ dead infants)
there is no classified idf data of 83% civilian casualty rate. there is data that idf can identify by name 17% of casualties as hamas/etc member. if there are 10 people with machine guns and rpg and you blow them up with a bomb, they don't become civilians just because you don't know their names
The numbers you state are from the Lebanese government and Hizbollah. So I don't think we can assume they are accurate. I don't have any better numbers, though.
You specific argument though misuses even those numbers. 42 is the number of people actually killed. I couldn't figure out how many were targeted (how many pagers did explode), but I'd assume the number could be much higher than the number of deaths. Without that number we cannot determine how well targeted this was. I also don't think it is plausible that for every target you injure 100 bystanders. So I would assume the number of targets was at least an order of magnitude higher.
There's also another number from Hizbollah, that 1500 of their people were injured. But no idea it those would be included in the 4000 wounded number.
People tend to easily forget that the civilian casualty ratio for conventional warfare is around 50%
These attacks killed and maimed children, but firing JDAMs kills and maims even more children.
Not excusing the Israeli military here... they definitely dropped a lot of JDAMs, unguided artillery, and indiscriminate autocannon munitions on Gaza.
But the specific point on the pager attacks being against civilians is not a great argument.
Another thing I will note is that a lot of Palestinian groups also use similar reasoning towards targeting the Israeli population on the basis of the fact there is mass conscription in place.
> People tend to easily forget that the civilian casualty ratio for conventional warfare is around 50%
Causality in war includes people that were only injured. This was far, far more than a 50% casualty rate. More like a 9552% casualty rate.
You're telling me that the 2,800 injured were mostly Hezbollah operatives? Was this sourced and verified anywhere? What is the rate of combatant to non-combatant casualties is this instance compared to "conventional weapons"?
These pagers weren't purchased in stores by civilians. You see, Hezbollah had a problem: Their phone network was totally compromised. Israel was using operatives' phones as tracking beacons. So Hezbollah purchased a few thousand pagers through specialty channels (which we now know had been compromised by Israel) to distribute to their commanders. They believed this would improve their security, because unlike the two-way radios in cell phones, pagers use a one-way broadcast radio, and there is no need to know or report the pager radio's location.
Given this context: A limited number of specialty electronics, acquired and distributed by Hezbollah as a means of military command and control, and subsequent to this operation Hezbollah's C2 was demonstrably neutered--you believe that the majority of injuries were innocent civilians?
Basic logic indicates that the vast majority of those killed and injured were, in fact, nodes in Hezbollah's command and control structure.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/pagers-drones-how-...
Here is Hezbollah boasting to Reuters before the pagers attack, about how it moved to using pagers and couriers to counter Israeli intelligence.
As you can guess, with the advent of mobile phones in the 2000s, pagers became obsolete in Lebanon
Unless you’re a Lebanese doctor?
Not to you specifically, but it is astounding how indiscriminate terrorism is lauded as “brilliant”. Is it because the victims were not of the white Judeo-Christian variety? Seriously trying to understand the mental gymnastics here.
Doctors don't use pagers anymore, just like tech on calls used to and don't anymore. Mobile phones are far superior for that, and are very available anywhere in the world, and especially to doctors
Regarding whether that's brilliant, that is not my wording, but generally it was quite mild compared to the methods of Hezbollah and was highly successful in ending a war with very little bloodshed. The other alternative was tried in 2006 and in Gaza, and fighting a terror organization entrenched in an urban setting means bombings and killing civilians in the process. This was not the end result as Hezbollah fell apart relatively quickly afterwards, so I think it was good compared to any alternative for Lebanese and Israelis
Doctors still use pagers. I don’t know about Lebanon in particular, but I would wager they still use them there too.
The rest is a bunch of hypotheticals. I am also unsure where the conclusion that Hezbollah is dead is coming from. Was their operational capability degraded? Of course. Is the group dead? Absolutely not.
The IDF is only able to kill 17 people they classify as "Hamas" for every 100 people they kill in Gaza (per their own internal reports). They have a self assessed 83% civilian kill rate.
It would probably be easier to classify them if they hadn't committed the war crime of not wearing uniforms
It would also be easier to classify Israeli deaths on Oct 7 if they weren’t all reservists and/or killed by their own country via Hannibal directive.
Do you see where your logic is going, or does it only apply to lesser victims?
