Three Major Implications Regarding the Pager Terrorism Incidents

Economic, technological, and moral

           I admit that I have been sleeping with my cell phone in another room lately. As I write, I type on a laptop, and cannot help but imagine what it must be like to be innocuously shitposting one moment, and have your fingers blown off the next.

            These Israeli terrorist incidents in Lebanon, where over the course of two days, thousands of pagers, walkie-talkies, and other forms of technology exploded and killed 37 people and wounded thousands of others, have frightened me immensely. Children have died, and simultaneous attacks have taken place in Syria as well. On the news, I watched an interview with a traumatized doctor describing a night full of eye surgeries. The footage switched to a clip of the gory operation, where for a second I saw a man with his eyes covered in bandages. I immediately had to turn off the TV. Often I feel like I must watch these things, as some kind of penance since others experience this violence and I only have to see it. But the human brain was never meant to see this much real violence.

            I feel like the world is falling into madness. Nothing makes sense anymore. I believe this incident could really be a turning point that will go down in history. IIt could really change the war and have huge consequences for the West for three major reasons:

1. Economic Implications

            Shortly after the two attacks on Lebanon, my X feed exploded with posts calling for a ban on Israeli technology. But do you know what else it exploded with?

            Posts calling for bans and boycotts on any Western technology at all.

            Could you call this anti-Western propaganda? Sure. You certainly could, and I’m sure there are plenty of incentives for people calling for such a ban.

            But on the other hand, for those who are afraid of what happened in Lebanon, as I too feel afraid, I cannot realistically blame anyone for fearing that their iPhones will explode in their hands. I personally fear my iPhone will explode in my hands, and I am someone from the West. So why would people not develop a worry about foreign-manufactured technology after an incident like this? Why would people have any hesitation to boycott technology from countries they feel they cannot trust?

After all, it is now being reported that Mossad/Israel did not actually tamper with the pagers and other devices as initially assumed. They rather manufactured them, meaning they were planned for use far in advance of the attack.

            As well, shortly after the first incident took place, a strange story emerged online about the American University of Beirut. The AUB, for those that don’t know, has had a contentious presence in the Middle East for some time. According to Western-controlled Wikipedia, in 1982, acting president David S. Dodge was kidnapped on campus by “pro-Iranian Shiite Muslim extremists,” while in 1984, the President Malcolm H. Kerr was killed by the Islamic Jihad, the group that preceded Hezbollah.

Why is this so interesting?

            Because the American University of Beirut reportedly took all pagers from its nurses and doctors about 10 days prior to the terrorist attacks, citing technical issues as a reason for its replacement. The University denied any involvement with the attacks, as did White House representatives. But the implications here is that if this change in pagers at AUB was in fact innocuous, the timing of this technology update was extremely fortuitous and coincidental. While nothing can be proven, it is certainly interesting that an attack conducted by Israel caused no harm to a university owned by their greatest ally, when this university also has had a contentious past with the region and with Hezbollah.

            So now people are suspicious about Western technology in general. And while this obviously applies to Israel and America, I have also seen chatter about extending this boycott to other Western countries’ technological exports as well. That would include my own country. If this continues, it will have economic implications for many in the West.

And still our Canadian government does not understand why everyone is so angry at them for their awful foreign policy choices.

2. Technological Warfare Implications

            When I wrote this article last week, I was hesitant to outright talk about some infrastructure concerns I have been concerned about. When I wrote about how I feel that we are “already at war,” one of the things I was hinting at is that I feel there may be some infrastructure attacks going on that we have not been able to quite recognize as warfare. This is because we do not currently have a precedent for understanding what war may look like in the technologically advanced 2020s. But it is likely that it will involve our new technologies—not just information wars on social media, but other forms of technological attacks that have not appeared in previous wars.

            Every large war, after all, represents a new development in technological warfare. Prior to WWI, for instance, wars still involved people going to war on horseback. WWI saw the development of rapid-firing machine guns such as the Maxim gun, the creation of poisons such as mustard gas, tanks, U-boats, and new forms of wireless communication (ie, radio). In the 40s, WWII saw the development of radar and sonar, as well as advances in cryptography, amphibious warfare, long-range bombers, and infamously the development of atomic bombs.

            We have always known that, if we ever were to have a major global war again in our contemporary era, information technology would surely play a factor. And sure enough, there have been a lot of bizarre bridge collapses and the like happening all over the globe this year. I did not feel confident enough to write about it previously, because I cannot actually provide evidence of which infrastructure attacks were coordinated warfare attacks, and which are simple accidents. It is likely that I will not know until years have passed. It is hugely possible that these infrastructure problems are just due to ordinary wear and tear. Many countries are struggling right now as we are all connected through globalism, and when people struggle, infrastructure may not get as much funding or attention. But on the other hand, we haven’t anticipated that things like solar panels could be rigged to explode. So whenever I see or experience an unusual or bizarre technological event, it makes me nervous.

            This pager attack is now a proven incident in which technology has been used as technological warfare. It was not just old-fashioned items like pagers and walkie-talkies that were programmed to explode, but also phones, laptops, and solar power cells. So what other forms of technology could be used to hurt other people? And why wouldn’t our most commonly used technology—iPhones or laptops or “smart” vehicles or TVs—be affected as well? I don’t say this to be alarmist, but I cannot help but worry about the possibilities.

