These takes are problematic because it's clear to most observers that the attacks were, by the standards set by ground combat in Fallujah, NATO air operations in Kunar Province, or operations against ISIL in Inherent Resolve, the pager/radio attacks were drastically more discriminating, and caused a tiny fraction of the noncombatant casualties. This, of course, is also a distorted standard capturing only NATO/aligned combat operations; the picture gets much worse if you pull in Gulf State military operations, Azerbaijan, or Russia/Ukraine.
(Turk's booby-trap argument is challenging for two additional reasons; the first is that the encrypted pagers and ICOM radios we're discussing are military command & control equipment, not items used "in daily life" in the sense contemplated by the booby trap convention, and further the definition of a booby trap in that convention involves a device triggered when random people approach it, not one detonated at a specific instruction by the party that placed it. The history of the booby trap convention is tied up in the human cost of unwinding booby traps after conflicts have wound down, which is not a problem the pagers posed.)
I'm concerned that people attempting (reasonably!) to communicate disapproval for IDF operations generally are damaging their credibility by trying to fold the pager/radio attack into their message. To me, the pager/radio attack is damning for an entirely different reason: with proper seriousness and resourcing, it's clear that Israel was able to incapacitate a near-peer military adversary with vastly lower noncombatant cost than what they've managed in Gaza.
(Turk's booby-trap argument is challenging for two additional reasons; the first is that the encrypted pagers and ICOM radios we're discussing are military command & control equipment, not items used "in daily life" in the sense contemplated by the booby trap convention, and further the definition of a booby trap in that convention involves a device triggered when random people approach it, not one detonated at a specific instruction by the party that placed it. The history of the booby trap convention is tied up in the human cost of unwinding booby traps after conflicts have wound down, which is not a problem the pagers posed.)
I'm concerned that people attempting (reasonably!) to communicate disapproval for IDF operations generally are damaging their credibility by trying to fold the pager/radio attack into their message. To me, the pager/radio attack is damning for an entirely different reason: with proper seriousness and resourcing, it's clear that Israel was able to incapacitate a near-peer military adversary with vastly lower noncombatant cost than what they've managed in Gaza.