DISCUSS: The Exploding Electronic Devices

DISCUSS: The Exploding Electronic Devices September 27, 2024

Supporting Israel’s fight against terrorists and all that, but are you bothered by its tactic of turning thousands of widely-distributed  pagers and walkie-talkies into bombs?

Yes, it was a brilliant operation that targeted members of Hezbollah high enough in the terrorist organization to rate the organization giving them equipment.  Yes, many of us laughed when  we first heard about it.  And yet. . .

I know it’s a paradoxical phrase, but it used to be commonplace:  Does this fall outside the bounds of “civilized warfare”?  It would seem to violate the Convention on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons (1980), to which Israel was a signatory, prohibiting booby traps “in the form of apparently harmless portable objects.”  Yes, Islamist terrorists such as Hezbollah use booby traps, but does that mean Israel is right in doing so?  Should warring parties care about such treaties and other “laws of war” as in the Geneva Conventions?

What does this tactic mean for the future?

After this bright idea and this precedent, do we now need to worry that hacking into the supply chain and putting explosives into ordinary household devices might be a new tactic for terrorism?

Might China install explosives into the mobile phones and other things it makes for us so that, in the case of a shooting war, it could immediately wipe out much of our population?

"Let people decide for themselves what kind of food best suits their need."

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