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The Military News

How Mossad Planned Its Exploding Pager Operation: Inside Israel's Penetration of Hezbollah (msn.com) 402

The Washington Post interviewed Lebanese officials, people close to Hezbollah, and Israeli, Arab and U.S. security officials and politicians about a years-long plan (originated at Mossad headquarters) that ultimately killed or maimed "as many as 3,000 Hezbollah officers and members — most of them rear-echelon figures... along with an unknown number of civilians... when Israel's Mossad intelligence service triggered the devices remotely on September 17." In the initial sales pitch to Hezbollah two years ago, the new line of Apollo pagers seemed precisely suited to the needs of a militia group with a sprawling network of fighters and a hard-earned reputation for paranoia... Best of all, there was no risk that the pagers could ever be tracked by Israel's intelligence services. Hezbollah's leaders were so impressed they bought 5,000 of them and began handing them out to mid-level fighters and support personnel in February. None of the users suspected they were wearing an ingeniously crafted Israeli bomb...

Israeli officials had watched with increasing anxiety as the Lebanese group added new weapons to an arsenal already capable of striking Israeli cities with tens of thousands of precision-guided missiles. Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service responsible for combating foreign threats to the Jewish state, had worked for years to penetrate the group with electronic monitoring and human informants. Over time, Hezbollah leaders learned to worry about the group's vulnerability to Israeli surveillance and hacking, fearing that even ordinary cellphones could be turned into Israeli-controlled eavesdropping and tracking devices. Thus was born the idea of creating a kind of communications Trojan horse, the officials said. Hezbollah was looking for hack-proof electronic networks for relaying messages, and Mossad came up with a pair of ruses that would lead the militia group to purchase devices that seemed perfect for the job — equipment that Mossad designed and had assembled in Israel.

The first part of the plan, booby-trapped walkie-talkies, began being inserted into Lebanon by Mossad nearly a decade ago, in 2015. The mobile two-way radios contained oversized battery packs, a hidden explosive and a transmission system that gave Israel complete access to Hezbollah communications. For nine years, the Israelis contented themselves with eavesdropping on Hezbollah, the officials said, while reserving the option to turn the walkie-talkies into bombs in a future crisis. But then came a new opportunity and a glitzy new product: a small pager equipped with a powerful explosive. In an irony that would not become clear for many months, Hezbollah would end up indirectly paying the Israelis for the tiny bombs that would kill or wound many of its operatives.

Because Hezbollah leaders were alert to possible sabotage, the pagers could not originate in Israel, the United States or any other Israeli ally. So, in 2023, the group began receiving solicitations for the bulk purchase of Taiwanese-branded Apollo pagers, a well-recognized trademark and product line with a worldwide distribution and no discernible links to Israeli or Jewish interests. The Taiwanese company had no knowledge of the plan, officials said... The marketing official had no knowledge of the operation and was unaware that the pagers were physically assembled in Israel under Mossad oversight, officials said... In a feat of engineering, the bomb component was so carefully hidden as to be virtually undetectable, even if the device was taken apart, the officials said. Israeli officials believe that Hezbollah did disassemble some of the pagers and may have even X-rayed them.

"Thousands of Apollo-branded pagers rang or vibrated at once, all across Lebanon and Syria," according to the article, with a short sentence in Arabic that said "You received an encrypted message." The two-button de-encryption procedure "ensured most users would be holding the pager with both hands when it detonated," according to the article, although "Less than a minute later, thousands of other pagers exploded by remote command, regardless of whether the user ever touched his device. The following day, on September 18, hundreds of walkie-talkies blew up in the same way, killing and maiming users and bystanders..."

"As Hezbollah reeled, Israel struck again, pounding the group's headquarters, arsenals and logistic centers with 2,000-pound bombs," the article concludes. And the strike "convinced the country's political leaders that Hezbollah could be put on the ropes, susceptible to a systematic dismantling using airstrikes and, eventually a ground invasion..."
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How Mossad Planned Its Exploding Pager Operation: Inside Israel's Penetration of Hezbollah

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  • LOL (Score:5, Insightful)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Saturday October 05, 2024 @06:12PM (#64842679)

    So they carried something that stands out and used an organization specific device? Bad idea. Never have the same supplier. Also, don't get Israel as an enemy. Have to wonder if Iran is infiltrated to this level too .. they probably have more knowledge and disruption capability of Iran than that ayatollah dude himself. Wouldn't be surprised if their entire nuclear program is compromised. If only South Korea was as on the ball, diabetes patient in North Korea would be under control.

  • "Boom. Big bada boom"

    "Multipass" (to the afterlife)

  • to continue the cycle of violence, now the surviving members of Hezbollah will want revenge, and the USA will be shocked again into forking over billions of dollars, then israel will bomb, then Hezbollah will fire rockets, this shit will continue back & forth forever long after were all gone from this earth, the great grandchildren of israel and iran will still be trying to kill eachother, what a tragedy of epic proportions
    • Been that way before most here were even born.

      • Goes back all the way to almost 2500 years. So nothing new here. This is normal for that region on earth. Just watch the show, since you have already paid for it.

