Some are cheering Israel’s strike at Hezbollah as innovative and instructive. Others aren’t.
How Israel Built a Modern-Day Trojan Horse
The New York Times reports How Israel Built a Modern-Day Trojan Horse: Exploding Pagers That is a free link to the full article.
The Israeli government did not tamper with the Hezbollah devices that exploded, defense and intelligence officials say. It manufactured them as part of an elaborate ruse.
The pagers began beeping just after 3:30 in the afternoon in Lebanon on Tuesday, alerting Hezbollah operatives to a message from their leadership in a chorus of chimes, melodies, and buzzes.
But it wasn’t the militants’ leaders. The pagers had been sent by Hezbollah’s archenemy, and within seconds the alerts were followed by the sounds of explosions and cries of pain and panic in streets, shops and homes across Lebanon.
Mohammed Awada, 52, and his son were driving by one man whose pager exploded, he said. “My son went crazy and started to scream when he saw the man’s hand flying away from him,” he said.
By the end of the day, at least a dozen people were dead and more than 2,700 were wounded, many of them maimed. And the following day, 20 more people were killed and hundreds wounded when walkie-talkies in Lebanon also began mysteriously exploding. Some of the dead and wounded were Hezbollah members, but others were not; four of the dead were children.
The booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies were the latest salvo in the decades-long conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which is based across the border in Lebanon. The tensions escalated after the war began in the Gaza Strip.
In Lebanon, as Israel picked off senior Hezbollah commandos with targeted assassinations, their leader came to a conclusion: If Israel was going high-tech, Hezbollah would go low. It was clear, a distressed Hezbollah chief, Hassan Nasrallah, said, that Israel was using cellphone networks to pinpoint the locations of his operatives.
Even before Mr. Nasrallah decided to expand pager usage, Israel had put into motion a plan to establish a shell company that would pose as an international pager producer.
B.A.C. did take on ordinary clients, for which it produced a range of ordinary pagers. But the only client that really mattered was Hezbollah, and its pagers were far from ordinary. Produced separately, they contained batteries laced with the explosive PETN, according to the three intelligence officers.
Not only did Mr. Nasrallah ban cellphones from meetings of Hezbollah operatives, he ordered that the details of Hezbollah movements and plans never be communicated over cellphones, said three intelligence officials. Hezbollah officers, he ordered, had to carry pagers at all times, and in the event of war, pagers would be used to tell fighters where to go.
Over the summer, shipments of the pagers to Lebanon increased, with thousands arriving in the country and being distributed among Hezbollah officers and their allies, according to two American intelligence officials.
To Hezbollah, they were a defensive measure, but in Israel, intelligence officers referred to the pagers as “buttons” that could be pushed when the time seemed ripe.
That moment, it appears, came this week.
On Tuesday, the order was given to activate the pagers.
To set off the explosions, according to three intelligence and defense officials, Israel triggered the pagers to beep and sent a message to them in Arabic that appeared as though it had come from Hezbollah’s senior leadership.
Seconds later, Lebanon was in chaos.
For the Lebanese, the second wave of explosions was confirmation of the lesson from the day before: They now live in a world in which the most common of communication devices can be transformed into instruments of death.
One woman, Um Ibrahim, stopped a reporter in the middle of the confusion and begged to use a cellphone to call her children. Her hands shaking, she dialed a number and then screamed a directive:
“Turn off your phones now!”
Why Are Hezbollah’s Pagers Off-Limits?
The Wall Street Journal defends exploding pagers in its editorial Why Are Hezbollah’s Pagers Off-Limits?
After Israel pulled off a covert operation against Hezbollah that ranks with the Trojan horse, the terrorist group’s apologists are crying foul. For too many in positions of influence, Israel simply isn’t allowed to fight back.
Do these people think the Lebanese communicate via pager and walkie-talkie? Israel didn’t tamper with civilian objects like smartphones or any device you might pick up at a Lebanese RadioShack. It sabotaged Hezbollah’s secure military communications.
The U.N.’s “alarm” is highly selective; Hezbollah’s takeover of southern Lebanon and daily attacks on Israel don’t trigger it. International bureaucrats reward the Iranian proxy group’s terrorism by creating new rules for Israel—and maybe next time for America.