Not all Israelis (or most) are reservists and most of the civilians were murdered by Hamas death squads execution style, not by the fabled Hannibal directive
While Hamas does not wear uniform in combat and publishes its dead as civilians, so no, my logic holds
Not true. The "classification" is combatants killed and identified by the IDF with first & last name. There's a larger un-identified group of combatants due to Hamas fighting in civilian clothes, and falsely claiming all deaths are civilian
Most sides in most wars aren't expected to classify every person they killed. Identifying certain people as Hamas(and they could be wrong about some of them) doesn't mean that every single other person is not a member of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or other millitant
Yes, since conveniently the attacker also gets to define who is a civilian.
The issue is using civil infrastructure as weapon, that could arguably be an act of terror. As pagers are rarely used in non-criminal settings, i guess this is somewhat okay in my opinion, but the callousness and overall reactions (proudness, smugness) of israelis and most of the west on this near-terror attack is in my opinion another proof of a lack of empathy that is starting to be pervasive in our societies.
I know people talk about the "entitlement epidemic", but entitlement is just another name from narcissism, in essence a lack of empathy. Which seems to be more and more socially acceptable and even rewarded (with internet points mostly), like your comment show (i'm not jumping on you, you are tamer than many, so i think it's a better exemple for my point than more violent ones).
And since that's the example we show our kids today, i'm now officially more worried about our society ability to handle social media than climate change.
Pagers are used by more then just criminals(see doctors) and targeting random criminals as opposed to millitants wouldn't be justifiable. But these particular pager that were wired up were specifically intended only for Hezbollah internal use and were sold to Hezbollah by Israel through a third party front.
"It's not a war crime the first time!"
Anyway sadly even if they did start attacking civilians, say Palestinian civilians as a random example, who is going to enforce the penalty for war crimes. These days its seems they're more of a suggestion than a rule of engaging in war.
War crime laws only apply to poorer nations sadly
Huh? Lebanon is not being held to war crime laws, and is the poorer nation. They bombed Northern Israel for over 2 years, including a soccer field full of children that weren't their targets but are very much dead.
If anything, it's the opposite.
Targeting here goes beyond reasonable expectation from a military at war. Compare that to the russian terror of lobbing 500kg bombs at random housing blocks.
Or the Israeli terror of lobbing 2000lb bombs at random housing blocks for that matter.
Yes, agreed.
Does it? Do you have any data on how many of these devices ended up in civilian hands?
Afaik they intercepted a shipment for Hamas members only. Do you have more information?
How many civilians there even use these pagers instead of mobile phones? Are there any?
Hamas is in Gaza, this attack was against Hezbollah and civilians in Lebanon.
> Afaik they intercepted a shipment for Hamas members only.
What? Hamas didn't have any of the pagers, Hezbollah did.
A year on, some Lebanese bystanders hurt in Israel’s pager attack still recovering... Over 3,400 were wounded when devices belonging to Hezbollah members exploded https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-year-on-some-lebanese-bystan...
3,400 bystanders? Or 3,400 mostly-Hezbollah but some bystanders?
* * *
That's like planting a bomb in front of a military camp. You might have a target, but in the end you just kill whoever was nearby at that time. In the case of the pager attack, that includes children aged 11 and 12, as well as a nurse.
That's much closer to a terrorist attack than to legal warfare.
"planting a bomb in front of a military camp" is like the textbook goal for bomb-planting devices (airplanes, artillery, MRLs), its one of the most normal scenarios out of all of normal war scenarios.
Planting a bomb on each soldier would be even better.
Yes, but planting a bomb in front of a military camp is absolutely legal.
There might be some potential legal defense in terms of proportionality of collateral damage but it's so thin here as to be absurd.
Regardless, given the number of war crimes this army has been found guilty of, this is somewhat moot. What's another war crime in the grand scheme of things.
there is 0 war crimes that IDF has been found guilty of by any legal authority.
There's no central enforcement of international war crime law, so this thread on legal technicalities isn't particularly relevant in real terms, but there is at least an arrest warrant out for the (former) Minister for Defence & Prime Minister in 124 countries, so there's not a lot of room for ambiguity here.
so you agree that nobody in IDF was found guilty of war crimes ?
been accused it's not same as been found guilty. at least last time I checked.
