So a Unity owned bloatware company being used by Samsung is now somehow controversial because it was founded in Israel? Am i reading this right?
replies(13):
The article doesn't appear to take a side one way or the other in the conflict, it's just listing a potential compliance issue.
> the program was found to be quietly invasive as it allows the installer to install programs on the user’s device without permission. It circumvents the user validation process and successfully bypasses multiple security checks, including antivirus programs
I agree that the headline “controversy” is manufactured.
> The presence of an Israeli-origin technology component on Samsung phones in WANA countries poses additional problems. Several nations in this region legally bar Israeli companies from operating, and in light of the ongoing Israel–Palestine conflict, the preload of an app tied to such a company becomes even more contentious.
So yes, the presence of Israeli software is a problem in many countries, and may even be illegal.
The issue is that it is an app which is forcibly installed without consent or disclosure, which has privileged access to the system and beyond the scope of the device vendor. To have no care for that reeks suspiciously of nationalistic bias.
edit: Please answer: Which country has backdoor control of the phones via this app?
Best step up to your words and throw away your phone then.
All major tech companies and chip manufacturers have R&D and design centers in Israel.
Four children were killed and dozens of _innocent_ bystanders were injured.
> What do you know about Lebanon and Hezbollah?
It's a conflict that's been going on for 30 years that I can remember and I don't think that more kinetic operations are going to accomplish anything other than fomenting an actual genocide.
Did you think gatekeeping was going to work? This conflict has spilled out into the broader world. If it were strictly contained to Lebanon and only implicated Hezbollah then you might have a point. We're well past that.
> How do people end up making such unfounded, unbiased claims so confidently??
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/world/middleeast/israel-e...
4000 civilians were injured
There were two waves of attacks. You're ignoring the second one.
Compared to thousands of Hezbollah members. Literally one of the most targeted large-scale attacks of all time. There are effectively zero other military means that would have been even close to as selective and discriminant. Would you prefer they drop a 500lb bomb on each of their houses instead?
Edit: I know what they wrote
https://www.icrc.org/en/law-and-policy/geneva-conventions-an...
If ‘no bomb/missile ever is a war crime’, then .. there is no such thing as “terrorism”, either. (Although the argument could be made that there is no such thing as ‘terrorism’ at all, and that indeed, the word terrorism is merely a propaganda crutch used to justify atrocities against so-called ‘lesser cultures’ deemed inferior by the same institutions which used to use the ‘n-word’ to justify their atrocities in decades past, too, before that became difficult to do ..)
You can indeed commit war crimes with sticks too, though, incidentally.
I didn't make it up, the Balfour declaration makes it pretty clear, so if you're upset natives are attacking you what's your point exactly.
Anyway, point is Israel has almost always lied throughout it's genocide against Palestinians. The IOF has lied or distorted the truth in almost every statement, one which always comes to mind is the attack on the Christian hospital.
The Israeli government are liars, they have a whole online army dedicated to misinformation and the 5 D's. For them lying is just another effective weapon of war which must be utilised.
There are plenty of us on HN who believe in the Israeli peoples’ human rights just as seriously as we support those of the children of Gaza, too.
Those of us who actually care about civilized society, human rights, and international law also consider that there are plenty of Israeli citizens who are, themselves, victims of their own states acts of terrorism as well.
You are responsible for the crimes of your state, citizen. No amount of chicken-waving is going to absolve you of that fact.
The point of discussing the heinous nature of the pager attack is to prevent the precedent set by that attack from taking further victims.
It is not in the interests of Israeli citizens to have their war-crime committing state subjugate their societies’ commercial institutions to commit further atrocities.
Because the Israeli Hasbara is now failing at this gaslighting strategy, you're leveling ad hominems towards people who see this as what it is - decades of war crimes and a humanitarian crisis.
So either come up with a proper argument, or stay quiet. Gaslighting us into thinking we're being biased, or that we're ill informed, just isn't going to work anymore.
So per the KPI metric you've chosen, making it more lethal and more dangerous to bystanders would have been better.
The difficulty in comprehending an answer to this question is precisely why allowing ones military to perform such actions using covert means is so dangerous for a civilian population to support.
War is supposed to be fought in the open in order to protect the civilians.
I suppose when the distinction between soldier and civilian is not so easy to make, the profligate mindset which allows covert, indiscriminate mass murder at scale becomes a norm.
