Pager Attack In Lebanon

Hezbollah doesnt run Lebanon, right? i know im introducing a conspiracy theory here but... is it possible the real government (if there is one) of Lebanon is doing this because they dont want hezbollah dragging them into a war? or does lebanon 100% support Hezbollah?
Doubtful Lebanon has intelligence services with the wherewithal/resources to pull this off. Even if it did, as much as Hezbollah and it supporters have infiltrated Lebanese society, equally doubtful such a plan could have been undertaken without them learning of it.
 
New reports coming in about exploding Walkie-Talkies.
Which may be true, or may be "fog of war" confusion and a bit of Chinese-telegraph. Either way, it accomplishes a desirable goal for Israel: making Hezbollah afraid of their channels of communication.
 
The fairly disturbing video here shows that it required no interaction at all: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cevy90jzr9xo
What is it about the video that makes you think there was no interaction? Could it not have been a silent radio signal that triggered the explosion?
Hezbollah doesnt run Lebanon, right? i know im introducing a conspiracy theory here but... is it possible the real government (if there is one) of Lebanon is doing this because they dont want hezbollah dragging them into a war? or does lebanon 100% support Hezbollah?
Doubtful Lebanon has intelligence services with the wherewithal/resources to pull this off. Even if it did, as much as Hezbollah and it supporters have infiltrated Lebanese society, equally doubtful such a plan could have been undertaken without them learning of it.
I lived in Dubai when Hariri was assassinated. At the time, the word among the locals in Dubai was that it had to be Israel, because no one else had the capability to pull off the attack. Many years later, the Lebanese government released their findings that it was probably Hezbollah. So there is no love between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government and actually Hezbollah did have the capability.

In this case, I suspect it is probably Israel, given the current situation in Gaza and this attack matching prior activity by Israel. I wouldn't rule out the Lebanese government with or without the assistance of Israel.
 
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What is it about the video that makes you think there was no interaction? Could it not have been a silent radio signal that triggered the explosion?
Context was the question whether the victim had to interact with the pager for the explosion to go off.

If you want to spin a conspiracy theory: it's possible that the explosive was on a simple timer.
 
Which may be true, or may be "fog of war" confusion and a bit of Chinese-telegraph.

Looks like the exploding radios are "a thing" if current BBC reports are reliable,

Capture1.JPG


External Quote:

What we know about the Hezbollah walkie-talkie explosions

...In the latest round of blasts, exploding walkie-talkies killed 14 and injured at least 450 people, according to Lebanon's health ministry.
The explosions occurred in the vicinity of a large crowd that had gathered for the funerals of four victims of Tuesday's blasts.
BBC teams in the city reported chaotic scenes in which ambulances struggled to reach the injured, and locals became suspicious of anyone using a phone.
The explosions deepened unease in Lebanese society, coming a day after an apparently similar, and highly sophisticated attack targeting pagers used by Hezbollah members.
The militant group blamed its adversary Israel. Israeli officials have so far declined to comment.
BBC News 17 September 2024 (updated c. 19:00, GMT,18/09/24), Matt Murphy, Joe Tidy
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz04m913m49o

Also from the Beeb, "Walkie-talkie explosions spark fresh day of chaos in Lebanon", Hugo Bachega, 18/09/24
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c781d8y397do
 
Looks like the exploding radios are "a thing" if current BBC reports are reliable,
i should start selling "i'm not Hezbollah" shirts in Lebanon so everyone isnt afraid of you being near them! (of course hezbollah would likely buy them too defeating the point)
 
It immediatly made me think of butterfly bombs, old and new which have a very small amount of exposive (less than 40g). How do they determine the detonation affects only legitimate targets? Were they designed to maim or kill?
Any kind of "leave it for later" explosive you can't completely control. Some modern butterfly mines and similar weapons have a time fuse that sets them off or disarms them after a period of days or weeks, but while they last anyone who gets near one becomes an indiscriminate victim.

Triggering them all simultaneously prevents targets from figuring out what's going on and ditching suspect devices but also means there's no way to control if it goes off in the hands of a Hezbollah fighter, their business associate, the kid who found one in the gutter and played with it, or the mail carrier taking it to a remote address.
 