You cannot quarantee who is holding the pager at the moment of explosion.
You can have a reasonable expectation secure military pagers are only going to be used by soldiers. Given how few collateral deaths there were this was a reasonable assumption.
Many of the people who had the pagers were doctors, lawyers, bureaucrats...
Maybe I'm wrong, but, I think Hezb0-lla-h is pretty much the "government", especially in southern Lebanon
“Expected” is not enough. These bombs didn’t go off in active war zone. They went off in public in Lebanon, and maimed and killed civilians.
The principle of proportionality is explicitly about expectations, i.e. expected military advantage vs expected collateral damage.
You seem to be holding Israel to an impossible standard of guaranteeing zero collateral damage, which IHL does not require because no military is capable of that.
The latitude you wankers expect is absolutely incredible ... talking of impossible standards around "zero collateral damage" after what Israel has done in Gaza et al ...
I found this thesis from some guy doing a master in international operation law at the Swedish defence college, https://fhs.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1974147/FULLTEXT...
and I interpret his analysis as that it was targeted enough to be legal.
Hezbollah was actively launching thousands of missiles at Israel when these pagers blew up. They stopped launching missiles at Israel en masse soon after these pagers blew up. What a odd coincidence.
The people those pagers were given to were NOT civilians. They were active members of Hezbollah.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wech_Baghtu_wedding_party_airs...
might is right. /s
That's a relatively new concept, certainly not true historically.
All of the arguments I've seen supporting this attack focus on the idea that it's fine to kill and maim civilians including children as long as you will probably get some combatants. It's a little bit open to interpretation, I guess, and I'm not a legal expert so fine, ok.
But booby trapping mundane daily objects accessible to non-combatants is a clear violation of international law. No real room for leeway or interpretation on that one either.
The prohibitions on booby-traps are that they're indiscriminant, not that they involve mundane objects.
I totally get the instinct to condemn the attack, since it's truly, deeply viscerally horrifying (not to mention terrifying!), but most of the rules about how you're supposed to conduct war basically boil down to 1. Make a reasonable effort to avoid disproportionately harming civilians 2. Don't go out of your way to inflict pain and suffering on your enemy beyond what's a necessary part of trying to kill or neutralize them 3. If your enemy is completely at your mercy, you have an extra duty to uphold 1 and 2.
Again, the pager attack is new, unusual, and just very upsetting. But it harmed civilians at a remarkably low rate, and the method of harm wasn't meaningfully more painful than just shooting someone. It compares very favorably with just bombing people on every metric other than maybe how scary it is if you're a combatant.
Given the apparently-terrible injury-to-death ratio, another angle to attack the legality of the action might be that the weapons were first and foremost effective at maiming, not killing, which is generally frowned upon by the laws of war (if they were intended as lethal, their success on that front was so bad it might fall into "guilty through incompetence" sort of territory)
(I agree the targeting per se seems to have been remarkably good for the world of asynchronous warfare—or even conventional warfare)
It's not really a "mundane daily object" though. It's a communications device that's issued to people on the Hezbollah private communications network. It's only accessible to non-combatants if they are (1) in the Hezbollah hierarchy in a non-combatant role, or (2) the person with the pager was exercising poor operational security and letting someone else handle their pager.
> the person with the pager was exercising poor operational security and letting someone else handle their pager.
So? You aren't off the hook because someone did something unexpected or "was exercising poor operational security."
You can do this to anything lol this logic goes wherever you need it to. A car bomb is simply an attack on hezbollah movement capabilities. Anything used by a hezbollah member is no longer a mundane object and so can be booby trapped. A terrorist is a person we treat like a terrorist, our killing you is proof of your guilt.
> So? You aren't off the hook because someone did something unexpected or "was exercising poor operational security."
You might be. If it was Hezbollah's guns that exploded and not their pagers, I would expect most people to agree that you would be "off the hook" if someone else was handling that gun.
Not saying pagers = guns, but it's a spectrum surely.
The laws of war don't expect a military to attack a target only if there was no risk to civilians. That would be so unrealistic that nobody would even attempt to follow the laws of war. There has to be some consideration of relative risk and proportionality.
