An illustration of media bias

[laughing dog]

Survivors of Israel's pager attack on Hezbollah struggle to recover

The pager attack across Lebanon killed 12 people, including two children, and wounded more than 3,000.

apnews.com

Attempting to stir up sympathy for terrorists hit by one of the most surgical military attacks of modern times?

If you truly believe that these attacks were surgically precise, you are admitting that Israel intentional targeted civilians - children, no less - for political violence. The definition of terrorism, as it happens.

That's a typical bit of strawman argument.
If you don't want to see the difference between what Loren said and your argument I can only assume it's willful blindness.
Tom

Politesse’s obvious point is the strike was not as surgically precise as Loren claimed.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Would you describe the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon as a terrorist attack?

Arguably, it'd be the military target of all military targets. However, the object being used to carry out the attack was civilian, full of civilians.

Ah, so if civilians are the weapon it's terrorism, even if the target is a legitimate military target. Is that correct?

I'm not going down a stupid rabbit hole here. You know my position.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

*never the mind*

 

[TomC]

Would you describe the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon as a terrorist attack?

Speaking for myself, I would not.
Tom

 

[pood]

The real subject is the risible claim of the thread title.

 

[Politesse]

Survivors of Israel's pager attack on Hezbollah struggle to recover

The pager attack across Lebanon killed 12 people, including two children, and wounded more than 3,000.

apnews.com

Attempting to stir up sympathy for terrorists hit by one of the most surgical military attacks of modern times?

If you truly believe that these attacks were surgically precise, you are admitting that Israel intentional targeted civilians - children, no less - for political violence. The definition of terrorism, as it happens.

That's a typical bit of strawman argument.
If you don't want to see the difference between what Loren said and your argument I can only assume it's willful blindness.
Tom

Politesse’s obvious point is the strike was not as surgically precise as Loren claimed.

Oh, I don't think the strike was inaccurate. Planting a bomb in someone's pager and setting it off at odd hours implies targeting their families along with them. Killing at least a few children was, as Loren would prefer the newspapers call it "collateral damage". They were not the target, but they were not an accident either. And Loren wishes us to agree that it is more "unbiased" to refer to a toddler with her head blown half off as "an acceptable loss" than with the more literally true phrase "a dead child".

It was a very clever operation, and very successful operation. But it was state sponsored terrorism also, and describing what happened in plain English is not propaganda.

 

[Politesse]

Do you deny that Loren described the operation as both surgical and successful?

Yes, I deny that.
It was successful. But the rest of his description is:

one of the most surgical military attacks of modern times?

which is much more nuanced and accurate than your strawman.
Tom

You have not convinced me of this at all. What is "nuanced" or "accurate" about saying "most surgical military attack of our time" that would not be true of just saying "surgical"? Adding superlatives makes a claim more extreme, not more nuanced.

Taken literally, Loren's claim is that bombing soldiers in their homes is a "more surgical military attack" than attacking them at a military base or on a battlefield. A much more common type of "military attack" than blowing up pagers is.

 

[laughing dog]

Media is always biased when its reports conflict with one’s prejudices.

 

[Derec]

Overall, the attack appeared to be remarkably successful. If there was a Nobel Prize for surgical attacks (why not, Nobel invented TNT),

Dynamite, not TNT. Dynamite is stabilized nitroglycerine (see the French movie Wages of Fear, or the American adaptation Sorcerer), and TNT (trinitrotoluene) is a completely different compound, and is inherently much more stable.

Mossad would have won for this.

It was really an expertly conceived and executed attack.

But it did have collateral damage. Innocents were maimed.

Nothing is perfect, of course. Btw, these family members would have been safe had they not tried to use their Hezbollah family member's pager. Curiosity killed the cat, I guess.

The cost of the attack likely fell within acceptable limits, but that doesn't mean we need to ignore the costs. Imagine if Israel help tend to the care of those that were caught by the attack unfairly. Imagine the value of goodwill it would provide. Of course, Hezbollah wouldn't allow that, and so we go back to going in circles.

The families would not either. Those were not random bystanders, but members of Hezbollah-allied families. Both of the young women who were injured have Hassan Nasrallah images (one on the wall, the other on the back of her phone) and the two boys are members of Hezbollah's youth division that I dubbed "Nasrallahjugend".

 

[Derec]

Or that 12 yr olds are necessarily “involved” or intended targets.

They were not the intended targets. Their Hezbollah terrorist fathers were. The twerps were too curious and tried to check out their fathers' beepers.
But they were on track on becoming Hezbollah terrorists themselves.

 

[Derec]

If you truly believe that these attacks were surgically precise,

Surgically precise does not mean absolutely perfect. Among the 3000 injured, vast majority were the intended targets.

you are admitting that Israel intentional targeted civilians - children, no less - for political violence.

No, they did not target them. They targeted Hezbollah personell. It was a few of the target's family members bad luck that they decided to pick up and activate a beeper belonging to a terrorist family member. I guess that will learn them not to snoop!

Speaking of children, let's review what Hezbollah did.
Children and teens among 12 dead in Golan Heights attack that Israel blames on Hezbollah, raising fears of major escalation
That's what an indiscriminate attack against civilians look like. Not boobytrapping terrorists' pagers.

