Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on Wednesday night tweeted this – I am not messing with you:
“Israel’s pager attack in Lebanon detonated thousands of handheld devices across of a slew of public spaces, seriously injuring and killing innocent civilians. This attack clearly and unequivocally violates international humanitarian law and undermines US efforts to prevent a wider conflict. Congress needs a full accounting of the attack, including an answer from the State Department as to whether any US assistance went into the development or deployment of this technology.”
Here are a few items missing from the Congresswoman’s bizarre diatribe:
1. Every last beeper that was blown up on Tuesday and walkie-talkie on Wednesday had been disseminated by Hezbollah to its members. Not a single Lebanese innocent civilian should have had one of them in his or her hand – if Hezbollah had caught them with its instrument in their hand they would have cut off said hand.
2. The US government classifies Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Intelligence estimates suggest the group possesses an arsenal of tens of thousands of rockets. This military capability has sparked worries that Hezbollah’s attacks that began on October 9, 2023, are an attempt to escalate the Israel-Hamas fighting into a more extensive regional war.
3. As legal expert Prof. Eugene Kontorovich put it eloquently in a Wednesday night tweet: “In international law terms, the pager operation is a classic act of sabotage, which is legal under International Humanitarian Law (IHL). Those protesting the attack on Hezbollah cell phones would have been crying over bombs placed on Nazi Germany’s train tracks.”
Noah Rothman wrote in the National Review on Wednesday (Their Problem Is That Israel Won’t Roll Over and Die): “If this is the reflex to which the Biden administration is prone, you can see why the Israelis declined to inform their American counterparts in advance of the spectacularly innovative and logistically impressive acts of sabotage targeting Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon and Syria this week.”
Like Kontorovich, Rothman wonders what exactly constitutes a violation of “international humanitarian law” in the context of blowing up the beepers of known terrorists. He noted that the International Red Cross defines it as a subset of “international law,” which itself comprises agreements between states, typically in the form of treaties or conventions. These agreements are, in principle, binding on the signatories.
However, this definition establishes that “international law” exists only insofar as individual nations craft, ratify, and—most critically—enforce it. Rothman mentions the Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC) that are applicable against “booby-traps and other devices” used against non-military targets, and only “restricted” against legitimate combatants in war.
Rothman proclaims:
“These LOAC protocols proscribe weapons that have “indiscriminate effects,” but what could be more discriminating than an attack on devices Hezbollah itself distributes to its most prominent members? The thinness of AOC’s indictment suggests her objections to Israeli spycraft aren’t legal but moral. Where does Jerusalem get the nerve to disable thousands of Hezbollah fighters without exposing its own people to the horrors of warfare? Dirty pool, that. But when you consider the alternatives, the framework Israel’s critics have applied to the Jewish state is exposed as a double standard.”
Here’s a droll thing: Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Thursday morning attached himself to AOC’s blatant lie about the Lebanese “victims,” declaring, ““We express our deepest condolences and sympathies to the dear people of Lebanon for the martyrdom and injury of thousands of Lebanese citizens as a result of treacherous mass terror carried out by the terrorist regime of Israel by exploding communication devices (pagers) without distinguishing between civilians and others.”
AND NOW, FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT, SOME TWEETED RESPONSES
Hen Mazzig: “AOC, you have not once condemned Hezbollah, a terrorist organization responsible for murdering hundreds of Americans, which has been firing rockets haphazardly at Israel for months. They killed people. Children. Yet you couldn’t muster up a peep. Now that Israel has attacked Hezbollah in a way that would be least likely to catch civilians in the crossfire, you talk about them, though you were sure to misuse the term civilian while you did it.”
Liberacrat™: “Why would “innocent civilians” be carrying [beeper emoji] owned by a terrorist organization?”
Ron M.: “Now you defend not just Hamas terrorists, but Iranian terrorists in Lebanon as well. There is no end to your love of terrorists, to how much water you will carry for Islamist terrorists – it’s sickening. It’s anti-American.”
Shaun Maguire: “The staggering naivete and incompetence demonstrated in this post is what pushed me from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.”
Shim: “You’re a joke what an Absolute joke! Who in 2024 uses pagers, only Hezbollah operatives! This is the most precise targeted operation in military history. But it’s not enough for you, AOC. Just say it out loud, you don’t want Israel to exist! A Jew fighting back upsets you!”
And the circle is complete.