Where you draw the line is complicated. If you look at what the allies did in WWII for instance, there are some decisions that are highly problematic (firebombing wooden Japanese cities or the RAF deliberately bombing German civilian populations) but there are also some decisions that I think were reasonable even with a very high civilian death toll (e.g. the US Eight Air Force conducting bombing raids on German industry with limited precision, leading to high civilian casualties).
I think this specific incident was lawful. Hezbollah was the aggressor here, and it spent the war launching attacks that were far less justifiable than this one (much more limited targeting). I think this was a reasonable act of self-defense. That doesn't mean that I think that everything Israel did in the war was lawful.
> letting someone else handle their pager
I guess you've never given your phone to your toddler for 2 minutes to watch a video while you pooped in a public bathroom, huh?
A pager is not a phone. Pagers and portable radios are not multi-purpose devices. You can't watch Frozen on a pager.
Kids love to grab anything that is interesting to them.
you are right, however I was never a member of an organization that killed and kidnapped journalists/politicians/diplomats/ordinary civilians, is a regular part of the international drug trade, killed hundreds of american and french soldiers and just started a war with its very pissed technologically advanced neighbor
If I would choose a career in an international terror organization, I'd might quit it once I had children
Well, I guess we disagree on this, but I think it's a shit move to blow up a bunch of any object that is normally benign and which could logically be sitting next to or in the hands of an innocent. I'll die on that hill. I know it goes against most people's opinions on HN but I don't mind that. As you can see, I have some points to spare so feel free to downvote me to oblivion, even though that downvote button is meant for people who go against the rules; I don't believe I have in any of my posts in this thread, but I am willing to apologize if so.
Also, I have a thought for you: what would you call it if a foreign nation which your country had poor relations with, possibly open hostility, had blown up the work laptops (which they might take home) of a bunch of high ranking military members in your country? Would that be terrorism or a legal attack to you? What would you think of the innocent lives lost to such an attack?
I too, wouldn't join the IDF.
Legal or not it makes me afraid of Israeli technology.
I don't want to be part of their collateral damage.
> "laws of war"
What you want to appeal to are just war principles.
It's quite clearly a war crime. You're putting booby trapped devices into supply chains where civilians will foreseeably get them and be injured or killed by them. This includes medical professionals and their families, who were both victims [1].
It's the equivalent of blowing up a commercial plane or bus because there's a military commander on it. Or, you know, levelling a residential apartment building [2].
If anyone else had done this we'd (correctly) be calling it a terrorist attack.
[1]: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/9/17/lebanons-terrib...
[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/israel-says-it-struck-hez...
It's quite clearly not. Only Hezbollah agents had the pagers.
The idea that it's a war crime is ridiculous. They specifically inserted it into the Hezbollah supply chain specifically Hezbollah internal use. They didn't just sell them at Lebanons markets they specifically sold the entire special order to Hezbollah directly. I think if any one other then Israel pulled it off a lot fewer people would be baselessly claiming it was a war crime
Indiscriminate bombing is not legal, and it should not be legal, and you're a bad person for promoting the view that this is somehow likely to be legal.
It is an obvious war crime on this alone, and even more so when one considers that the israeli decision makers know that Hezbollah is a group of mainly civilian organisations and still went through with this project.
You don't have to imagine, powerful israelis have claimed that they absolutely have prepared such consumer products in the same way in "all sorts of countries".
Do you know what the word "Indiscriminate" means?
It wasn't indiscriminate, is the main point. Almost exactly the opposite.
> I actually consider the pager attack to be legal.
If it was done to "israelis", I bet you'd be singing a different tune. Imagine if iran or saudi arabia or anyone else did this to "israelis", some whiny people would be calling it terrorism.
If Hezbollah executed this same attack against the IDF it would also not be terrorism.
It's disheartening to see so many Hacker News readers supporting terrorism. I hope the FBI is monitoring them. I agree with you completely. It was legal, targeted, effective. It saved lives by shortening the Lebanon engagement.
Monitoring people for... Supporting opinions that don't agree with you?
HN let this one fall through the cracks I guess. Usually this article would get flagged in under 10 minutes of being up.
It was flagged and enough people complained about censorship that is was resurrected with a pinned post from dang about how we should be civil
For those curious, you can find videos of what Palantir Gotham is on YouTube. It might help you be more informed before you post here.
So rather than point us at more Palantir marketing and YouTuber conspiracy theories, why not be a little more specific (if you can) and just tell us a bit more about that since you are allegedly an ex-Palantir?
