They planted bombs in hardware that is used exclusively by Hezbollah operatives and their accomplices to evade gathering sigint. Yes, civilians got hurt. That’s the nature of war, and what makes it so horrible - people who might hold no malice nor pose any threat to the other side get hurt and die.

How is this argument different than defending the use of landmines?

So the pagers were ordered by Hamas. You send that text you don’t know if they are at a daycare picking up their kids, if they lost the pager and it’s sitting on some restaurant owner’s countertop next to some other family, etc etc etc.

There are so many things that can happen between when those pagers get rigged and sent out and the time they are detonated.

If Israel seemed at all like they tried to avoid bombing and shooting civilians in Gaza we could at least defend their actions there by saying “clearly they are trying to avoid civilian casualties” (we can’t, but we could) - but there is nothing but hopes and prayers to avoid civilian casualties in an attack like this.

Literally if any non-governmental entity did the same thing, no one would hesitate to call it a terrorist attack. And that’s what it is here, a terrorist attack.