If they were surgical then why did innocent civilians and children get hurt? What kind of surgeons are you used to and what on earth is their level of success?
Meanwhile, Lebanon is still firing rockets at Israel. The only reason that not more Israeli civilians are dead is because of the Iron Dome
Why is Israel getting attacked by Hezbollah? (It's not Lebanon attacking Israel.)
I'd say it was closer to a surgeon than to most recent Isreali actions, but you're right, "surgical" is always a propaganda term in military contexts. There is no clean war, only relatively less dirty.
Customary international humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby traps – objects that civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use – precisely to avoid putting civilians at grave risk
both in absolute terms and especially compared to continuing airstrikes, some with ai-cooked target list and including actual warcrime tactics, pagers were basically spotless in terms of targeting. the more likely illegal part was in booby-trapping pagers in the first place. westpoint lawyer take on the situation https://lieber.westpoint.edu/exploding-pagers-law/