    • by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Saturday October 05, 2024 @06:41PM (#64842735)

      False. Most Iranians actually like Israel and hate their own rulers. They can't do anything about it because the regime is ruthless and kills anyone they perceive as a threat. Everytime they organize protests there are executions/torture. Organized revolt is impossible, the regime is too powerful because there is a percent of Iran that supports the regime. Also the regime has enough spies and informants to prevent any organized opposition.

      • False. Most Iranians actually like Israel and hate their own rulers.

        *Citation needed.

        • I don't know about individual people, but one thing I think you don't understand is that virtually nobody in the middle east wants a Palestinian state. The only one besides Palestine itself that has expressed any desire towards this end is in fact Israel. Iran, Lebanon, and Syria in particular do not give one fuck about Palestinians.

          Tall al-Za‘tar, the big Palestinian refugee camp in East Beirut, was besieged by Lebanese forces and reduced to rubble in the early days of the Lebanese civil war in 1975. And just three years after the Shatila massacre, in 1985, something started called the “War of the Camps.” That was Lebanese Shia, backed by Syria and Iran, laying siege to the Shatila and Bourj el-Barajneh camps for almost three years with untold numbers of dead and wounded among the Palestinians. And the irony there of course is when you fast forward to today and the supposed Iranian support for Hamas and the Palestinian cause generally — well, not so much. It is a marriage of convenience. All part of Iran’s larger strategy of exporting force beyond its borders with allies and proxies. We in the West do not remember the War of the Camps, but I assure you that the Iranians and Palestinians do. They understand there is no love in Tehran on the part of Ayatollahs for the Palestinians or their cause.

          ...

          The last thing the Arab states, particularly those around Palestine and Israel, wanted to see was an independent Palestinian movement, let alone a state.

          ...

          The Nakba of 1948 shook the legitimacy of Arab regimes. Seven Arab states declared war on the Zionists — and were decisively routed. Arab leaders feared the consequences of their failure in Palestine, both from elements within their own societies and from Palestinians themselves. But the fact that [Palestine Liberation Army] units were under the command of the Arab armies allowed them to keep control of Palestinian arms until the Six Day War. The 1967 war brought two dramatic changes: It ended dreams of the conquest of Israel by force of arms, and it gave rise to the PLO as a somewhat independent force. These combined to shift the fight for Palestinian control of territory to the Arab lands themselves — Lebanon in 1969 and Jordan in 1970.

          That is what led to Black September, the 1970 PLO effort to overthrow the Jordanian monarchy. That failed not just because of the prowess of the Jordanian military but also because the Syrians withheld the air support for the Palestinians they had promised, and that allowed the Jordanians to win the day. That Syrian air force was under command of a general named Hafez al-Assad [later ruler of Syria], whose hatred and fear of all things Palestinian was intense.

          That was one of the many ironies of the Israeli invasion in 1982, in that Israel did serious work for Syria in dismantling the PLO structures in Lebanon and forcing the PLO to evacuate from Beirut.

          https://www.politico.com/news/... [politico.com]

          This is not, and never was about "liberating" Palestine. It is and always was about one thing, and one thing only. IMO you should stick to wors

        • by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Saturday October 05, 2024 @09:25PM (#64843065)

          Well Reza Pahlavi has more followers on X in comparison to Khamenei. And notice also that Reza’s posts are in Farsi so we can surmise that most of his followers are Persian. And by the way the way Iranians are following him at risk to themselves and families in Iran.
          Here’s a link with analysis: https://iranian-studies.stanfo... [stanford.edu]

          Other evidence: Iranians always vote for the least radical candidate when given a chance. Here’s what people in Iran are like:
          https://youtu.be/dFhj30lAFTk [youtu.be]
          https://youtu.be/s2bUgICvCQs [youtu.be]

        • Here’s another citation in addition to the ones in my other reply. https://youtu.be/o73NnqX8hYM [youtu.be]

      • by dskoll ( 99328 )

        I don't know about most Iranians, but every Persian I've met here in Canada hates the Islamic regime and is quite fond of Israel. The most pro-Israel person I know, who cheers on Netanyahu, is a Persian friend.

        When you've lived under Islamic repression in what used to be a forward-looking and cultured society, you get pissed off.

      • Iran has been trying to moderate & modernize since America forced the Shah on them. The reason they became a theocratic hellscape is that the churches were the only place you could talk freely w/o the Shah's goons watching you, so it was their that revolution fomented, resulting in a theocracy.

        We were well on our way to getting Iran out of it's shell under Obama... and then we pissed away 20 years of careful foreign policy with one bad president (no prizes for guessing which one).

        Ask yourself wh
        • The Shah wasn't ideal, but the Iranian people will take his son Reza back as interim leader to sort out the mess. The only thing is I feel like he'll be too milquetoast/weak against the religious psychos. They need someone really tough who will do a serious clerical purge the likes of which the world has never seen before (and yes I've heard of the French Reign of Terror, Chinese Cultural Revolution, Ataturk's reforms (which were clearly super-weak), and Russian Civil War).