There is shame in saying this, as so many people have had to suffer through war, but war has not reached me at home because I am a civilian of a warmongering country. But now, however, all bets are off. And as long as my country refuses to do the right thing, the more I worry about war reaching me here.

If anyone has any recommendations for writers on Substack who might understand a bit more about the technological side of this war, please do share them below as I am eager to learn.

3. Moral Implications and Double Standards

            After the pager incident took place, pro-Israeli people took to social media and gleefully celebrated the deaths. While many did so unkindly and ignorantly, others likely were only doing so because they have been manipulated into believing that only malicious players were hurt. Western countries after all have designated Hezbollah as a “terrorist organization,” and have done their darnedest in their narrative-shaping to keep Israel in position of the victim. They refused to condemn the pager explosions or use the word terrorism. Unsurprisingly, they would not even commit to stating the bare minimum of “no, the United States would never approve of warfare that involves exploding a bunch of innocent civilians.”

Western media organizations, such as the BBC, have also been using sneaky, manipulative headlines that likely triggered the gleeful posts mentioned above. Those who did not have time to read extensively about the event and only were able to skim the headlines likely would come away from it assuming that the attack was justified, as they might assume that only those associated with Hezbollah were injured or killed. But innocent civilians, including healthcare workers and children, have died just by being within the vicinity of the explosions. Thousands of others have been injured, connected to Hezbollah and not. But the BBC and others have been deliberately using the term “Hezbollah pagers” and “Hezbollah pager explosions” to make it seem like Hezbollah was the one exploding everyone:

          The BBC of course is not the only one who has been using these kinds of headlines. Look for example at this image from the New York Post:

Remember, children have died in this attack.         

If this had happened in America or Canada or France, and innocent healthcare workers and children were attacked on Western soil, no one would print this or would fail to use the word “terrorism,” even if the main target had been someone the people had considered a threat. If there was a “radical Islamic terrorist” in Canada, for example, and he was killed in a planned foreign attack, but children and healthcare workers also died in the crosshairs, would the West consider this to be ethical or acceptable warfare? Or would they rightly say that this was a gross violation of human rights, which violates humanitarian law?

Despite what some might think, these pagers that were targeted were not owned by Hezbollah alone. As well, the devices hurt people who were not even possession of the devices, as they exploded inside hospitals, grocery stores, and even homes. Many of the injuries affected people’s hands, hips, and eyes. Look for example at this video of this Lebanese eye surgeon as he discussed the aftermath of the bloodbath. He indicated that something similar also happened four years ago, in 2020. When you think about this violence, it is important to know that it was not just those associated with Hezbollah, but also innocent bystanders, who suffered this violent fate.

And what if someone who was in possession of a pager was on a plane at the time of the explosion? Or at a school? Or at a funeral? Oh, wait, they actually did set off devices at funerals? Okay. Great. What a fantastic world.

Yet the White House and the West refuses to acknowledge this as terrorism. White House representative and professional bullshitter John Kirby for instance was asked point blank: “these kinds of tactics: blowing up pagers and walkie talkies—is this type of warfare acceptable to the United States?” As he is a weak, spineless turd, as turds often are, he stated: “I’m simply not able to address these incidents over the last couple of days in any level of details one way or another.” Aka: “I don’t give a shit and look forward to my trial at Nurmenburg 2.0.”

Even if one is absolutely delusional or completely immoral and does not see anything wrong here, because they believe anything is worth sacrificing in order to target Hezbollah, does one not understand that if we allow these kind of attacks to happen, it sets a precedent for it happening to any civilians anywhere in the world? Do we not realize that by allowing this, we are normalizing violence against civilians, and are literally telling foreign players that they are allowed to treat civilians as “collateral damage?”

That is so fucking stupid, and is further evidence that Western countries have lost our moral compass.

Because when you insist on treating lives as disposable, and when you performatively claim to care about human rights but then fail to take any action to actually protect humans lives, essentially arguing that they don’t matter because they live in a different country, then you are literally encouraging other nations to treat your civilians as disposably as you treat theirs. That is not a world I want to live in and I’m just absolutely ashamed about everything.

Lives matter. When one life ends, a single life, it matters. It should be mourned. And when thousands of children lose their lives, for stupid, shitty wars that are pointless and stupid and evil, then it means that humanity has completely lost its direction. As a species, we must have a moral purpose.

If not, what is the point of it all?

Thank you so much for reading. I have really appreciated the kindness and support of my readers as we all go through this hard time together. If you like my writing and want to support me, please consider subscribing to my newsletter or sharing my articles with others. I write these essays for free every week.

Articles and writers on Substack I’ve been reading:

• Is it simply too much effort not to have a war? by Robert Urbaschek

• Breaking up with the New York Times by Lauren Grubaugh Thomas

• Austerity and Genocide, neoliberalism is the gateway to authoritarianism by JM Smith

• Israel Has Killed 8% of Gaza's Population – the Equivalent of 26 Million Americans by Steven Donziger

• Hamas are not terrorists, EU Court said by Marianne Bergvall

• Republican Senator Targets Only Muslim Witness at Hate Crimes Hearing by Prem Thakker

• We Are Sleepwalking Into Dystopia by Bettbeat Media