Not saying these were necessarily counterfeit, but Mossad greasing the right palms in Hungary would have given them access to the pager shipment(s). Could there have been a shell game involving a second, off-the-books production lot(s) of pagers for Hezbollah, altered by/for Israel, that was then switched with the original, contractually produced pagers for Hezbollah? May sound a bit convoluted, but could have allowed the Israelis to booby-trap one group of pagers all the while the other group is sailing along through production/inspection/shipping processes until swapped out late in the game for the weaponized pagers?
Yeah, this may "sound" convoluted but this is actually the predominate way these sorts of supply chain breaches happened. Someone gave an example above where the front group was a direct-participant (Anom w/ DOJ and co), those are rarer examples.
Usually in these cases there are complex webs of front groups on both sides, and the company "involved" may or may not know at all. Hezbollah uses cut outs with front groups themselves to buy devices too.

How this is "gamed" is usually someone coming in as an intermediary offering to service this portion of the supply chain - eg, your cut out doesn't have to buy them themselves, Bob can! As it turns out, Bob bugged your phones, or in this case, put other materials in them. All the information we have would indicate this form is more likely what happened, rather than the actual manufacturer and distributor being fronts also (eg like anom).

People have been pointing out BAC Consulting, I think they're actually a legitimate company, but whatever else was happening was likely exploiting them. Gold Apollo, and this is *not* uncommon, acts more like a brand holding company, and instead franchises out their designs and brand name for others to do the manufacturing and distributing. BAC did also state they were an intermediary for the end-maker, which, also lightly makes sense, since, BAC itself doesn't do any manufacturing - they do, do service pairing though (at least per their claims, they'll do things like connect companies together to work on joint civil development projects).
 
It immediatly made me think of butterfly bombs, old and new which have a very small amount of exposive (less than 40g). How do they determine the detonation affects only legitimate targets?

To cut a very long (and fascinating, but horrific) story short, both the Axis and Allied powers used area bombing in WWII.
Huge numbers of bombs, mines and incendiaries were dropped over residential areas.

Whatever rationales were given, in effect from 1940 on the Luftwaffe, RAF Bomber Command and later the US Eighth Army Air Force were involved in the de facto carpet bombing of enemy cities. Later in the war Japanese cities were similarly hit.

Were they designed to maim or kill?

The WWII butterfly bomb in the video (the SD 2) was a submunition from an early type of air-dropped cluster bomb.

External Quote:
...the main explosive filling consisting of 225 grams of cast Füllpulver 60/40 (Amatol) explosive. The fragmentation density produced by an SD 2 was 1 fragment per m2​ in 8 meters radius from a ground burst SD 2 bomb; overall, the body of an SD 2 did produce about 250 fragments with a mass of over 1 gram and a still greater number of lighter fragments. The fragments were generally lethal to anyone within a radius of 10 metres (33 ft)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_Bomb

The PFM-1 is a anti-personnel mine. It has a much smaller charge (Wikipedia states 37g).

External Quote:
The so-called "Butterfly" or "Green Parrot" (reference PFM-1 or PMZ)5 is another type of mine, which was widely used in Afghanistan. These mines are of Soviet manufacture... ...and is intended not to kill but to maim. This mine, which is loaded with 40 g of liquid explosive, is detonated by momentary or repeated pressure applied to its thickest part. Holding it between the thumb and forefinger, for example, may be enough to make it explode.
Cauderay, G.C., "Anti Personnel Mines", International Review of the Red Cross 33 (295), 1993,
https://international-review.icrc.org/sites/default/files/S0020860400080530a.pdf

Nonetheless it can easily kill; casualties may bleed to death; laying your torso on the mine (e.g. when taking a prone firing position) will result in lethal injury.

37g may not sound like a lot, but M406 high explosive rounds for the M203 grenade launcher contain only 32g of US Composition B (https://www.bulletpicker.com/cartridge_-40mm-he_-m406.html); the Swedish equivalent, 40 GSGR, which is also launched from an M203, contains 3g PETN and 23g RDX (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_40_mm_grenades#40×46mm_SR; look for Swedish flag next to "HE, high explosive", click 'show', find "40 GSGR data" at foot of item, click 'show').

Re. the M406 with 32g of HE,
External Quote:
...produces a ground burst that causes casualties within a 130-meter radius, and has a kill radius of 5 meters.
FM 3-22.31 (FM 23-31) 40-MM GRENADE LAUNCHER, M203, Headquarters Department Of The Army, February 2003,
https://www.bits.de/NRANEU/others/amd-us-archive/FM3-22.31(03).pdf

(I think you'd have to be pretty unlucky to become a casualty at 130 m).
 
