Paging a new rogue state- state sponsored terrorism
Sep 23, 2024
Exploding pagers and two-way radios. What a brilliant act of ….. state-sponsored terrorism. Or a classic destruction of an adversary’s command and control communications ability.
It begs the question of why the primary suspect, Israel, chose not to use its undoubted technological skill to simply jam the targeted pagers and two-way radios.
Whoever was responsible chose to use methods condemned globally and outlawed by a number of agreements and conventions made in the post-war period under the general auspices of the United Nations and Geneva Conventions. The Humanitarian Law of Armed Conflicts include measures required to prevent genocide, to protect human rights and prohibit attacks on civilian hospitals and medical transports, and enable the rapid and unimpeded passage for humanitarian aid during armed conflicts.
These rules have often been observed in the breach, most recently with Israeli attacks on hospitals and obstruction of aid delivery. However, the rules provide a framework against which the actions of the State can be measured and held to account.
Following the Israeli warning to the US of an operation in Lebanon, it is reasonable to conclude that the pager attacks are an Israeli operation. States are expected to not behave as terrorists do. They are expected to observe and comply with the rules of international behaviour set out in post-World War II agreements.
Protocol II to the Conventional Weapons Convention says, “It is prohibited to use booby-traps or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects which are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material.”
The assumption underpinning the attack is that the exploding devices were only used by terrorists, although there is no way of proving this assumption is correct. The civilian dead are in no position to correct the record.
States that do not observe the conventions of conflict and sovereignty are classed as rogue states. The key question now is to determine if Israel’s latest action is enough to classify the country as a rogue state and impose the appropriate sanctions. Other rogue nation states that operate in the same way are already subject to sanctions.
Sanction regimes also already apply to terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. The sanctions are designed to stop their activity which falls outside the global conventions on conflict. Many will argue sanctions are an ineffective measure, but, despite this, they should be applied in a consistent fashion.
The 180 degree test provides a measure of appropriate response. Imagine the global outrage if Iran had executed this widespread booby-trap attack on Israel. Imagine the swift global condemnation of Hezbollah or Hamas had they executed this strategy?
Stealing as a servant of government is treated more seriously than common theft because a higher standard of behaviour is expected. So too are the actions of a nation state. These booby trap explosions, reprehensible from a terrorist group, are more reprehensible because the global rules of conduct hold the nation state to a higher standard.
Those who support the global rules-based order cannot pick and choose which laws they will support and in which circumstances. The very essence of a rules-based order is the universal application of those rules irrespective of who breaches them. The West’s failure to condemn these attacks with the same alacrity and vigour as they condemned the Hamas 7 October attacks is a measure of the collapse of the rules-based order.
Israel’s very foundations are built on Haganah terrorism and those supporting the use of these booby traps should understand this. With the pager attacks, Israel has reached deep into its Haganah roots and that is not appropriate for a state that pretends to be part of the global community.
Taking out command and control abilities is a classic military strategy, but booby-trapped pagers cross the boundary into a state sponsored act of terrorism because the same result could have been achieved by jamming the relevant radio frequencies.
These are the actions of a rogue state and they pose a great threat because now every pager and two-way radio is a potential weapon for the discontented. (Luckily I use a Huawei Mate60.) Those who claim to support the rules-based order bear the responsibility for taking action to bring Israel back into a global community of responsible states, and if this is not possible, then Israel should be treated as a rogue state.
Not to do so makes them complicit in supporting terrorism and in the destruction of the architecture of the global community ruled by law.
Daryl Guppy
Daryl Guppy is an international financial technical analysis expert. He has provided weekly Shanghai Index analysis for mainland Chinese media for more than a decade. Guppy appears regularly on CNBC Asia and is known as "The Chart Man". He is a former national board member of the Australia China Business Council. The views expressed here are his own.
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