A new low bodes ill for the future

Intercepting supply chains to turn consumer electronics into bombs threatens too many things to list in a single sentence

Last week, Israel organized a series of attacks across Lebanon that killed dozens and injured thousands, at the very same time that the country’s murderous leadership continued its genocidal violence to its South targeting Palestinians in Gaza.

While Israel’s disregard for international law has grown outrageously well-established and accepted by figures across Washington, last week’s attacks represent a new low in the history of state terrorism. They threaten not only international law, and whatever vestiges of security might remain in the Middle East, but also users of electronic devices around the world—including here in the United States.

Image crafted by Al-Jazeera https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2024/9/20/the-pager-bombings-everyday-tech-that-kills

On Wednesday, the producers of Flashpoints on the Pacifica Radio network reached out to invite me on a the wide-ranging discussion with host Dennis Bernstein. I encourage you to share either our interview and/or this post.

Expanding conflict in the Middle East

The most immediate impact of Israel’s operation targeting Hezbollah is the risk of inviting an expansion of the violence that has already gripped southern Israel and Gaza. The genocide waged by Netanyahu as the Israeli Defense Forces continue to launch indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets was bad enough before, before Israel turned its sights on Lebanon. Having also recently bombed Syria, Israel finds itself inviting outright war on three distinct fronts.

The extent of this week’s violence was gruesome, and particularly reprehensible when considered in context.

Monday’s attacks leveraged the previous interception of pager shipments by the Mossad, and killed dozens of figures across Lebanon. While many of them may have been affiliated with Hezbollah, some of them obviously were not, like the 10 year-old girl killed by the Mossad without any regard for civilian casualties or collateral damage.

The initial attacks appeared engineered to maximize casualties among intended targets. Reportedly, the devices buzzed with an alert for a few seconds in order to draw the attention of the intended targets, who suffered various injuries to their faces and hands when handling devices that literally blew up in their faces.

The second round of attacks, however, were engineered to maximize casualties among random targets, like those attending funerals for people killed the day before. The second round of attacks also weaponized an expanding array of electronic devices, including walkie-talkies and even solar panels.

Israel has previously targeted Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as state actors in both Iran and Syria, with targeted assassinations over the past year, as well as strikes targeting civilian institutions including hospitals and schools. The latest attacks injured more people by orders of magnitude, inviting the escalation that other actors, from Iran to Syria and Lebanon, have to this point managed to avoid.

Having inflicted maximum civilian casualties, Israel has effectively thrown down a gauntlet demanding the expansion of conflict.

Tactics over strategy

On the one hand, the effectiveness of Israel’s interception of commercial supply chains and ability to injure thousands of individual targets through an attack seemingly planned for months (if not years) is impressive, to say the least.

On the other hand, last week’s attacks could offer a case study in how successful tactics can undermine strategy.

In particular, Israel has galvanized opinion in Lebanon. Voices who previously supported de-escalation have turned, in the wake of the attacks, to increasingly favor retaliatory escalation in response to the fear internalized across the entire country—not just of an international antagonist, but also the entire spectrum of consumer electronics used on a daily basis by millions of people. 

Solar panels? Really?

Among the sets of electronics weaponized by the Mossad last week were solar panels. That should disturb anyone, particularly because it cynically targeted victims based in part on their responses to the climate crisis, creating justifiable fear of technology that we need people to widely adopt.

When I spoke last week on Flashpoints, the host Dennis Bernstein was especially outraged by the weaponization of solar panels. I shared his concern, while noting that the horses already ran out of that proverbial barn.

Years ago, the CIA was criticized for using a fake immunization campaign in Pakistan as a basis for an intelligence operation. Any public health worker should have been concerned, even long before the U.S. began bombing doctors working for international nonprofits. 

Device security and legitimating future attacks on users

Some observers have claimed that the consumer electronics devices detonated in Lebanon last week were targeted at Hezbollah, but the reality suggests otherwise. Because Israel intercepted the components it weaponized before the point of manufacture and distribution, they could effectively end up anywhere, especially given the possibility of individuals selling their electronics (for instance, to upgrade to a new model) or allowing friends to borrow them.

