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The most recent development marks a shocking advancement in Israel’s wholesale disregard for human life but it is not new, even if you would never learn that from reading the Western press.
The massive unfolding attack in Lebanon targeting personal electronics belonging to members of Hezbollah, which has so far killed at least 20 people and wounded roughly 3,000, is already beyond doubt Israel’s work. The attack that began on Tuesday has continued into a second day, with more reports of other personal communication devices exploding, killing at least nine people and injuring dozens of others at a funeral on Wednesday for people who had been killed in the first attack the day prior.
The ongoing attack, which can only be described as terrorist in nature, is unprecedented in its scope and method, but the nature of its indiscriminate attack is far from unique for Israel. In fact, Israel’s doctrine of inflicting massive harm to civilians is named after the area of Beirut, Dahiya, where this very attack was centered. The most recent development marks a shocking advancement in Israel’s wholesale disregard for human life but it is not new, even if you would never learn that from reading the Western press.
The New York Times team of Patrick Kingsley, Euan Ward, Ronen Bergman, and Michael Levenson covered the attack, and while they did name Israel as the culprit, it worked to include Israel’s blatantly false PR angle that it was a targeted attack.
The Timesreported:
According to American and other officials briefed on the attack, Israel hid explosive material in a shipment of Taiwanese-made pagers imported into Lebanon. The explosive material, as little as one or two ounces, was inserted next to the battery in each pager, two of the officials said. The pagers, which Hezbollah had ordered from the Gold Apollo company in Taiwan, had been tampered with before they reached Lebanon, according to some of the officials. According to one official, Israel calculated that the risk of harming people not affiliated with Hezbollah was low, given the size of the explosive.
The Times also wrote that “the blasts appeared to be the latest salvo in a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that escalated after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7,” giving this an aura of mere military activity, rather than a blatantly imprecise and deadly attack on a civilian population. American whistleblower Edward Snowden, cited on this site yesterday, correctly summarized the focus and impact of the attack:
What Israel has just done is, via *any* method, reckless. They blew up countless numbers of people who were driving (meaning cars out of control), shopping (your children are in the stroller standing behind him in the checkout line), et cetera. Indistinguishable from terrorism.
Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara provided a reality check, perhaps most pertinent for Western audiences:
For our viewers around the world, it is probably helpful to do some “role-play” here. Imagine if 1,200 people, active in the Pentagon, State Dept. and CIA, had pagers explode in their faces, arms, and abdominals. How would you think the U.S. would feel about that?
The Times notes Israel’s “long history of using technology to carry out covert operations against Iran and Iranian-backed groups” as if it were some impressive technological achievement. But really, in order to understand what Israel is doing here, we must look at its track record of indiscriminate attacks. And this is, in fact, not only historically relevant but strategically and geographically relevant as well.
The name of the Dahiya Doctrine stems from the Dahiya quarter of Beirut that Israel targeted and leveled during the 2006 war, a quarter where many families affiliated with Hezbollah lived. In 2008, then military Chief of Northern Command Gadi Eisenkot (later chief of staff and centrist minister), coined the doctrine and outlined “what will happen” to any enemy that dares attack Israel:
What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on… We will apply disproportionate force on [the village] and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases.
Israel applied this method already in its 2008-9 Gaza onslaught. The United Nations “Goldstone Report” of 2009 concluded that Israel had conducted a “deliberately disproportionate attack, designed to punish, humiliate, and terrorize a civilian population,” and noted that the Dahiya Doctrine “appears to have been precisely what was put into practice.” Just to reiterate: “Punish, humiliate, and terrorize.” That last word, “terrorize,” should give us all pause, especially in this particular context.
The recent Gaza onslaught has in its way been the implementation of this doctrine into full-blown genocide. This is not surprising, since the vein of deliberate harm to civilians as a logic of “warfare” has been in the DNA of this doctrine to begin with.
So now, Israel is blowing up pagers. The prospect of this being called an act of terror by Western media appears to be very low. That is still considered a radical notion, when it comes to Israel because terror is a political term that is only reserved for enemies of the West. For the readers of The New York Times, it is just a “latest salvo” and not a reflection on the nature of Israel itself.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned that "there is a serious risk of a dramatic escalation in Lebanon, and everything must be done to avoid that."
Update:The death toll from Wednesday's attacks has risen to at least 20, with more than 450 others injured, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry.
Earlier: A day after an Israeli attack caused thousands of pagers to explode across Lebanon, killing a dozen people including children and wounding over 2,800 others, new explosions of battery-powered devices killed at least nine more people and injured upward of 300 others around the Middle Eastern country, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
Multiple Lebanese and international media outlets reported that targets of Wednesday's attacks included people attending funerals of those killed by the previous day's explosions.
"Anyone who has a device, take out the battery now! Turn off your phones, switch it to airplane mode," Hezbollah security members commanded mourners at one funeral in a Beirut suburb, according toThe Washington Post.
While the source of Wednesday's blasts—which reportedly targeted smartphones, car radios, walkie-talkies, solar power components, and other devices—was not immediately clear, several media outlets confirmed that the previous day's attacks were carried out by Israeli military and intelligence operatives targeting members of the Lebanese political and paramilitary group Hezbollah.
Among the reported victims of the pager attacks were two children— Fatima Abdullah, a 9-year-old girl; and Bilal Kanj, an 11-year-old boy.
