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Comment by gizajob | Hacker News Reader

In Britain, if the mobile phones of 3000 members of the non-governing Conservative Party exploded in their pockets caused by the armed forces of a different state, one could be reasonably assured you just declared open war on Britain.

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For a more accurate analogy, imagine if Conservative Party were a terrorist organization with its own military, took direct orders from Iran, had claimed for itself all of Wales, and had been firing thousands of missiles into France without cooperating in any way with either the British government or army.

Then imagine that France predictably shoots back, and takes great care to specifically target members of that terrorist group.

In this more accurate analogy, would you still say that France declared open war on Britain? I would say no - that the terrorist group is the one that declared war; and that France is clearly engaging in acts of war against that terrorist group, which happens to be embedded in a host country, like a parasite.

For a more accurate anology involving Britain, imagine that British secret services decided to detonate pagers belonging to Sinn Fein party members in the territory of the Republic of Ireland.

Yeah I agree with you. It’s also that the situation in the region around Israel is so complex and long-running that there aren’t really appropriate analogies. The two countries are at a state of war that’s fairly obvious regardless of the parties involved. I’m fairly confident Israel given its history in these matters knows what it’s doing and takes actions that will move it toward security and victory, and any potential responses from Hezbolah have been considered and accounted for. One thing that came up for me was if Hezbolah had de-escalated, what would Israel have done with the pagers? It’s clearly a kind of “sleeper” munition, I wonder what the circumstances would have been for them to never use it.

What if the pockets of IRA members had exploded (yes, I know. Say 40 years ago when they were doing their share of bombing)? Does anyone seriously dispute that Hezbollah is a proxy army for Iran?

I think your comparison stops holding wage as,soon as you mention the Conservative Party. They just aren’t the same thing as Hezbollah.

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