EDIT: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42882440
> Palantir ended up having to rent a second-floor building that housed its Tel Aviv office, to accommodate the intelligence analysts who needed tutorials
Has anyone here tried using their software? It's salesforce-level fucked. They did a great job spewing lofty concepts, with their ontologies and their kinetic layers, but in the end it all ends up being a giant wormy ERP. There might be one good idea in there (articulating the schemas and transformations in separate layers) but overall it's a perfect vibe match for orwellian bureaucracies.
I think Foundry is insanely impressive tbh. If you set it up correctly, its insanely powerful
I second that. My company is really changing its point of view on data at scale thanks to their tools. [note: SAP announces DataSphere for 2026, and their stack is surprisingly similar :)]
Maybe they aren’t optimizing for user experience and are instead optimizing for how much data they can suck into their central db?
An ERP where instead of investing in building up your in-house domain experts, your pay consulting fees to train another company's staff on the knowledge, then pay to access it.
Crazy how modern companies want to be McFranchise level of capable. What are you adding as a company if you outsource everything that can make your company a differentiator and your company is just plug and play cogs?
You forget that the whole idea that public companies sell on the stock market is that any management, any idiot with an MBA, could just come in and take it over, making roughly the same profit as the people that sold.
If you don't believe that, you shouldn't be investing.
If you're going to make this argument, it'll only apply to private companies in founders' hands, maybe to family businesses, but certainly not to public companies.
Like most very complex and powerful software it takes a long time to learn and configure it correctly.
you have to wonder, if they weren't the only tech firm willing to engage w/ DOD, would they survive in a more competitive atmosphere?
Funny you think they are the only tech firm willing to engage with the DOD.
Was there ever, in history, a more targeted attack on combatants of a terrorist organization? You can’t kill terrorists these days huh? ffs
Based on the rules of international humanitarian law and the predictable harm to civilians, Israel’s pager attack was a highly unlawful and unacceptable method of warfare: it used booby-trapped everyday civilian objects, made civilian injury and widespread fear foreseeable (literal definition of terrorism), violated the principles of distinction and precautions, and was described by UN experts as constituting war crimes. Even if the intended targets were Hezbollah members, the method chosen inherently endangered civilians, undermined civilian safety, and produced terror among the populationc, making the operation indefensible under humanitarian law.
Everyone defending it are out of their mind. They‘d be crying foul immediately when Israel‘s opponents did the same.
When Israel kills thousands of civilians to free three soldiers (hostages), then for them it’s ok. If Palestinians did the same, to free one of many thousand illegally detained civilians they‘d call it terrorism.
There are a few different angles to this.
1. If any other state had done this, we'd be correctly calling this a terrorist attack and there wouldn't be any question about it; and
2. Palantir was a partner in developing several AI systems used for targeting missile strikes in Gaza. Collectively these tend to be called Lavender [1][2]. Another of these systems is called "Where's Daddy". What does it do? It targets alleged militants at home so their families with be collateral damage [3]; and
3. These systems could not exist without the labor of the humans who create them so it raises questions about the ethics of everything we do as software engineers and tech people. This is not a new debate. For example, there were debates about who should be culpable for the German death machine in WW2. Guards at the camp? Absolutely. Civilians at IG Farben who are making Zyklon-B? Do they know what it's being used for? Do they have any choice in the matter?
My personal opinion is that anyone continuing to work for Palantir can no longer plead ignorance. You're actively contributing to profiting from killing, starving and torturing civilians. Do with that what you will. In a just world, you'd have to answer for your actions at The Hague or Nuremberg 2.0, ultimately.
[1]: https://www.business-humanrights.org/es/%C3%BAltimas-noticia...
[2]: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
[3]: https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-ai-system-wheres-dadd...
If any other country handed out explosive pagers to terrorists and had them blow up in their faces and balls we'd consider it terrorism? Really? I thought terrorism was targeting civilians. Are you arguing that Hezbollah's top brass were civilians?
So the indiscriminate mass detonation of explosive devices is not terrorism? Are you aware of how many civilian casualties there were as a result of this attack? Would this be acceptable if Hezbollah did this to Israeli military officers?
