Quote:
Originally Posted by Oil Stain
What do you think should happen to those who plant bombs in pagers that could be detonated around civilians?
That's an act of terror don't you think?
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Good question. That's an act of counter-terrorism. Those pagers weren't simply sold to anyone that could get their hands on them. The pagers were purchased by Hezbollah and distributed directly to Hezbollah terrorists as a way to convey orders.
Now there's a huge misconception about civilians being around when it comes to legitamate military targets.
Valid military targets:
- Combatants
- Military infrastructure
- Supply lines and logistics
- Weapons and ammunition
Targets like that have an NCV(non-combatant cutoff value), people like to claim that one civilian life negates any action at all, but that's just not true. NCV is the number of civilians you're legally allowed as collateral damage in order to strike.
Lawyers are a part of the process of determining the NCV, and they look at:
1. Military necessity - how essential is the military target to achieving your military objective/advantage.
2. Proportionality - the use of force must be limited to what is necessary to achieve an advantage.
The pager operation definitely provided the IDF a huge advantage by compromising the command and control structure of Hezbollah, while causing a very limited collateral damage.