There's a good argument that this is not a civilian item, in this context. It's insanely unlikely that a civilian would use a pager, because the only use case for it is to avoid interception that is inherent in other equipment.

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Not exactly. I think other links in this thread point out that archaic pagers are still commonly used in the medical community because a) spectrum used for pagers is in a different range than signals for cellular service or wifi and has better reach inside hospital buildings (especially basements where radiology labs are typically located), b) the battery life is much better. For staff on call within a hospital who MUST successfully receive a notification for emergencies, pagers still rule.

In this case, some may argue Israel did some SERIOUS homework to exploit this "vector..." They knew their foes were avoiding now-typical cellular communication for fear Israel had ways of compromising those communications. They knew their foes were attempting to limit dependency on cellular because so much of the network in areas involved was destroyed or unreliable or heavily overloaded. They apparently also learned that these foes were purchasing batches of these pagers from the few firms still making them. That's what likely triggered the additional research into the supply chain that allowed Israel to discover these orders were being fulfilled by a separate licensee purchasing rights to make units using the brand name involved. At that point, they researched that licensee, reviewed that company's supply chain (providers to it, middlemen firms that took the completed products and got them into retail channels, etc.) then figured out a way to intercept that chain to insert the explosives.

Israel might have been VERY confident through that research that the INTENDED purchasers of the intercepted and rigged units were all "bad guys" but there is no way for Israel to have been able to guarantee WHO would be carrying each device or near one or WHERE that device would phyiscally be at the time Israel chose to activate them. These absolutely could have been present within a bus or plane or train resulting in far more innocent lives being killed.

No one has the right to take that chance. Or maybe stating it another way... No one has the right to take that chance while being protected from blowback when innocents are killed. Israel shouldn't get to keep playing a game of horrific relativism and keep doing barbaric things behind a fig leaf of "it isn't as horrific as the last thing someone did to us."


WTH