More information about Israel’s pager etc. attack against Hezbollah has come to light, and it appears Israel didn’t intercept and adulterate the supply chain, it was the supply chain.
Israel has injured thousands across Lebanon, with hundreds in critical condition and dozens more dead, this week in two waves of simultaneous explosions of electronic communications equipment targeting Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists.
The blasts — which may have killed 19 and wounded 150 of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members — started on Tuesday afternoon around 3:30 p.m. local time when pagers used by Hezbollah started beeping with a message from their leadership.
After a few beeps, the pagers simultaneously exploded across the country, blinding hundreds, tearing off limbs, and leaving gaping holes in bodies.
The messages that the devices received were not from Hezbollah leadership; they were from Israel’s intelligence and military apparatus, and they were part of a multi-year plan.
There was initial confusion as to what happened when the explosions were reported. Various news reports said that malware had potentially been uploaded to the devices, causing the batteries to overheat and explode. Then reports surfaced claiming a small amount of highly explosive material had been placed into each device after Israel intercepted the devices after they were manufactured by a Taiwanese company.
However, none of those reports were accurate, according to a New York Times report that revealed that Israel never intercepted the pagers — it made them.
Hezbollah has forced tens of thousands of Israelis to evacuate their homes in northern Israel since October 7 as the terrorist group fires drones, rockets, and missiles on a regular basis — having fired many thousands in nearly 12 months.
Israel has responded with precision strikes, killing more than 300 top Hezbollah commanders and numerous lower-level terrorists.
Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah pushed for the terrorists to abandon their phones and switch to low-tech pagers to avoid being tracked by Israel. Nasrallah had bragged that his strategy would “blind” Israel.
However, unbeknownst to Hezbollah, Israel had been secretly manufacturing the pagers that Hezbollah was buying for years.
The Taiwanese company Gold Apollo had contracted with a company called B.A.C. Consulting in Hungary to manufacture the pagers. B.A.C. Consulting was one of three shell companies that Israel created to mask the true manufacturer of the communications equipment: Israeli intelligence.
B.A.C. Consulting created real pagers for numerous customers to create the perception of a legitimate company in order to get picked up for the contract to produce the pagers for Hezbollah.
The pagers manufactured for Hezbollah were separate from those made for other clients, the report said. The pagers that Hezbollah received “contained batteries laced with the explosive PETN” and began shipping in 2022, the report said.
One of my objections to the “planted explosives” idea was that there was no way for explosives in the battery compartment to access the antenna circuitry to receive the detonation signal, but if Israel designed the pagers from the ground up to go boom then obviously that’s not a problem.
After the first round of explosions on Tuesday, Israel struck again on Wednesday, detonating Hezbollah’s backup communications equipment: walkie-talkies.
The explosions from the walkie-talkies were significantly larger than the explosions from the pagers because the devices were larger, meaning they could be packed with more explosive material. Videos posted online showed entire apartment units blown out and numerous cars engulfed in flames.
My other objection was that Israel would be better off gathering intel from the pagers than making them go boom, but if they manufactured them, they probably have all the intel they need on locations of leadership, warehouses, weapons, etc. It looks like Israel was the one that blinded Hezbollah, not the reverse.
It may also explain why Israel hasn’t assassinated Nasrallah yet: Because he’s evidently an idiot.
There’s been much speculation that with Hezbollah’s communications so compromised, Israel will now move decisively against them. And indeed, right now Israel is pounding the snot out of locations in southern Lebanon.
Plus Israeli F-15s are evidently flying over Beirut with evident impunity. (Lebanon couldn’t take down Israeli aircraft during the Lebanon War in 2006 either, mainly because they’re using old Soviet crap.)
A lot of MSM commentators have shrieked over and over again during the Israel-Hamas War that Israel was in trouble because they would face a two-front war when Hezbollah really got involved. That didn’t happen. Instead, Israel settled Hamas’ hash in Gaza (where it’s now mopping up), then hit a whole lot of militant factions on the West Bank (an under-reported story), all the while withstanding pinprick strikes from the Mullahs and their proxies while carrying out varied strikes in Syria and Iran.
Having accomplished all that, Israel seems to be moving decisively against Hezbollah. Now Israel is poised to enter a two-front war, but only on its own terms, not Hezbollah’s. It’s almost like Israel had its own Schlieffen Plan to defeat each of its enemies in turn before turning to the next, only competently executed. But with Hezbollah so disorganized, it may not even feel the need to launch a ground incursion into Lebanon.