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A report Thursday alleged that a Hungarian firm [BAC Consulting, Budapest] that apparently supplied pagers used by Hezbollah was secretly set up by Israeli spies as part of a widescale operation that appeared to culminate this week when the devices exploded, killing several and maiming thousands of Hezbollah operatives and others in Lebanon and Syria.

The New York Times claimed that rather than merely managing to tamper with the devices at some stage of their production or distribution, Israel actually "manufactured them as part of an elaborate ruse."

The report was the latest to seemingly pull the covers back on what is widely believed to have been a secret Israeli operation that burst into the open Tuesday as thousands of devices blew up in Hezbollah strongholds.

According to the New York Times, the company supplied other firms with pagers as well, though only the ones transferred to Hezbollah were fitted with batteries that contained explosive materiel known as PETN.

"Authorities have confirmed that the company in question is a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary. It has one manager registered at its declared address, and the referenced devices have never been in Hungary," Zoltán Kovács [Hungarian government spokesman] posted Wednesday on X. He did not say where the pagers were manufactured.

Bulgaria, meanwhile, said it would investigate a third company linked to the sale of the pagers. The DANS state security agency said in a statement that it was working with the interior ministry to probe the role of a company registered in Bulgaria, without naming it.

Bulgarian media reports alleged that a Sofia-based company called Norta Global Ltd had facilitated the sale of the pagers. Reuters was not immediately able to confirm the link to Norta, and company officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A lawyer that registered the company at an apartment block in Sofia did not respond to Reuters questions.

Images of the exploded walkie-talkies showed labels bearing the name of Japanese radio communications and telephone company ICOM 6208.T and resembled the firm's model IC-V82 device.

The company, which says it manufactures all of its radios in Japan, said Thursday the model was manufactured and shipped to the Middle East from 2004 to 2014, but had not been shipped by the company since then. It said batteries for the devices were also no longer being manufactured.

The handheld radios were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, around the same time as the pagers, a security source said.

The Osaka-based firm said its radio products were all manufactured by a single subsidiary in Wakayama, using only its own parts, with no overseas production.

The company has previously warned about counterfeit versions of its devices circulating in the market, especially discontinued models.

"A hologram seal to distinguish counterfeit products was not attached, so it is not possible to confirm whether the product shipped from our company," it said, referring to the devices that exploded Wednesday.

Source The Times of Israel

  • "I already knew that the pagers were manufactured in Israel. However, the detonating device is totally separate and doesn't rely on the pager. It's triggered by a powerful satellite signal in space. The detonator has its own RF receiver and does not even need a battery. Those pagers would have exploded even without the batteries in. Israel demonstrated this by detonating solar energy systems today in Lebanon and those devices have no batteries or radio electronics like pagers and walkies-talkies. This newer technology allows Israel to simply embed these detonators in anything and not just electronics."
Comment by user at the article by The Times of Israel
 
The detonator has its own RF receiver and does not even need a battery. Those pagers would have exploded even without the batteries in
Well not if the PETN was in the battery...

It's bit confusing, but it seems the explosive was in the battery, but does not require there to be power to detonate, it's just using the battery to house it.

Nor does it require the RF receiver of the pager, so it's essentially a passive device that could be in anything..
 
The guy says the RF signal came from a satellite.

I think he's assuming RF device was elsewhere when saying batteries weren't needed in pagers to explode.
 
Article:
Citing three unnamed intelligence officers with knowledge of the operation, The New York Times reported that BAC Consulting was part of a front set up by figures in Israeli intelligence.


Article:
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that the U.S. did not know about and was not involved in a wave of exploding pagers targeting Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon, and urged restraint among all parties to avoid escalating further conflict in the Middle East.
 
  • "I already knew that the pagers were manufactured in Israel. However, the detonating device is totally separate and doesn't rely on the pager. It's triggered by a powerful satellite signal in space. The detonator has its own RF receiver and does not even need a battery. Those pagers would have exploded even without the batteries in. Israel demonstrated this by detonating solar energy systems today in Lebanon and those devices have no batteries or radio electronics like pagers and walkies-talkies. This newer technology allows Israel to simply embed these detonators in anything and not just electronics."
Comment by user at the article by The Times of Israel
is there any kind of corroboration for this?

solar energy systems are often internet-connected

and it's still possible that a simple timer was used

if israel used a satellite, can that satellite be identified?
 