Israel-haters set an impossible standard in Gaza, where Hamas fights from schools and hospitals. But even when Israel meets that standard, as now in Lebanon, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says, “This attack clearly and unequivocally violates international humanitarian law.” She cried when funding passed for Israel’s Iron Dome that shoots down Hezbollah’s indiscriminate rocket attacks.
Who Else Still Uses Pagers?
The Wall Street Journal Explains
Pagers have declined in popularity but are still widely used in the healthcare industry. Hospitals and doctors continue to use them to relay urgent messages, from summoning surgeons in an emergency to deploying staff and supplies where they are needed.
The technology has lost ground to cellphones, but pagers persist in healthcare because beepers can reach workers in cellular dead zones and have long-lasting batteries, said Eric Martinuzzi, a senior research analyst for Lake Street Capital Markets.
Roughly 2,200 U.S. hospitals still use the technology, according to Spok, a major seller of the devices, based in Plano, Texas. And as of June, the company had roughly 747,000 pagers in use across the U.S. and Australia, said Vince Kelly, Spok’s chief executive. The devices are manufactured exclusively for the company, he said.
Escalating the war in the Middle East
Eurointelligence has a more sobering take in its article Escalating the war in the Middle East
The chances of an escalating war in the Middle East increased dramatically this week. A series of exploding pagers and walkie-talkies targeted Hezbollah members throughout Lebanon. The scale of the operation and its impact on the civilian population is unprecedented too. The message it sends to Hezbollah and its people is that wherever you are, we will find you. Officially, these two consecutive attacks killed 32 and injured 3150, though the real numbers are likely to be much higher. According to Al-Monitor, Israel planned this pager attack as part of a full blown war, but the action was expedited as two Hezbollah members got suspicious about the pagers.
The question is not whether but how the conflict will escalate. Hezbollah sees no choice but to retaliate. Iran is potentially getting involved too. The series of events can then be used by Israel to pull the US on its side in this all out war. Which country is next? Yemen? And who is going to finance this? Could Iran not count on the Russians to help them out in return for their weapons delivery? There are potential world war III scenarios.
What happened in Lebanon would fall under common western definitions into the category of terrorism – not war. Whatever you call it, it will trigger further radicalisation. If Israel aims to kill every Hezbollah member, what do Hezbollah members have to lose other than their choice of how to die? Hezbollah already threatens a return of suicide bombers. How does Israel count on making the country safe for its population if it radicalizes those living around them?
International diplomacy was short-circuited by this pager attack. The US said they were not informed. And it comes after Europe and the US urged Iran and Hezbollah for restraint in their response in response to Israel killing two senior leaders in Tehran and Lebanon. This week’s attack makes a mockery of European diplomacy. Israel creates facts and the world follows suit.
It is not even clear what Israel’s goal is. Hamas is not finished in Gaza. They are just about to recruit the next generation of fighters. Now the focus shifts to the borders with Lebanon in the north, testing Israel’s deterrence capacity and the loyalty of its allies.
How long can Arab leaders keep on holding out a promise of normalization with Israel, if it keeps on creating havoc in Muslim communities? Israel is playing out its formidable technological superiority. But as the 7 October terrorist attack reminded everyone, even the most advanced technology can fail in crucial moments. It should have been a lesson to reflect on.
Three Key Questions
- If Israel aims to kill every Hezbollah member, what do Hezbollah members have to lose other than their choice of how to die?
- How does Israel count on making the country safe for its population if it radicalizes those living around them?
- How long can Arab leaders keep on holding out a promise of normalization with Israel, if it keeps on creating havoc in Muslim communities?
The War Must Go On
Biden promised for months that a cease fire agreement was close. Biden never really made it to the ballpark. And all peace initiatives are now dead on arrival.
On Thursday, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said the Kingdom wouldn’t recognize Israel without a Palestinian state.
Take a look at the lead image and the first of the three key questions. How many more Lebanese did this attack radicalize?
No matter what your take on this issue of exploding pagers, the war must go on.