The end result of the war Hamas’ terrorist atrocity started will be that Israel will be stronger and its borders more secure, all Israel’s terrorist enemies will be destroyed or weaker, and Iran will be shown, yet again, as a very weak horse using incompetent proxies.
Now, as a bonus, here’s a Habitual Linecrosser video on the subject.
Edited to add: “Hezbollah Starting To Think They Shouldn’t Have Gotten Pagers From Levi Goldbraumstein’s Pager Emporium.”
Tags: B.A.C. Consulting, Beirut, Benjamin Netanyahu, F-15, Gold Apollo, Habitual Linecrosser, hacking, Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah, Iran, Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Israel-Hamas War, Jihad, Lebanon, Military, Mossad, Operation Grim Beeper, technology, video
It’d be really bad tradecraft for them to let the details of how they pulled this off get out, sooooo… I’d suspect anything I heard until the responsible parties are writing their “tell-all” autobiographies decades hence. And, even then? I’d be hesitant to take those stories to the bank.
This is such a huge multi-layer attack on Hezbollah that it’s not even funny. At the beginning, the Israelis attacked the smart phone, convinced the guy running Hezbollah (who is probably very much not a tech guy…) that they were dangerous and needed something like the pagers, which they then happened to have for sale… Along with all the other crap like the walkie-talkies, computers, and other items that have recently gone “BOOM”.
They’re probably sowing distrust among the surviving Hezbollah types by telling them things like the pagers were meant to serve as suicide devices to punish traitors and anything else that the intel guys can come up with. If I were running the Israeli effort, I’d have deliberately left some of the targets out of the loop, and then quietly let it be known in later months/years that anyone who had a pager and survived unharmed…? Was an Israeli agent.
The real value here is likely going to be all the fallout. Convince enough of the survivors to go on a massive witch-hunt for traitors…? LOL. I lay you long odds that Hezbollah is going to be crippled for years to come, and not just because of the first-order effects we’re starting to see right now. It’ll be ‘effing epic, if the guys and girls at Mossad can start spinning the rumor control mill with the Hezbollah types. Which, I must point out, they’re ripe for: I mean, anyone who believes that women’s hair emits mind-control rays that drive men to commit sex crimes…? Yeah. It ain’t like it’d be that hard.
One of the major advantages anyone has fighting Arabs is that they’re simultaneously both very credulous and highly superstitious. We had Iraqis convinced that our guys were out standing guard in the summertime in full body armor, and it was because they had personal air conditioning units in their armor that they wouldn’t share with Iraqi soldiers, and which only worked for Americans… Nothing would convince them otherwise. Mind-boggling.
I had always wondered why Israel never went after Nasrallah. Israel needs to go in and destroy/ capture / compromise Hezb missiles, facilities, bank accounts etc while Hezb is in disarray.
FAFO.
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Candygram for Mongo!
Habitual Linecrosser is a highly reliable source of laughs.
Israel has injured thousands across Lebanon, with hundreds in critical condition and dozens more dead
What a garbage lead from the Daily Wire. How about
In retaliation for Hezbollah’s child murdering rocket attack, Israel struck back this week, injuring thousands of Hezbollah terrorists across Lebanon, with hundreds in critical condition and dozens more dead
So, to wrap up (and I’m willing to believe that Israel did manufacture the pagers. Letting that be known once the op is done is not a huge loss, because the bad guys would have followed the chain back now that things went boom)
Israel made the pagers. Which means they know at least roughly where every single pager was at any given point in time, every page it received, every one it sent. They must have wet themselves with the treasure trove Hezballess dropped in their laps
Nasrallah sounds rather “active stupid” to me. Which means that Israel is in a win-win here. If he stays in charge, he keeps on making bad choices. If his idiocy has pissed off people enough, then Hezballess will have conflict, and perhaps a nice little civil war, to get rid of him
Or perhaps Iran will kill him for the IRG people injured /killed.
One hopes that the peopel who pulled this off get a raise / promotion for it
John F. MacMichael didn’t put it strongly enough, so I will:
the Habitual Linecrosser video is freaking AWESOME!
Just don’t watch it at work.
You mentioned twice your thought that ‘If Israel was able to (intercept-and-mod OR outright-manufacture) the percussive pagers, they would be far better served having the pagers send Intel instead’
I say why couldn’t they have just done BOTH? Once the compromised party starts to suspect, or at a time when Israel decides it wants that second reward, send the mass 7734 page. Boom.
Or, Intel Outside, then boom inside.
oh and a big thumbs up to the poster with the ‘set-us-up-the-bomb’ comment in the last blog post.
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