The detonator has its own RF receiver and does not even need a battery.
Does that mean it does not rely on the pager battery? Surely it needs some sort of battery or power source to do something, such as receive a signal and set of an explosive? It's own battery or the like? If I'm wrong, please correct me! ^_^


if israel used a satellite, can that satellite be identified?
For MB to do that would seem to me to skate close to aiding one side in the current hostilities. I'd suggest caution.
 
The Thing, the seemingly predecessor of such a passive RF receiver needed no power other than electromagnetic energy from an outside source.
 
The Thing
For anyone else who wondered if this referenced Ben Grim of the Fantastic Four, or the movie by John Carpenter (or, earlier, Howard Hawks):

External Quote:
The Thing, also known as the Great Seal bug, was one of the first covert listening devices (or "bugs") to use passive techniques to transmit an audio signal. It was concealed inside a gift given by the Soviet Union to W. Averell Harriman, the United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union, on August 4, 1945. Because it was passive, needing electromagnetic energy from an outside source to become energized and active, it is considered a predecessor of radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology.[1][2][3]

...

Its design made the listening device very difficult to detect, because it was very small, had no power supply or active electronic components, and did not radiate any signal unless it was actively being irradiated remotely. These same design features, along with the overall simplicity of the device, made it very reliable and gave it a potentially unlimited operational life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)
 
For MB to do that would seem to me to skate close to aiding one side in the current hostilities. I'd suggest caution.
I agree but that's not our fault. IDF should have used this technology very surgically on very precise targets. They chose a mass attack that won't harm Hezbollah as an organization anyway. Apart from its spectacular effect, not a very wise military strategy. This attracted massive coverage and every detail is likely to be publicly known. Further this disclosed apparently simple technology, ready to be assembled in any garage, and soon it can easily be made available to drug cartels just to start.
 
They chose a mass attack that won't harm Hezbollah as an organization anyway.
If it was known that Hezbollah in particular had gone to the use of pagers (as seems to be the case), it might. My guess is that most civilians had cell phones instead. While only two Hezbollah members were reported killed, there were several thousand injuries.
External Quote:

Hezbollah and government officials are saying Israel is responsible for the attack, which wounded about 2,750 people, The Associated Press reported.

The Israeli military declined to comment when reached by the AP and Reuters.

The pager attack killed at least nine people, including at least two Hezbollah members and an eight-year-old girl. Ali Ammar, the son of one of Hezbollah's members in the Lebanese parliament was among the dead.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/hezbollah-leaders-killed-thousands-of-people-injured-in-pager-explosions-in-lebanon-syria/ar-AA1qIXFO#:~:text=Hundreds of handheld pagers exploded in Lebanon and,wounded about 2,700 people, The Associated Press reported.
 
is there any kind of corroboration for this?

solar energy systems are often internet-connected

and it's still possible that a simple timer was used

if israel used a satellite, can that satellite be identified?
I think its unlikely any sort of satellite based RF signal was used to detonate the pagers. The pagers already contained a mechanism ideal for controlled detonation.
They responded to a page sent to them, either from a specific phone number or containing a specific message or perhaps both.
Using a highly specific signal means there is almost no danger of an accidental premature detonations.

Presumably MOSSAD intercepted a message from a Hezbollah source ordering the pagers, to replace the cell phones their operatives were then using. The shipment was intercepted or substitued for with the pagers containing the explosive and trigger mechanism. Then Hezbollah distributed them to its members. When you don't know the identitity of all of your enemies its much easier to let them do the distribution of the rigged devices.

No telling which of the stories of this being a hurried detonation event or one long in planning are correct. But the signals were sent and the devices exploded. It is a reasonable assumption that everyone in possession of one was a Hezbollah member, or the family member of one, or living in the same residence of one. By monitoring reports of the identities of the dead and wounded MOSSAD now has a more complete list of important Hezbollah members than it had before. Identifying them may or may not have been the intended purpose of the operation.