The attack was by definition discriminate. I don't think there's an attack in modern history that was more targeted and had less collateral damage. The attack targeted hundreds Hezbollah leaders, who bought and used those pagers. There was minimal collateral damage among civilians amounting to unverified allegations that a child of a Hezbollah member was maimed, and some minor other damage. The explosives in the pagers were measured in grams, and the explosions were relatively small, specifically to minimize collateral damage.
It was indiscriminate in timing, location, and device possession.
Unless you’re saying that the country behind a self-evaluated >80% civilian to combatant kill ratio in Gaza went through rigorous protocols to minimize harm in this attack?
… and it’s not just that Israel woke up one morning and decided to take Hezbollah to the cleaners, either. Hezbollah started a military campaign against Israel on October 8th, 2023, one day after the most horrific attack Jews have experienced since the holocaust.
I don’t think this attack could have been more moral or justified than it was. It didn’t even kill on large numbers, instead it was just enough to neutralize Hezbollahs command and control structures.
Back when Google's motto was "Do no evil" we used to joke about Palantir embracing the opposite ethos.
Would that be "Do all evil" or "Do exclusively evil" or "Do no good"?
There's also the option of "Do Some Evil".
evil(x) -> not(do(x)) which equates to not(evil(x)) or not(do(x)).
The negation would be evil(x) and do(x) by DeMorgan's law.
If what you mean is all(x), evil(x) -> not(do(x))
then the negation would be exists(x), evil(x) and do(x).
Do Evil, Yes!
Was this by chance a "No, money down!" Simpsons reference?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yuL6PcgSgM
One of the most sucessful integelligence operations ever, absolutely brilliant. And the brilliance in my opinion is that the targeting was not your regular Hizbollah terrorists but only higher ranking members the one who were given the beepers. So basically cutting the head of the snake.
I doubt Palantir had any involvement, just trying to get some credit. The operation to attack the supply chain was started long before Palantir had grown and could offer something.
The brilliance in the targeting was in doing pagers, which are disproportionately carried by doctors and other medical workers. One of the most effective acts of terrorism in history.
> One of the most effective acts of terrorism in history.
It's what "israel" specializes in. When you read the history of "israel", it's literally a series of acts of terrorism.
Yep. Mossad is a terrorist group roleplaying as an intelligence agency.
You seem to be under the impression that they targeted pagers that were distributed through civilian channels. These were pagers that were purchased BY Hezbollah to be used on Hezbollah's private, secure network, not on a public network. These were not pagers used by a hospital for normal healthcare work. Healthcare workers were carrying these pagers because Hezbollah effectively serves as a shadow state in Lebanon. So if a healthcare worker had one of these pagers, it was because they were part of that hierarchy.
Again, so what? You aren't off the hook because of the actions of your enemies. It was obvious these would be going off around civilians, in homes and public spaces, including hospitals, and they chose to go through with the attack knowing this. That the civilians who would be around them would have no particular reason to fear or suspect this attack, because the vector was a common daily object.
It was an attack on civilians in pursuit of a non-military political goal. Terrorism. I think it was pretty successful on the terms of the people who carried it out but call it what it is.
We literally have videos of these going off in public spaces. The explosions were weak enough that people literally inches away were unharmed. The only way to be seriously injured is to be holding it in your hands or against your body.
You cannot seriously call it an attack "on civilians" - you especially cannot say that it's in pursuit of a non-military goal when it kicked off a literal military operation by crippling Hezbollah communications and (literally crippling) hundreds/thousands of their fighters before a land invasion of the southern border areas of Lebanon. And in any case, all war is politics.
The explosions were in fact strong enough that innocent people, including children, died https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device...
Such amazingly precise bombs that they can kill Hezbollah leadership with effectiveness while "people literally inches away were unharmed". Maybe tone down the rhetoric some.
You're strawmanning.
I didn't claim that they were particularly lethal. In fact, they were not particularly lethal. Thousands of pagers exploded and only 12 people were killed despite these devices being held directly up to the face or against the skin (pockets).
They were as close to non-lethal incapacitation, even against targets, as it is possible to get in war. When even the targets are rarely killed by the explosion, obviously that results in fewer unintended victims being hurt/killed.
It wasn't a non-military political goal. It had a military purpose of taking out the communications network and personnel of a group that was actively engaged in combat.
This reads like an ad for the geriatrics in power. They don't even mention what the hell they contributed but did mention that whatever it was was "AI powered" rofl.