The device explosions came amid ongoing Hezbollah attacks on Israel with rockets, armed drones, and other projectiles that have killed dozens of people, including Druze children playing soccer in the illegally occupied Golan Heights in Syria.
Hezbollah vowed Wednesday that Israel would suffer a "difficult reckoning" in response to the device attacks. The group is allied with Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip and led the October 7 attack on Israel. Israel's ongoing retaliation—for which it is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice—has left more than 146,000 Palestinians dead, injured, or missing.
Numerous observers including experts on international law said the Israeli device attacks fit the legal definition of terrorism.
Pointing to video footage of a pager detonating in a crowded market, Heidi Matthews, an associate professor at the Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, wrote that "each explosion constitutes an indiscriminate attack," and that "under these circumstances, this is an act of terror."
In a Wednesday briefing, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned against the weaponization of civilian objects.
"What has happened is particularly serious, not only because of the number of victims that it caused, but because of the indications that exist that this was triggered, I would say, in advance of a normal way to trigger these things, because there was a risk of this being discovered," Guterres said.
"This event confirms that there is a serious risk of a dramatic escalation in Lebanon, and everything must be done to avoid that escalation," he added.
Belgian Deputy Prime Minister Petra De Sutter condemned what she called Israel's "brutal escalation of violence."
"Silence is not an option," she added. "An international investigation is called for. The bloodshed must end."
As militarism increasingly demonstrates that it is incapable of resolving conflict with non-state armed groups, the need to reevaluate the approach to such violence is as pressing as ever.
More than 38,000 dead in Gaza. Fighting with the Houthis in the Red Sea and Yemen. A never-ending stream of back and forth strikes between American forces and Iran-backed groups in Iraq and Syria.
Conflict in the Middle East is escalating, fueled by weapons and military actions that increase the very real risk of a greater regional war. All the while a wave of military coups in Africa continues, aided by training and assistance carried out in the name of “counterterrorism.”
As militarism increasingly demonstrates that it is incapable of resolving conflict with non-state armed groups, the need to reevaluate the approach to such violence is as pressing as ever.
It is long past time to move beyond Band-Aid counterterrorism that only fuels the very injustices that cause the formation and growth of violent non-state groups in the first place.
Following the horrific events of 9/11 and the beginning of the so-called “Global War on Terror,” the United States embarked on more than two decades of using war as the foundation for its response to terrorism threats abroad. Today, it remains in armed conflict with numerous non-state groups across the Middle East and Africa, including ISIS, al-Shabaab, al Qaeda, and others.
However, while the War on Terror was intended to quash terrorism, the United States’ violent approach has instead served to fuel it. Annual attacks from non-state groups increased by 1900%—or 20 fold—in the seven countries the U.S. either invaded or conducted air strikes in between 2001 and 2018. Annual attacks worldwide increased fivefold during the same time period. And as the U.S. continued to pour billions of dollars into training foreign forces to combat “militants,” the result was increasing reports of gross violations of human rights by government forces, exacerbated violence, instability, and military coups. This approach has proven deeply counterproductive while failing in combatting terrorism worldwide.
So, what can the U.S. do to more effectively address the threat of international terrorism?
A new report from the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) provides concrete recommendations for critical non-military tools to both prevent and respond to this complex issue. These recommendations fall into three broad categories: (1) diplomacy; (2) development and peacebuilding; and (3) law enforcement, intelligence gathering, and restorative justice.
The report details the need for increased investment in and use of State Department experts in strengthening state stability and other core competencies, as well as using leverage to support negotiated settlements to wars with non-state armed groups. This requires properly resourcing and deploying the State Department’s Negotiations Support Unit of trained, experienced experts in negotiating and implementing peace agreements; effectively executing long-term economic development and peacebuilding programs like the Global Fragility Act; and moving away from a war paradigm and the use of lethal force as a first resort in responding to international terrorism. Instead, the U.S. should prioritize the use of law enforcement and intelligence gathering to disrupt plots and hold individuals accountable through Article III courts—a strategy which has been highly effective and grossly underappreciated throughout the post-9/11 period.
Rather than partnering with autocratic regimes and training their militaries to kill suspected militants, we must pursue nonviolent means that are grounded in respect for human rights and help address the root causes of violence. In regions suffering from discrimination and corruption, non-state militants rise up to oppose the current power structure. By addressing the issues that contribute to the formation and expansion of these groups, the U.S. and its partners can more effectively counter global terrorism. But responding to the emergence of violent groups through greater violence and oppression, with resulting civilian casualties and destabilizing impact, serves only to reinforce the beliefs of non-state actors and bolsters their ability to recruit others to their cause.
For too long, the focus in the executive branch and Congress has been on the question of whether or not to utilize force against non-state actors. It is time to expand this question and prioritize other avenues for counterterrorism. These nonviolent approaches have proven to be highly successful: Peaceful negotiations have accounted for the resolution of 43% of conflicts involving non-state actors. In contrast, just 7% of these conflicts were resolved through military action.
It is long past time to move beyond Band-Aid counterterrorism that only fuels the very injustices that cause the formation and growth of violent non-state groups in the first place. Addressing the core reasons for international terrorism and responding to it strategically and skillfully is the only realistic avenue toward a safer, more just world.