The definition of terrorism, as it happens.

Targeting terrorists and, in a very few instances, harming somebody else is not the definition of terrorism. Unlike what your friends from Hamas and Hezbollah are doing.

 

[laughing dog]

Or that 12 yr olds are necessarily “involved” or intended targets.

They were not the intended targets. Their Hezbollah terrorist fathers were. The twerps were too curious and tried to check out their fathers' beepers.
But they were on track on becoming Hezbollah terrorists themselves.

Perhaps. But we shall never know if your prediction was accurate.

 

[Derec]

And Netanyahu saying there is no starvation in Gaza and no civilians are being shot.....

Photos of hunger and despair from Gaza were staged in collaboration with Hamas, German newspaper reveals
On the other hand, we have real instances of a hostage held by Hamas being deliberately starved.

Reports are increasing numbers of Israelis are seeing through the government propaganda and are objecting to the war.

There have always been some objecting to this war, people who preferred for Israel to make any concessions in order to effect the release of hostages. I think that was always misguided. Giving into Hamas demands to release terrorist prisoners would only embolden them to try taking hostages over and over again.
The only chance for peace is to destroy Hamas and allied terror groups. That means destroying all tunnels as well.

Of course BBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS are all biased and collude against Netanyahu....

There is a lot of bias against Israel and willingness to swallow Hamas propaganda by news outlets, yes.

For decades our main stream media presented only the Israeli conservative hawkish views. Now we also see issues from the Palestinian side.

That is simply not true. There has always been a lot of criticism of Israel by US media.

The standard media view was ignore what Israel did and continued to do to Palestinians from the founding and labeling all Palestinians as terrorists.

Not all Palestinians are terrorists, but a large number of them are. And most of the others support terrorist attacks against Israel.

It was part of the all Arabs are terrorists and Islam phobia narrative.

It's not "Islamophobia" to recognize that Islam has a terrorism problem, as well as wanting-to-subjugate-the-world problem.

 

[laughing dog]

And Netanyahu saying there is no starvation in Gaza and no civilians are being shot.....

Photos of hunger and despair from Gaza were staged in collaboration with Hamas, German newspaper reveals

That article offers only conjecture not evidence about staged hunger. It also does not dispute that there is hunger or starvation.

 

[Derec]

Israel has been doing these kinds of things for decades. The more recent bombing of an Iranian wedding to kill one person.

What are you referring to here?

Way back a Canadian ballistics exert Bull was helping Hussein build a super gun capable of hitting Israel. He was assented in Brussels.

Do you mean Gerald Bull? Mossad has been suspected, but it has never been confirmed to my knowledge. Anyway, would not this make him a legitimate target? Besides, he was killed 35 years ago.

Iranian scientists assassinated.

And executed by the regime.
On the Hunt for Spies, Iran Executes a Nuclear Scientist

Who is a terrorist and who is a freedom freighter depends on which side you are on. Both Israel and Hamas morally think the ends justify the means.

No, it does not. There is no hint of equivalence here.

 

[Derec]

That article offers only conjecture not evidence about staged hunger. It also does not dispute that there is hunger or starvation.

There is some hunger of course, mostly because Hamas diverts much of the aid.
The only real starvation are a few people with preexisting conditions (like the infamous photo western media were bamboozled by) and of course, Israeli hostages being deliberately starved by Hamas.

 

[Derec]

Ah, so if civilians are the weapon it's terrorism, even if the target is a legitimate military target. Is that correct?

If you are attempting some kind of false equivalence here, let me just remind you that the Hezbollah beepers were not filled with civilians.

 

[laughing dog]

That article offers only conjecture not evidence about staged hunger. It also does not dispute that there is hunger or starvation.

There is some hunger of course, mostly because Hamas diverts much of the aid.

That is an unproven narrative.

The only real starvation are a few people with preexisting conditions (like the infamous photo western media were bamboozled by) and of course, Israeli hostages being deliberately starved by Hamas.

More conjecture masquerading as fact.

 

[Politesse]

Ah, so if civilians are the weapon it's terrorism, even if the target is a legitimate military target. Is that correct?

If you are attempting some kind of false equivalence here, let me just remind you that the Hezbollah beepers were not filled with civilians.

No, just carried by them.

 

[ZiprHead]

If you truly believe that these attacks were surgically precise,

Surgically precise does not mean absolutely perfect. Among the 3000 injured, vast majority were the intended targets.

you are admitting that Israel intentional targeted civilians - children, no less - for political violence.

No, they did not target them. They targeted Hezbollah personell. It was a few of the target's family members bad luck that they decided to pick up and activate a beeper belonging to a terrorist family member. I guess that will learn them not to snoop!

Speaking of children, let's review what Hezbollah did.
Children and teens among 12 dead in Golan Heights attack that Israel blames on Hezbollah, raising fears of major escalation
That's what an indiscriminate attack against civilians look like. Not boobytrapping terrorists' pagers.

The definition of terrorism, as it happens.

Targeting terrorists and, in a very few instances, harming somebody else is not the definition of terrorism. Unlike what your friends from Hamas and Hezbollah are doing.

It appears your link is incorrect. PM me with the proper link and I will correct it for you.

Update: Derec's link is now fixed.