Spokesman confirms: – Netanyahu approved pager attacks in Lebanon

Netanyahu “confirmed on Sunday that he had approved the use of pagers in Lebanon,” his spokesman Omer Dostri told AFP news agency, referring to the massive explosion of pagers on September 18.

The confession comes as no surprise
It was the first time the Israeli government publicly acknowledged its authorship. The admission comes as no surprise, as the attacks were immediately attributed to the Israeli foreign intelligence service Mossad.

On September 19, there was another wave of attacks, during which hundreds of Hezbollah fighters’ walkie-talkies exploded.

Sharp criticism of Israel
The attacks received sharp international criticism because unsuspecting civilians were also threatened with death by the exploding telecommunications equipment.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the country of “carrying out attacks as a terrorist group.” While international lawyers disagreed over the permissibility of the attacks, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, described them as a war crime. “If the attacker is unable to assess the compatibility of the attack with the binding rules of international law, in particular its likely impact on the civilian population, the attack should not be carried out,” he told the UN in September Security Council.

“International humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby traps in the form of apparently innocuous, portable objects specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive materials. Violence with the intention of spreading terror among the civilian population is a war crime,” the Austrian continued.