Common Article 3 was breached by carrying out lethal attacks against persons taking no active part in hostilities (including off-duty medics and civilians) without individual assessment; GC I Articles 12 and 18 were violated when medical personnel and facilities were hit by exploding devices carried by wounded or off-duty health workers; GC III Article 13 was infringed because many victims instantly became hors de combat through injury yet were subjected to further maiming by shrapnel designed to cause maximum harm; GC IV Articles 27, 32 and 51 were contravened by the indiscriminate killing and mutilation of civilians (including children and bystanders) and by imposing collective punishment through mass, simultaneous detonation regardless of individual status; Additional Protocol I Articles 48, 51(2–5), 57 and 54 were violated through the failure to distinguish combatants from civilians, the inherently indiscriminate and disproportionate nature of detonating thousands of devices in populated areas, and the use of treachery/perfidious means to kill; finally, Amended Protocol II to the CCW Article 7(2) was directly breached by transforming ordinary civilian pagers into prohibited booby-traps specifically designed and constructed to contain concealed explosives.
The use of treachery/perfidious means to kill is particularly disturbing, since it sets the precedent for similar means to be used in retaliation, very likely to result in yet more unjustifiable acts of terror.
Any and all means are and will always be justified to prevent that.
“The IDF attacks civilians. It uses perfidy to indiscriminately attack the civilian population of its enemies. It, too, ignores the laws of war.”
There is no way to continue justifying acts of terror being committed by your in-group, without also become equivalent to the terrorist of your out-group.
No? The slave workers in Nazi germany who purposely fucked up equipment to get german soldiers killed were not committing a war crime. Sabotage is legitimate warfare. The french people getting the trust of german soldiers and then slitting their throats were not committing war crimes.
>Civilians died in those indiscriminate attacks - which were terrorist in nature and deed.
Civilians die in every war because war is messy and the geneva conventions, which only considered prisoners of war until the 4th, do not prevent civilian causalities. They are not intended to. The Geneva conventions were updated after world war 2 and were STILL not made to prevent things like the London Blitz or infrastructure attacks, and indeed things like Russia trying to freeze Ukraine to death by blowing up it's electrical infrastructure is not a war crime.
If hezbollah are legitimate combatants, then they have to wear a uniform during hostilities to be protected by the conventions/protocols/hague. If they do not wear a uniform, they are considered defectors to lawful war and have less protections than actual combatants.
If China puts backdoors in all the chips we buy from them, and we build weapons with those chips, and China pressed a button that self destructs all things made with those chips, that is also not a warcrime.
War crimes are pretty much only treating POWs incorrectly by doing medical "experiments" on them or genociding them. If you are not a POW yet, the Geneva conventions don't say much about you.
Do you people think anyone would have signed a treaty that says "You can't kill more than 1 innocent person per bad guy"?
>Tell me you don't care about the Geneva convention without telling me you've probably never read the Geneva convention.
Big words from someone who doesn't seem to recognize that they geneva convention they've "totally read" doesn't say what they seem to think it says. Please quote the part where blowing up a civilian with your target is called a war crime
Israel is guilty of both the forcible expulsion and mass killing of Palestinians, so the definition certainly applies.
Obviously yes, Hamas and Hezbollah indiscriminately firing rockets at Israel consistute war crimes. I assume you must agree that Israel's systematic targeting of schools, hospitals, mosques, and refugee camps would also qualify?
It is also a war crime to carry out what is known as the Nakba - ethnically cleansing and displacing hundreds and thousands of Palestinians. It is a crime illegally occupy land that does not belong to you. It is a crime to maintain an apartheid state. It is a crime to hold 'prisoners' without any charges It is a crime to rape said prisoners. It is also disgusting to have a society that riots when said rapists are called out for their actions. It is a crime to continually bomb and kill Palestinians for just existing. It is a crime to continually kill Palestinians for no reason via 'mowing the grass' exercises It is a crime to crime to kill Palestinians when they peacefully protest It is a crime to indiscriminately bomb Gaza because some Palestinians have had enough of being subjected to sub-human conditions.
So if you say 'any and all means are justified to prevent that', then any and all means should be justified to prevent the above, right?
And all of this is ignoring the blatant international law violation against booby trapping. This was very clearly a war crime.
I'll start to believe this sort of fantasy when the people who win wars begin investigating and prosecuting themselves for the crimes that they committed or suborned.
- Not use Intel processors, as many are developed in Haifa
- Not use a firewall. It was invented in the IDF.
- Not use Waze. It's Israeli.
