‘We call it terrorism’: Netizens react to wave of device explosions in Lebanon

By Press TV Website Staff

The mass pager explosions in Lebanon on Tuesday, which claimed the lives of at least 11 people and injured nearly 2,800 others, were orchestrated by the Tel Aviv regime.

Pagers are primarily used by the members of the Hezbollah resistance movement as well as medical practitioners in the Arab country and most of the casualties happen to be young men.

Social media has been abuzz with condemnation of the terrorist act perpetrated by the Israeli regime amid the genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza, where the death toll now tops 41,200.

According to reports, explosives had been placed in pagers made by a European firm under a Taiwanese brand that had been shipped to Lebanon recently and exploded en masse on Tuesday.

The theory of pagers being “hacked” in a cyber operation by Israeli hackers has been dismissed.

“No one "hacked" the pagers. This is Israeli mumbo jumbo to make themselves look special,” independent British journalist Richard Mehdurst said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

“Explosives were placed in the devices. There is a security issue somewhere in the supply chain.”

Medhurst also echoed what many are saying that the Israeli regime wanted to inflict maximum casualties among ordinary Lebanese, not just members of the Hezbollah resistance movement.

“If Israel is so sure those devices belonged to Hezbollah members, why didn't they wait to detonate them during a war or major battle, to disrupt their comms and gain the upper hand? They knew random people would be hurt and did it anyway. We call this terrorism.”

US-based journalist and columnist Nathan Johnson also pointed to the indiscriminate nature of Tuesday’s pager explosions, which implies it wasn’t just meant for Hezbollah members.

“Israel knew that detonating all the pagers would mean indiscriminately killing civilians because you have no idea where the person with the pager is going to be,” wrote Johnson on X.

“Launching explosions in fruit markets and killing children is rightly called terrorism.”

He hastened to add that Israel has “absolutely no idea who would be standing nearby when those beepers exploded”, noting that “they didn't care, because civilian life is meaningless to them.”

World-renowned whistleblower Edward Snowden in his remarks termed the attacks “reckless.”

“They blew up countless numbers of people who were driving (meaning cars out of control), shopping (your children are in the stroller standing behind him in the checkout line), et cetera,” he wrote on X.

“Indistinguishable from terrorism.”

Snowden also dismissed the theory of “hacking” due to the scale of “serious injuries.”

“As information comes in about the exploding beepers in Lebanon, it seems now more likely than not to be implanted explosives, not a hack. Why? Too many consistent, very serious injuries,” he Snowden.

“If it were overheated batteries exploding, you'd expect many more small fires & misfires.”

Snowden further called out the double standards exhibited by Western media by not describing what happened in Lebanon on Tuesday as an act of terrorism.

“If it were iPhones that were leaving the factory with explosives inside, the media would be a hell of a lot faster to cotton on to what a horrific precedent has been set today,” he stated.

“Nothing can justify this. It's a crime. A crime. And everyone in the world is less safe for it.”

Many social media users called out BBC and other imperialist media outlets for distorting facts and whitewashing the Zionist regime’s diabolic crimes against people in Lebanon.

“As if any further evidence was required, there is not a single act of Zionist terror depraved enough that it will not be downplayed or obscured, if not outright justified, by the despicable BBC,” wrote Louis Allday, a journalist and book publisher.

“A classic & typical headline here that doesn’t even identify the perpetrator.”

One of the users replied that it was “straight up flipped around” to make it appear like the Hezbollah resistance movement is the “cause/perpetrator.”

They were referring to a BBC article headlined “Hezbollah pagers: How did they explode and who is responsible” published on Tuesday, hours after the mass bombings in Lebanon.

A social media user Yara affiliated with the Palestinian Youth Movement also blasted the BBC for its willful distortion and spin-doctoring of facts about Tuesday’s bombings.

“What we know is that BBC and imperialist media outlets are using language like “Hezbollah pager explosion” to divert blame away from a Zionist terror attack that killed 9+ and injured thousands across Lebanon,” she wrote in a post on X on Wednesday.

Some like journalist and podcaster Rania Khalek were brutally blunt in calling it for what it is.

“Not a pager attack. A terrorist attack,” she wrote on X.

Journalist Asad Abukhalil also took to X on Wednesday to link the August 2020 Beirut port bombing to the Israeli regime, saying he was certain “for the first time” that the regime was behind that.

“For the first time, I now consider Israel the primary suspect in the Beirut port explosion. I used to think it was purely criminal negligence,” he wrote on X on Wednesday.

On August 4, 2020, hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate detonated in a warehouse at the Beirut port, claiming the lives of more than 200 people. The blast continues to shroud in mystery.

Many also linked the attack to the US, suggesting that Washington was aware of it and dismissing the claim made by US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller that they were not involved.

“The US State Dept says the US was not involved in the pager explosions in Lebanon and was not aware of the incident beforehand. In unrelated news, the American University of Beirut Medical Center replaced the pagers of their doctors and staff 2 weeks ago,” wrote a user ‘Expat Vibes’.

Meanwhile, the Hezbollah movement has vowed to continue “its blessed operations to support Gaza, its people, and its resistance”, undeterred by the mass pager explosions orchestrated by Israel.

The resistance movement said it holds Israel “fully responsible” for the attacks that killed at least 10 and injured nearly 3,000, many of them in critical condition. 

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is expected to deliver an address on Thursday.

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