Marriott Issues Internal Alert in Lebanon Fearing Walkie-Talkie Bombs Still Unaccounted For
Marriott’s Four Points by Sheraton Le Verdun discarded pagers and walkie-talkie batteries in response to ongoing Israeli bombings in Lebanon
Just over a ten minute drive north from the Rafic Harari airport in Beirut, Marriott International’s Four Points by Sheraton Le Verdun hotel quickly mobilized to eliminate its pagers and walkie-talkie batteries in the wake of Israel detonating modifications of authentic AR-924 pagers sold by the Taiwanese company Gold Apollo last Tuesday and replicas of long-deprecated IC-V82 walkie-talkies from the Japanese firm Icom last Wednesday.
Marriott’s security team warned of further unexploded devices from the coordinated attack. An urgent message sent to Marriott executives cautioned that “it is unclear if all of the reportedly 5,000+ devices reportedly shipped to Lebanon have been accounted for or whether some unexploded ordinance [sic] remains in the country or beyond.”
Marriott International’s Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) office did not respond to a request for comment on its mobilization, which is being reported here for the first time, or on whether the company had been in communication with the U.S. State Department on how to respond to the Israeli hand-held device bombings.
More than just U.S. businesses are scrambling to respond to the crisis. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has recently asked his Israeli counterparts to take measures to ensure the Israeli Defense Forces do not target or kill U.S. citizens or U.S. forces. American citizens are now being asked to leave the country, and similar evacuation efforts are underway for European and other foreign nationals in Lebanon.
The Israeli bombings, which former Central Intelligence Agency director Leon Panetta characterized as “a form of terrorism,” killed 37 Lebanese, including seven women and three children, according to Lebanon’s health minister. By contrast, President Biden’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt, jokingly asked “Do you want a beeper?” at the Israeli-American Council’s annual summit on Thursday after the moderator suggested Israel was viewed as weak after being surprised by the Hamas-led October 7 attacks. U.S. Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) similarly told NBC News “I love it” when discussing the Israeli hand-held device bombings on Sunday.
The attacks are part of a rapid escalation in violence between Lebanon and Israel. MK Amichai Chikli, an official in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet, warned publicly that Israel sought to invade Lebanon and create a "renewed buffer zone, free of enemy population.” Chikli’s message was posted on X alongside maps of Lebanese villages and small cities near Israel’s border.
Last week’s pager and walkie-talkie bombings are believed to have been conducted by an Israeli intelligence service, particularly the Mossad or Shin Bet, the latter of which killed the Hamas engineer Yahya Ayyash in 1996 through detonating a bomb in his Motorola Alpha cell phone.
The Israeli Air Force expanded the Lebanese death toll beginning last Friday through a ‘massive air strike’ in the Dahiyeh neighborhood of southern Beirut, killing at least 45 people just a fifteen minute drive southeast of the Four Points hotel, including Hezbollah senior commander Ibrahim Aqil and fifteen officials from its Radwan special operations force. Israeli strikes continued this week across the country, killing a reported 492 people on Monday – including two staffers from the UN’s refugee agency – and reportedly six more people on Tuesday while targeting Hezbollah rocket chief Ibrahim Qubaisi in the Dahiyeh region.
Lebanon’s health ministry has stated that at least 558 people have been killed in Israel’s ongoing wave of strikes, including 50 children. Qatar’s Al Jazeera further reported twelve deaths in a recent Israeli strike on Gaza, bringing the Gazan death toll from Israel’s response to the October 7 to “at least 41,467 people.”
I posted this on Lee Fang's SubStack
I believe these mini-bombs qualify as booby traps - which, if I read correctly, the Geneva Convention explicitly prohibits:
Per the Geneva Convention -
Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW): This convention, which includes its Protocol II on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices, sets out several key points:
Prohibited Uses: Booby traps designed to cause harm through everyday objects or in ways that target civilians are explicitly banned. This includes attaching booby traps to or associating them with items like medical facilities, children's toys, food or drink, religious objects, and cultural heritage sites.
Indiscriminate Harm: The use of booby traps in a manner that does not discriminate between combatants and civilians is prohibited. This means they cannot be used in ways that would cause harm to civilians or civilian objects indiscriminately.
Unnecessary Suffering: Booby traps must not be designed or used in a way that causes superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering to combatants.
This is out of hand, how much more can pressure is going to be brought to bear before the whole thing explodes? More than anything, this convinces me how weak the US is right now. This isn't going to end well. Vote this November like your life depends on it....
Israeli device attacks will do more than BDS ever could to inspire corporate boycotts.