Pager Terror Attacks

It is generally accepted that #Israel is to blame for a mass terrorist attack that injured more than 2900 people in #Lebanon.

Israel carried out a #pager #bomb #attack that left roughly 2,800 people injured and 12 dead in #Lebanon and #Syria yesterday fearing that #Hezbollah was on the cusp of foiling their deadly plot, a new report has claimed.

Pager devices recently introduced by the group to beef up security exploded en masse yesterday, causing chaotic scenes and devastation in Lebanese hospitals. Israel is believed to have orchestrated the attack but has not claimed responsibility. Security sources believe Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, intercepted devices en route to Lebanon months ago and attached explosives to be used when needed to cripple the Iranian proxy group.

Still, questions remain as to why the attack was carried out on Tuesday. One American official told Axios it was ‘a use it or lose it moment’ as Hezbollah were understood to be getting close to uncovering Israeli espionage.

Three US officials told Axios that Israel decided to blow up the pager devices carried by Hezbollah members on Tuesday as they feared the group was close to uncovering their operation.

A security source told Reuters that up to three grams of explosives had been hidden in the new pagers and had gone ‘undetected’ by Hezbollah for months.

One senior Lebanese security source told the news agency he believes the devices had been modified by Mossad ‘at the production level’ before arriving in Lebanon. ‘The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code. It’s very hard to detect it through any means,’ the source said.

Hezbollah earlier this year ordered thousands of pagers to conduct communications after leader Hassan Nasrallah declared smartphones would be more susceptible to cyber attacks by Israeli forces. As many as 5,000 devices are believed to have affected, though not all went off on Tuesday, according to the Lebanese source. The source claimed Hezbollah ordered the pagers from a Taiwanese company called Gold Apollo, but executives there said the devices were actually manufactured and sold under licence by BAC Consulting in Budapest, Hungary.

Elijah J. Magnier, a Brussels-based senior political risk analyst, later said he spoke with Hezbollah members who had examined pagers that failed to explode. The pagers appeared to receive a coded error message sent to all the devices that caused them to vibrate and beep for some 10 seconds. When the user pressed the pager’s button to cancel the alert, the explosives were detonated – a design that would ensure the pager was being held by the user at the time of the blast to inflict maximum damage.

The months-long operation by Mossad and the IDF represents an unprecedented security breach for Hezbollah, which vowed to exact revenge on Israel and continue its support for ally Hamas amid the ongoing war in Gaza.

First, this was obviously an own goal by Israel, which doesn’t seem to grasp that it is already considered to be a #genocidal #terrorist #state by most of the world now due to the #Gazacaust. The obvious probability of collateral damage, the trivial amount of military damage that could potentially be inflicted, and the indifference to civilian casualties make it a clear and obvious act of #terrorism. There is no way this is going to improve the diplomatic crisis that Israel presently faces.

Second, there are three major implications in the Unintended Consequences department. One, who in their right minds is going to buy any #Israeli #technological #product now or in the future? For all my opposition to anti-boycott laws and policies in the #USA, I don’t follow the #BDS movement and I’ve never had any issue with Israeli products in the past, but there is no chance I will ever buy or utilize any Israeli product that is capable of containing explosives in the future, and I very much doubt I am alone in this.

Two, Hezbollah’s leadership already wanted its fighters to stop using mobile phones. This mass attack on pagers has underlined the wisdom of the leadership’s position and will further reduce the likelihood that Hezbollah’s fighters will violate operational security.

And three, this should put a nail in the coffin of #transhumanism. Only morons are going to put a chip in their hand, or in their head, in the knowledge that there is a genuine possibility that someone will have the ability to make it explode? It may even have a negative effect on device and smart phone sales over time, particularly if it is ever repeated.

These attacks were moderately successful. But they strike me as very ill-conceived and essentially non-military in conception. They are the sort of thing that Smart Boys in #intelligence always concoct because they think it would be cool and clever, not the kind of operation that is conducive to actually winning wars.

UPDATE: Israel doubled down on its exploding device attacks:

Thousands of walkie talkies used by Hezbollah fighters have detonated across Lebanon, killing nine and wounding hundreds of people including mourners at a funeral, witnesses and security sources have reported. The second wave of carnage comes a day after thousands of exploding pagers used by the group left almost 3,000 people injured and a dozen dead, including civilians and children. Lebanese media has also reported that home solar energy systems have blown up in several areas of #Beirut. The latest explosions this afternoon have hit the country’s south and the capital Beirut, where dramatic time-lapse video shows multiple plumes of smoke rising above the skyline in different locations almost simultaneously.

This really doesn’t bode well for devices such as the #iPhone that don’t permit users to change their own batteries. How can you trust that there isn’t an ounce or two of high-explosive attached to your battery if it’s in a sealed-off department?

It’s certainly an object lesson in “build your own communications equipment” for everyone around the world.

Israel unleashed pager attack earlier than expected in 'use it or lose it moment' amid fears...

Security sources believe Mossad intercepted devices en route to Lebanon months ago and attached explosives to be used to cripple the Iranian proxy group

^{David Averre (Daily Mail)}