- Not use thumb drives. Invented in Israel.
- Not eat cherry tomatoes. Israeli development.
The list goes on and on, but I must add - if you ever suffer a serious head or stomach injury, tell the medics to not use the Israeli bandage.
Where the question “which Israeli companies are involved in committing Israels war crimes?” needs to be answered, is at the ICC - not here on HN.
(Unless the question is being answered by a whistleblower, of course..)
> “I don’t think there’s any question that it’s a form of terrorism,” Panetta said on “CBS News Sunday morning.”
https://thehill.com/policy/international/4893900-leon-panett...
I don't take anything Leon Panetta says as gospel, but the fact that someone like him says this shows how the position is not ludicrous in the way you and other similar replies are painting it.
Show me the Article in the CCW which supports this claim. And do you mean sabotage against civilian infrastructure, or military materials? Again, show the Article, either way.
>If hezbollah are legitimate combatants, then they have to wear a uniform
Yes, true. Just as those responsible for the pager attacks had to identify themselves as combatants, also.
> If China puts backdoors in all the chips we buy from them, and we build weapons with those chips, and China pressed a button that self destructs all things made with those chips, that is also not a warcrime.
If this were to occur, it would be considered a war crime under one or more of the following articles:
- Perfidy (Art. 37 AP I)
- Indiscriminate attack (Art. 51(4) AP I)
- Excessive incidental civilian harm / disproportionality (Art. 51(5)(b) AP I)
- Treachery (broader Hague prohibition)
- Superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering (Art. 35(2) AP I)
- Failure to take feasible precautions (Art. 57 AP I)
Any of these 6 violations can constitute war crimes.
>“War crimes are pretty much only treating POWs incorrectly by doing medical "experiments" on them or genociding them.”
Okay, this is just plain, ignorant, crazy talk.
>”Please quote the part where blowing up a civilian with your target is called a war crime,”
Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions and from the Rome Statute of the ICC.
I'll tell you as soon as you tell me exactly why ZTE devices were banned in the United States. The thing about clandestine operations is that they aren't done in the open.
Oh, and .. who are you referring to as “people living in the US”, and by what means are you certain of this fact? HN is an international community.
Some of us don’t see national identity and just want the mass murder of children to stop, whatever it takes.
Only then will you have the moral altitude required to gain the support of the rest of the world in prosecuting “their” war criminals.
Common Article 3; GC I Art. 12 & 18; GC III Art. 13; GC IV Arts. 27, 32 & 51; AP I Arts. 48, 51(2–5), 57 & 54; CCW Amended Protocol II Art. 7(2) of the Geneva Conventions.
Common Article 3; GC I Art. 12 & 18; GC III Art. 13; GC IV Arts. 27, 32 & 51; AP I Arts. 48, 51(2–5), 57 & 54; CCW Amended Protocol II Art. 7(2) of the Geneva Conventions.
Common Article 3; GC I Art. 12 & 18; GC III Art. 13; GC IV Arts. 27, 32 & 51; AP I Arts. 48, 51(2–5), 57 & 54; CCW Amended Protocol II Art. 7(2) of the Geneva Conventions.
Which country has backdoor control of the phones via this app?
The claims made in the interview align with various other sources, including videos of the explosions showing that bystanders were unaffected. Likewise none of the spicy pagers were found to have been sold to the general public.
You claim:
> “sold exclusively to terrorists” - false.
> “used exclusively by terrorist organizations for communications” - false.
> “weren't any non-terrorist affiliated medics ” - false.
From the interview
> Lesley Stahl: Did people other than Hezbollah want to buy this based on what was being said about it online?
> Gabriel: Yes. We received several request from regular potential customer. Obviously we didn't send to anyone. We just quote them with expensive price.
You claim:
> “bystanders were essentially unaffected due to the design of the explosive payload” - false.
From the article:
> In order to put explosives inside. But not too much. Using dummies, Mossad conducted tests with the pager in a padded glove to calibrate the grams of explosive needed to be just enough to hurt the fighter -- but not the person next to him.
War is a horrible and inherently immoral thing. We do no favors to our humanity or othercs by pretending it's a simple black and white matter when it is really not.
It complains about inability to uninstall from the manufacturers handset which is a manufacturers decision.
Again both articles manufacture controversy simply by nature that the Appcloud is associated with an Israeli company, not by what the app actually does or not by the fact that nobody forced Samsung to install this app on their handsets.
