[sir0010010]

The pagers were sold to Hezbollah. The military objectives achieved were: a) to prevent the combatants holding the pagers from being able to attack Israel in the future b) to disrupt the communications of Hezbollah, therefore, making it more difficult for them to coordinate attacks Israel.

Also, the explosives used were weak such that most people near them were maimed rather than killed. Meaning, it is reasonable to assume that alternative methods of eliminating the Hezbollah operatives, such as airstrikes or a ground invasion, would end up with a significantly higher civilian casualty per targeted combatant ratio than what we saw with the pager attack.

[soulofmischief]

The only acceptable "civilian casualty per targeted combatant ratio" is zero. The recent terrorist attack committed by Israel in Lebanon and Syria breaks every respectable moral compass. Innocent people, including children, were harmed and continue to be harmed by Israel's ongoing war campaign. And I can't believe I have to say this, but "maiming" children is not any less morally bankrupt than killing them.

[tharne]

> The only acceptable "civilian casualty per targeted combatant ratio" is zero.

A lot of German civilians were killed during World War 2. Would you have preferred handing the Germans all of Europe to prevent that? As others have noted, reality is significantly more complex than theoretical ethics. Often times your choice is not between right and wrong, but between wrong and somewhat less wrong.

[soulofmischief]

> reality is significantly more complex than theoretical ethics

Actually, it's the other way around. This is covered by very rudimentary theoretical ethics. [0] The trolley problem has never been justification to cause harm to innocent people. It focuses on "impossible" binary choices in which either decision leads to innocent people being harmed. But reality is not a false dilemma. There exists a spectrum of choices that can be made, not just two. It's not "kill innocent Palestinians" vs "allow Jews to be killed".

Israel is a colonial apartheid state. The entire conflict has been manufactured from the beginning in order to establish Western supremacy in the Middle East. Now the colonial imperialist US government is supporting Israel in a genocide in order to secure its colonial presence. Tim Walz literally let it slip during the VP debate that this is about "the expansion of Israel". The UN is by and large condemning Israel for its role in this genocide, the ICC prosecutor considers Netanyahu a war criminal. [1] There is absolutely no moral justification for this, and I urge you to not be a victim to the Western military industrial complex's propaganda machine. This is a modern-day Holocaust and if we're lucky, history will remember it as such.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

[1] https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-...