Rigging both pagers and walkie-talkies seems to be overly ambitious, having either detonate in large numbers was a sure way of Hezbollah discovering the rigging of the other. They are not going to trust commercially sourced electronics for a while, and probably try to get them from trusted sources and monitor their delivery closely to ensure they are not tampered with. Kind of a one-shot operation that will be much harder to do again.
 
...not a very wise military strategy.
There may be more to this than you say.
Claim/Speculation by journalist: The attacks were supposed to take place in the middle of an invasion of Lebanon by IDF forces, but the war was delayed.

According to an article by Jamal Kanj at Counter Punch (which is a Marxist/left leaning publication which is consistently critical of Israel), the timing of the attack may have been screwed up by delays in the invasion into Lebanon.
External Quote:

As an example, on September 16, leaflets in Arabic were dropped in South Lebanon ordering residents to leave their homes and warning that civilians who remain become legitimate Israeli targets. But shortly afterward, the Israeli military announced that no official evacuation order had been issued and that the leaflets were distributed without proper authorization.
...
This raises the questions, could the leaflets have been part of an earlier war plans? Did Hochstein's visit force a delay in the timing, but the change wasn't communicated down to the unit responsible for distributing the leaflets?

Then on the following day, Tuesday September 17, approximately 3,000 pagers exploded simultaneously across Lebanon.

Is there a connection between the original timing of the leaflets and the detonation of the pagers?

The above two incidents suggest a serious misstep and could have possibly derailed the original Israeli war plans against Lebanon. In fact, these miscalculations may potentially become larger than Israel's security screw-up on October 7, 2023.
...
In essence, it appears that Israel had initially prepared to order the evacuation ahead of a planned military action on the 16th. At the same time, the pagers were programmed to detonate during the initial phase of the war, 24 hours later, to disrupt communication channels, create confusion and disarray in the midst of war.
According to the Jerusalem post, the IDF confirms there were flyers ordering an evacuation, but these were unauthorised. The article is dated Sunday 15 September 2024.
External Quote:

It was reported that the IDF Brigade commander for Unit 769 issued evacuation orders on Sunday for that small village of typically a few hundred residents.

IDF sources said that the commander had acted on his own and was being investigated.

Further, the sources said that the evacuation orders were not distributed throughout the village or anywhere beyond the village, but only to a certain area of tents where Syrian refugees have taken up residence.
...
Earlier on Sunday, Lebanese reports had said that the IDF leaflets were calling on Sunday morning for the evacuation of the Wazzani village in southern Lebanon by 4 p.m. local time.
Timeline:
- On 15/9/24 Yonah Jeremy Bob of the Jerusalem Post advised leaflets were being distributed in Lebanon indicating people should leave the border areas of Lebanon by 4PM Sunday and these leaflets were distributed by an IDF member without authorisation. (Not Counterpunch writer Jamal Kanj at Counter Punch indicates the leaflets were distributed on 16/9/24 (both may be true).
- On 17/9/24 the pagers exploded.
 
External Quote:
On Wednesday, amid the second wave of Hezbollah communication devices detonating, reports emerged of solar energy systems also exploding in several areas of Lebanon, sparking further concern among residents for their safety.

According to the state-run National News Agency, solar energy systems also exploded in homes in several areas of Beirut and the south, including Nabatieh. However, these reports remain singular and unconfirmed.
https://today.lorientlejour.com/art...systems-explode-during-wednesdays-attack.html

In addition to this long established, French language newspaper published in Beirut, similar stories were reported by a number of news outlets worldwide (including Sky News, ABC News, Al Jazeera, Times of India, etc.), but I thought this to be the most detailed.

From the article (above), I found this particularly interesting:

External Quote:
"A solar system can not explode unless there are explosives in it," he said.
He also said that it is highly improbable that the systems were hacked especially since a hacker needs to work on each system separately.
Isn't that what the Israelis did with pagers and walkies? And the experts cited in the article telling those in Lebanon to disconnect their solar systems from the internet "just in case" wouldn't fill me with confidence if I had a solar system.
 
From the article (above), I found this particularly interesting:
External Quote:
... He also said that it is highly improbable that the systems were hacked especially since a hacker needs to work on each system separately.
Yeah, that's BS. As with the Internet of Things generally, you can automate the hacking of similar devices, because they're likely to be configured the same way. If you can breach the auto-update mechanism, it's trivially easy.
 
