Israel Killing People With Their Own Everyday Devices Is A War Crime — And A Threat To Us All

Updated Sep. 19, 2024 at 8:10 p.m.*

–Editorial-

BEIRUT — The idea is truly terrifying. In its gravity, it even exceeds the casualties — at least 37 dead, thousands wounded, including many maimed for life. To plant explosives in pager and walkie-talkie devices of more than 5,000 Hezbollah members and detonate the explosives remotely is beyond a security breach.

Whoever pressed the detonation button, did so with the knowledge that the target was not going to be limited to those who carry the devices. He must have been aware that most Hezbollah members spend their days with their families or work colleagues, or they are walking in markets, stores and streets, along with civilians who have no idea what is going on.

The decision was made to detonate thousands of small explosions in the hands and pockets and homes of people in their daily lives. Benjamin Netanyahu approved the operation, so we can indeed say that he pushed the button himself.

From what moral ground did this act originate? The majority of targeted Hezbollah members lived outside the trenches of war, and the decision to liquidate them all means that the goal was not to kill just them, but to expand the circle of death to their hometowns.

It is the same genocidal approach that has killed 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza. Thus this new attack aimed at their “hometown” qualifies as a war crime, because the target goes beyond the fighters, down to their families and children. The images of the two murdered children among Tuesday’s victims, Fatima Abdallah and Mohammad Kanj, are the most dramatic proof of that.

The individual targeted explosions are a kind of retaliatory act, and the pain they inflict goes beyond the death count. The tearing out of the eyes is a kind of torture, and the amputation of the fingers that the bombs caused hit not just the fighters, but their families and relatives.

Political consequences

Some will say that Hezbollah had it coming, and deserves blame for the deaths of the innocents killed by the Israeli attack. Yes, since 2006, Hezbollah has turned into an entity that benefits from influence within many key Lebanese sectors, which predisposes it to indulging in the “bliss of power.” And we have witnessed many examples of this in the past two decades. Perhaps the most prominent chapter of such a story was when a Hezbollah senior official, Wafiq Safa, entered the Palace of Justice to threaten a judge in front of the journalists.

Hezbollah is an authority, and authority is easy to penetrate.

Hezbollah is an authority, and ruling authorities are especially easy to penetrate in a bankrupt country where corruption wreaks havoc. It is difficult to get rid of corruption, especially since everyone knows that Hezbollah and its allies are implicated in it.

Yet this Israeli hacking attack cannot be considered just an isolated security breach, because the area of the hacking is greater than any fortified area or war zone. And it’s surely not the first time that something like this happens: look at the killing of Hezbollah’s most prominent military official as well as dozens of other officials and hundreds of fighters, who were targeted far away from the frontlines, with civilian casualties as “collateral damage.”

But Tuesday’s attack is something altogether different. What’s particularly unsettling is that hit so far away from the frontline, all the way into daily life, taking advantage of those devices that everyone carries with them at all times: your smartphone and laptop, all the way to electronic cigarettes.

Eavesdropping, or worse

It seems possible that these devices will wind up being tools to kill us. Israel is a leader in this regard. The Israeli company NSO, which works under the supervision of the Mossad, is a perfect example: NSO sold eavesdropping devices to the most oppressive and slanderous regimes.

We have now moved from eavesdropping to direct killing.

But in the “pager” incident, we have now moved from eavesdropping to direct killing. And maybe this technology can be marketed to anyone who wishes to kill, anywhere in the world.

We are on our way to losing the basic trust in devices that have become essential to our lives. The phone can turn into a device to eavesdrop, and the laptop offers an opportunity to steal our private and public lives. And the pagers have become a means of murder.

These devices might soon reveal a dark side we might have never imagined: designed as a means of human welfare, they could soon become the most popular devices for murder.

*Originally published Sep. 18, 2024, this article was updated Sep. 19, 2024 with new details of the walkie-talkie attacks.