This conversation already has comments on one side flagged to invisibility. If you are going to allow these conversations, but only allow one side, then Hacker News is not about discussion but about what?
If there are flagged comments which are not breaking the site guidelines, I'd like links to take a look at.
The moderation intention is for comments which break the site guidelines to be flagged, regardless of which side they are or aren't on. It's not possible to reach this state perfectly, of course.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46218945
That one doesn't seem to violate the rules, and there is a lot of discussion below it.
Agreed, and I unflagged that one a while before you posted your comment here - most probably you had a non-refreshed version of the page.
At least one of mine, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46219068
The last sentence breaks the site guidelines.
OK, sure. How 'bout this one? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221729
Or this one? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221631
Or this one? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221972
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221729 sounds like cross-examining to me.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221631 is not flagged. That might be because we'd already turned off flags on it (I can't remember).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221972 I agree should not be flagged and I've unflagged it.
The point isn't so much to litigate each flagged comment, just to highlight how pervasive the flag abuse problem is. And of course, when the flag abusers 'defect' and gain some utility, it is only rational for the 'victims' to themselves defect from the civil conversation and start to abuse flags.
In threads that are, unfortunately, adversarial, abusing the flag button is a stable Nash equilibrium. I think it's a shitty equilibrium, though, and makes real, substantive conversations--ostensibly the goal on this forum--harder to achieve.
I think it's high time to reconsider the current 'flag' mechanics. At the very least I think we would all be better off if flags were simply disabled on highly controversial topics.
Hi @dang. Here is a factual comment of mine that does not break the rules which, along with many other comments on one side of the Israel/Palestine issue, was unnecessarily and unjustifiably flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45832233
I think that one is borderline but, in the context of a topic this divisive, borderline is not so bad, so I've unflagged it.
Dude, your flag function is abused to no end, and you don't really do anything about it. One of the earliest comments I've made was one on semi-recent X11 history, and got flagged for it, because apparently everything is political now.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45796728
I agree with you that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45796728 should not have been flagged, and have fixed that now.
95% of flagged comments don't break guidelines in any given discussion. flagging been used forever to silence "inconvenient facts" and "dissenting opinions"
as example, just below there is reply to you saying that flagging been abused, been flagged
> 95% of flagged comments don't break guidelines in any given discussion
That number is much too high IMO, so I assume we interpret the site guidelines very differently.
> as example, just below there is reply to you saying that flagging been abused, been flagged
I assume you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221396? No, you'd see "[flagged]" if that were the case. The comment is [dead], but it was killed by software, not flagged by users. I'll restore it.
Can expound on what software did this on its own?
There are various software filters based on past abuses by related accounts.
>That number is much too high IMO, so I assume we interpret the site guidelines very differently.
looks like it. going through entire conversations there is a bunch of comments of comments saying that israel is terrorist nation/engages in terrorism not flagged, and many comments saying that hezbollah members are valid military target/collateral damage was minimal/etc are flagged.
from this (and many similar topics) it looks like official guidelines that are followed on this site as follows
- throwing any criticism and accusations at israel in line with guidelines
- presenting counter arguments and facts against guidelines.
it will be much easier if you will codify it into official guidelines.
if you think that it's not the case, can you please fix flagging abuse. like give ability to flag comment only if it reached -20 or something. or just remove ability to flag comments in general - i don't think this contributes to quality of discussion here
I don't agree, and there are many counterexamples in this thread alone.
People who are passionate about a divisive topic often feel like the site/moderators/community are hopelessly biased against their view. The people with opposing views feel exactly the same way—which, ironically, becomes the one thing they can agree about, although they disagree about the direction.
This is ultimately a function of how the passions work, so I don't believe there's much we can do about it.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
A lot of my comments calling out Israel for this terrorist attack are flagged.
Also, this should certainly not be flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46219097
That last sentence is arguably on the wrong side of the line, but ok, I've unflagged it.
Thank you (even though it's not my comment). I feel like if people are free to say the pager attack was "brilliant", then saying it was an act of terrorism (which obviously I agree with) is the equivalent on the other side.
There are no useful discussion to be had on such topics as war in Isreal, Donald Trump (be it "stolen elections", or foreign politics), or Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Nobody will ever think "That was a well-reasoned argument I now believe war crimes were, or were not, committed".