If you have information showing that Samsung is selling phones that are remote controlled by another government or corporate actor, that would be extremely newsworthy. Please share these news when you find them
You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter what you're replying to. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them if you want to keep participating here.
Even if that were the case, destroying those buildings with civilians inside is still a war crime
You're mixing two different things with the civilians in buildings. The mass building destruction we see is done on buildings after evacuation to dismantle booby trapped buildings. Israel does frequently do strikes on buildings or infrastructure that contain civilians, but that is a different kind of action with different reasons and circumstances (e.g. collateral damage of strikes on military targets, etc.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcqIDKf1uYU
You're someone that has deepthroated the Israeli narrative, with no critical thinking whatsoever. I hope, for your own sake, you start to see more of the reality, as defending a violent regime like this can have an impact on ones soul, which will affect - if not already - other areas of your life.
The mere existence of a state per se is violent, and given that both Israel and Palestine insists on having mutually incompatible states over the same territory, there is no other option but endless bloodshed until both sides commit to a conciliatory settlement. Until that day, a day which may never come, since everyone is hellbent on egging their respective favored side on, things will simply continue as is until one or both sides are destroyed. Since Israel unquestionably has more power, it will likely survive. There is no morally unquestionable option, but I think anyone who has a stake in the livelihood of Palestinians would be interested in stopping the conflict as soon as possible and making a settlement, even an imperfect one. In such a quandry, the only ethical option is to remain open and curious, be willing to look at facts and evaluate claims instead of jumping to conclusions, and refrain from asserting an uncertain narrative as fact when there are competing narratives and counterexamples.
The First thing that popped into my head, was
- is this a problem because of bloatware in general? Or…
- because its Israeli bloatware?
If the latter, I would understand your discomfort because of past security intrusions by Israeli companies.
But not if it’s just „IsRa-HeLl bAd“
Your claim that buildings are being destroyed because they were "booby trapped" comes from a partisan source (the Israeli Government/IDF), which is an active participant in this conflict. Their claims are a liability limiting exercise and it's in their best interests do downplay destruction they have caused.
Statements from a government at war regarding their own military conduct are basically a PR exercise unless they have been independently verified. Plus independent verification is quite hard, as the same partisan source has prevented independent media from gaining access into the strip which stops independent verification of both side's claims.
Do you have independent sources for the booby trapping other than IDF or news organisations repeating their press releases? Basically anything from international NGOs / neutral observers that confirm that houses are booby trapped to such a scale that it necessitates the flattening of entire residential blocks?
While you say it's trivial to find a house with no damage, that was not my point. My point was from viewing the drone footage - that's view covers entire suburbs - there is not one single intact building in all 3 separate videos.
But since you mentioned "recently satellite imagery", lets look at the actual data provided by experts who analyse it.
The United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT), released its Comprehensive Damage Assessment in late October 2025. So it's 3 weeks old. Completely fresh and up to date.
* It uses high-res imagery from as recent as 11 October 2025
* It tracks damage over time rather than just a before/after assessment
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/unosat-gaza-strip-damage...
Quoting the summary:
> According to satellite imagery analysis, as of 11 October 2025, approximately 81% of all structures in the Gaza Strip are damaged. Among the damaged structures, UNOSAT identified 123,464 destroyed structures, 17,116 severely damaged structures, 33,857 moderately damaged structures, and 23,836 possibly damaged structures for a total of 198,273 affected structures. Compared to the 8 July 2025 assessment, this corresponds to a 4% increase in total affected structures, and an 18% increase in destroyed structures, indicating worsening damage. An estimated 320,622 housing units have been damaged, 12% more than on 08 July 2025.
Their satellite analysis shows:
* 23,464 destroyed structures
* 17,116 severely damaged structures
* 33,857 moderately damaged structures
* 23,836 possibly damaged structures
* A total of 198,273 affected structures
It also shows the destruction of housing / infrastructure has been both systematic and continual over the past two years.
Having 81% of all structures damaged (and 320k housing units) puts extreme doubt to the claim that it is "just making it safe from booby traps".
Hamas members themselves have said they have trapped structures [1]. I don't think it is unreasonable that many buildings were trapped. There are also other causes of destruction, like bombing.
[1] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/international/ham...
> Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices as amended on 3 May 1996 (Protocol II to the 1980 CCW Convention as amended on 3 May 1996)
or some other document? IIRC for start it does not have article 18.
I am quite confused by your weird unusually formatted citation style.