According to an article by Jamal Kanj at Counter Punch (which is a Marxist/left leaning publication which is consistently critical of Israel), the timing of the attack may have been screwed up by delays in the invasion into Lebanon.
External Quote:
As an example, on September 16, leaflets in Arabic were dropped in South Lebanon ordering residents to leave their homes and warning that civilians who remain become legitimate Israeli targets.

I don't know Counter Punch, but I'd be very surprised if any leaflets dropped were worded as they claim.
Civilians who not involved in military efforts/ deliberate harmful actions against opposing forces are never lawful targets.

International Committee of the Red Cross, "10 things the rules of war do", 19-10-2016
https://www.icrc.org/en/document/10-things-rules-of-war-Geneva-Conventions
External Quote:

The rules of war, also known as international humanitarian law:

Protect those who are not fighting, such as civilians, medical personnel or aid workers.
Protect those who are no longer able to fight, like an injured soldier or a prisoner.
Prohibit targeting civilians. Doing so is a war crime.

International Committee of the Red Cross, International Humanitarian Law Databases, Geneva Conventions and Protocols
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/api-1977/article-51?activeTab=
External Quote:

Article 51 [1949, John J.] - Protection of the civilian population
1. The civilian population and individual civilians shall enjoy general protection against dangers arising from military operations. To give effect to this protection, the following rules, which are additional to other applicable rules of international law, shall be observed in all circumstances.

2. The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited.
Same source, https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/api-1977/article-48?activeTab=
External Quote:

Article 48 - Basic rule
In order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.

The Israel Defence Forces are relatively well-advised, I don't think they would drop leaflets so blatantly in breach of the laws of war- it would be a propaganda gift to their critics.
 
How well have the Israelis adhered to this policy in Gaza?
Very well, actually. "Must not be targeted" does not equate to "must not be allowed to be harmed in any circumstances". Combatants are not permitted to use non-combatants as shields. If a command post is set up in a maternity ward it is a legitimate target.
 
Just commenting on what the IDF are likely to say or not.
I don't think it's likely they'd say, or drop leaflets saying, "Civilians who remain become legitimate targets" or words strongly to that effect.
There's some weird edge areas here too.

So, I won't state I think this happened, we have no material to state so. Although, theoretically speaking, you could entirely drop leaflets like this if your intent was to increase evacuations due to perceptive fear, that, would include people that otherwise wouldn't just leave from a normal evac leaflet. There's some other potential effects too. That'd all be entirely legitimate in a legal sense, of course, some may fairly debate the technique.

I would note, the claimed leaflets do actually say this. With that said, the leaflets look like an odd one out to me. The actual document background with the blue borders and etc I've never seen IDF or any Israeli service using that, plenty examples online of the general formatting their leaflets have and the colors and all they contain. They were also printed crooked, which, not a major key but worth consideration.
 
The Israel Defence Forces are relatively well-advised, I don't think they would drop leaflets so blatantly in breach of the laws of war- it would be a propaganda gift to their critics.
I agree. This is the reason that I gave some commentary on the political agenda of the source and why I pointed out their dates differed to those of Israeli sources. The idea that these attacks may have been timed to coincide with an invasion, however, is an interesting theory and may be borne out or refuted by further data. In particular, if the Israelis invade in the next few days and if the devices in question are all determined to be on a timer, I think this would lend credence to the theory.
 
Just commenting on what the IDF are likely to say or not.
I don't think it's likely they'd say, or drop leaflets saying, "Civilians who remain become legitimate targets" or words strongly to that effect.

This is metabunk.
"Leaflets saying ${whatever}" is a claim of evidence.
One that would be trivial to photograph in high resolution.
A mass drop of leaflets will be evidenced by a photograph of a mass of leaflets. Picking up paper isn't hard.
Absent such a photograph, this is just a tooth fairy.
 
This is metabunk.
"Leaflets saying ${whatever}" is a claim of evidence.
One that would be trivial to photograph in high resolution.
A mass drop of leaflets will be evidenced by a photograph of a mass of leaflets. Picking up paper isn't hard.
Absent such a photograph, this is just a tooth fairy.
The CounterPunch article reference an Al Jazeera article here.

There were no pictures of the leaflets. It is reasonable to conclude that some leaflets were dropped since an Israeli source has confirmed it but there is no evidence they said "Anyone present in this area after this time will be considered a terrorist" as Al Jazeera has claimed.
 
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