The best thing to do on posts like this is avoid reading them, or flag them.
It feels like there's an obviously correct side to most of these issues, the problem is half the audience here believes their side is correct and yours is wrong.
> There are no useful discussion to be had on such topics
I think there are useful discussions to be had on these topics, and in fact, we must have those discussions. The issue is that, if we want to do so productively and a comment section is the only venue for us to speak to each other, then we must be extremely patient with others and ourselves and reflect on what they say and what we say (i.e., discuss in good faith).
That burden may be too high for most people, but collectively, we don't have a better forum anymore, and we need to have these discussions and come to consensus before the world is engulfed in authoritarianism or war (which is not hyperbole).
You might believe there are useful discussions to be had, but when a faction of readers like the GP flag or downvote every thread they don’t like, then it’s impossible to have any conversation, no matter how much good faith is brought to bear.
Manually appealing to dang for unflagging is not a workable solution either.
This really is an entirely unsuitable forum for this discussion.
It shouldn't be the case that people acting in bad faith can disrupt meaningful discussion between people acting in good faith. I am at a loss to suggest a better forum. Town halls, protests, talking to people on the street, Congress, etc, are not able to have these discussions either.
Maybe this is not the forum, but then what is? A philosophy class you took ten years ago?
> Maybe this is not the forum, but then what is? A philosophy class you took ten years ago?
Funny that you mention it, but Israel/Palestine was also a banned topic in the “Ethics and International Law” course I took circa twenty years ago.
I advocate concerning yourself with the things you can control, which does not include this forum’s idiosyncratic moderation style.
> I advocate concerning yourself with the things you can control, which do not include this forum’s idiosyncratic moderation style.
I can control my comments, which are a part of this forum's moderation style, and I can advocate in those comments for people to act in good faith, and appeal for help in figuring out how to make it more common.
If we can't discuss important topics in good faith on a nerd website, what hope do we have of discussing them elsewhere? It's not hyperbole anymore to say that if we don't come to some consensus we are going to end up in authoritarianism or war.
The pager attack is where Israel intentionally put civilian devices in the civilian supply chain, and blew them up indiscriminately. Thousands were injured including hundreds of children. Apart from being a very obvious Crimes Against Humanity, it is also exposing some absolute psychopaths on this site, who think somehow targeting civilians in order to get to military leaders is OK.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/09/exploding-pa...
https://www.newarab.com/analysis/why-israels-pager-attacks-l...
This is why Grim Beeper was so enlightening for me. It proved that Israel could go above and beyond to limit collateral damage with some brilliant attack no one has even contemplated before and there would still be people online saying it was a war crime.
> The pager attack is where Israel intentionally put civilian devices in the civilian supply chain
That is not true. They targeted devices acquired by Hezbollah and distributed by Hezbollah to their commanders. These devices had a military purpose and never entered the civilian supply chain.
Have ye any citations?
[flagged]
Ironic that it's already full of flag bombed comments (just from the opposite side of what you are complaining about).
I’ve said this before and cannot be said enough. Palantir is a data platform. I think they optimize for knowledge graphs (ontology). It has several uses. It’s seems to be fashionable to blame Palantir these days. But then wouldn’t you also blame other things - Java and database open source, Python, Linux foundation, etc. for all this.
I think people just want to blame without analyzing what else could be blamed to. Really it’s most of the free software community too.
Disclaimer: I don’t consider what Israel did unlawful. They were under attack by hezb and Hamas. They were within rights to retaliate. And no, hezb and Hamas don’t care about civilian casualties.
"please verify that you're feeling something different—quite different—from anger and a desire to fight this war."
Um, why is it inappropriate to be outraged that international humanitarian lwas are actively being violated by Israel, in Gaza?
I don't think they're saying it's inappropriate. It seems like they're saying this isn't the place to share your outrage.
Inappropriate and “this isn’t the place” are synonyms.
Why is it inappropriate to be outraged that international humanitarian laws are actively being violated by Israel, in Gaza? Can someone help me understand?
Because history started on October 7th, apparently, and implying otherwise by bringing in facts and nuance is antisemitic, apparently.
It'd also be antisemitic to point out the various Israeli aggressions against Lebanon, too.
I can't imagine why Israel was carrying out strikes in Lebanon after October 8th. It's a total mystery.