That’s precisely why international law has long prohibited booby traps. Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, explained that the international prohibition of bobby traps particularly applies to “objects that civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use," and that any use of "an explosive device whose exact location could not be reliably known would be unlawfully indiscriminate…." 

One reason international law has long prohibited actions like torture—until George W. Bush and Dick Cheney revived it and Barack Obama decided it was OK—was because all parties recognized the need to stop proliferation, and to guard the rights of their own citizens by respecting the rights of others. Israel’s weaponization of consumer electronics opens the door to other countries—including North Korea, Iran, or China—following suit, with potentially devastating consequences.

Corruption insulating itself with state violence

One of the most disturbing aspects—not only of last weeks attacks, but the ongoing genocide in general—is its contrivance to serve the political interests of a corrupt leader. Benjamin Netanyahu was born in Brooklyn, and clings to power in Israel, where he has long been criticized for corruption, precisely and only because the conflict continues.

Should the conflict resolve itself, Netanyahu will productively lose some of the coalition partners who keep him in office. His political future more or less binds him to the genocide, regardless of the interests of Israel, its citizens, or anyone else.

Of course, the U.S. has been down this road before. On the one hand, our Founders anticipated leaders using conflict to serve their own political interests, and designed the Constitution largely as an elaborate attempt to block that from happening. Yet George W. Bush initiated multiple conflicts in the wake of the 9/11 attacks that revealed themselves as strategic blunders, while riding popular support for the wars to his reelection in 2004.

Netanyahu has more or less killed (at least, if not more than) tens of thousands of people, undermined international law, and rendered an entire set of industries unsafe for the sake of his own personal gain. As the head of a nuclear-armed state, his actions resemble those of some of the most morally reprehensible actors in human history.

International law and accountability 

Strategies designed to maximize civilian casualties violate international law and demand accountability. Voices around the world have accordingly decried the new weaponization of consumer electronics, recognizing the threat it poses to civilians in all countries and well-settled principles of international law.

Among them were a group of United Nations human rights experts who described Israel’s actions as constituting “terrifying” violations of international law. They wrote: 

[A]t the time of the attacks there was no way of knowing who possessed each device and who was nearby. Simultaneous attacks by thousands of devices would inevitably violate humanitarian law, by failing to verify each target, and distinguish between protected civilians and those who could potentially be attacked for taking a direct part in hostilities.

According to ​UCLA law professor Jessica Peake, "detonating pagers in people’s pockets without any knowledge of where those are, in that moment, is a pretty evident indiscriminate attack.” She described the violation of international law as "quite blatant…violations of both proportionality and indiscriminate attacks.”

But don’t hold your breath. Israel has pursued an analogous policy for decades, particularly over the last year. It bombed a school in Gaza on the very same day that it detonated pagers across Lebanon, and followed its remote explosions across the country with yet another random airstrike on Saturday that killed another 37 people, including women and children. It also raided the West Bank offices of Al-Jazeera, presumably in order to block independent journalism from exposing the Netanyahu regime’s continuing—and escalating—violations of international law.

Global condemnation has not been enough to restrain Israel, which continues to enjoy carte blanche from Washington. Even as Democrats and Republicans froth at the mouth over the upcoming presidential election, both of the major parties’ candidates have endorsed Netanyahu’s disregard for laws once held sacrosanct across the globe.

Meanwhile, Washington continues to stand as Israel’s most critical enabler on the world stage. That should be no surprise. Under administrations from each of the corporate political parties, Washington & Langley have widely used drones to bomb essentially random gatherings despite the predictable, documented, and repeated collateral damage implicit in bomb campaigns. Even the “double tap” strategy evident in Israel’s attacks on Tuesday, killing random bystanders who were mourning casualties from the day before—has grown well-established in the context of U.S. drone strikes despite global outrage.

If voices from around the world clamoring by the millions are not enough to compel Washington’s attention, what would be? I envision a future post answering that question, but am eager in the meantime to invite any suggestions in the comments.