    • by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Saturday October 05, 2024 @06:46PM (#64842749)

      >Israel is just creating more enemies to continue the cycle of violence

      Sure. But if it wasn't a cycle it'd be line - Hezbollah killing Jews without anything to slow them down.

    • If you want it to stop all you have to do is convince Israel's neighbors to stop attacking them. The day that happens Israel will stop.

  • by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Saturday October 05, 2024 @06:48PM (#64842753)

    Hezbollah kills indiscriminately. Mossad targeted Hezbollah members.

    If they're going to kill each other, I know which group's tactics I can support.

    • How many civilians has Hezbollah killed in the last year? How many civilians has Israel killed?
      • by lsllll ( 830002 )

        Save your breath. The OP probably watches FOX News. It doesn't even matter that the whole international community is protesting the indiscriminate killing of civilians and that international courts are passing genocide judgement.

      • by dskoll ( 99328 )

        That's the wrong question. The question is the ratio of civilians to combatants, because in absolute numbers, of course Israel has killed more because they have a much more powerful military.

        In terms of ratio, Hezbollah is worse. The 12 Druze kids they killed were not anywhere near a military target.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by lsllll ( 830002 )

          The question is the ratio of civilians to combatants

          Are you serious? The whole world is complaining about Israel's indiscriminate killing of civilians. Of the over 40000 killed in Gaza, most were women and children [un.org]. Lebanon is just starting and over 2000 civilians have already died (not counting pager and walkie-talkie deaths). Are you going to stick to that line?

      • How many civilians has Hezbollah killed in the last year?

        They tried to kill hundreds of thousands. Random rocket attacks will do that, they fire several thousand a year. They only need to get lucky once, if someone was firing rockets at city you lived in would you want that to stop or nah?

        How many civilians has Israel killed?

        Zero with the pager attack, brilliant.

        P.S. Fuck Nazis.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      I know which group's tactics I can support.

      yeah, the genocidal one's, you have made that very clear many times.

    • Know what? You don't have to choose sides. You can choose not to support any of them.

      • Yes, one can. But I believe it's good and appropriate to stand with those who are indiscriminately attacked just because they exist. The Jews were given a piece of land in the Middle East after the Germans and the Ottomans tried to annihilate them in WWI and WWII. The Palestinians have been trying to drive out the Jews ever since. THAT is genocide.

    • What a load of shit. Israel has slaughtered more Palestinian women and children than Hamas members by a factor of 20. Are you stupid, or just a victim of US propaganda?

  • by systemd-anonymousd ( 6652324 ) on Saturday October 05, 2024 @08:00PM (#64842881)

    >American diplomats had been pressing Nasrallah to agree to a separate cease-fire with Israel, without links to the fighting in Gaza, hoping for a deal that could lead to the withdrawal of Hezbollah fighters from the southern Lebanese bases that threatened Israeli citizens in communities near the border.

    >Senior Israeli officials said they voiced support for the cease-fire proposal, but Nasrallah withheld his consent, insisting on a cease-fire for Gaza first, U.S. and Middle Eastern officials said. Some senior political and military officials in Israel remained deeply uncertain about targeting Nasrallah, fearing the fallout in the region.

    >On Sept. 17, even as the debate in Israel’s highest national security circles about whether to strike the Hezbollah leader raged on, thousands of Apollo-branded pagers rang or vibrated at once, all across Lebanon and Syria. A short sentence in Arabic appeared on the screen: “You received an encrypted message,” it said. ...

    > “We will not accept a terror army perched on our northern border, able to perpetrate another Oct. 7-style massacre,” Netanyahu said in the speech [after the explosions].

    So let me get this straight...they were engaged in peace negotiations that would withdraw the troops that Israel objected to, under the condition they stop attacking Gaza, and to make sure those talks failed they detonated the devices and assassinated the guy, Nasrallah, who was negotiating for peace?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      they were engaged in peace negotiations that would withdraw the troops that Israel objected to

      You are assuming that Netanyahu wants peace. He, or more precisely his right wing supporters, want Gaza and a big chunk of southern Lebanon. Cleared of existing occupants first, of course. Hamas/Hezbollah are no match for Israel. So as long as Bibi can keep shaking the tiger cage and eliciting the appropriate response, he can just point and say to US negotiators, "See? I told you so."

      Anyone that successfully negotiates peace with Palestine will end up like Yitzhak Rabin. Bibi isn't that stupid.

      • Considering he ordered the operation in the midst of peace talks, I'd already agree that no, he doesn't want peace, and any statements to that effect are contradicted by his attack.

      • by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Saturday October 05, 2024 @11:22PM (#64843291)

        Anyone that successfully negotiates peace with Palestine will end up like Yitzhak Rabin. Bibi isn't that stupid.

        It's not even that.

        First thing to remember is that if Bibi left power tomorrow his corruption trial would resume and he'd go to jail. So his only hope of staying out of jail is staying in power until he can give himself immunity.

        Second thing to remember is that Bibi is largely responsible for the Oct 7th attack. Not only did he ensure Hamas stayed in power by helping Qatar funnel money into Gaza, but in the months leading up to the attack he increased tensions by increasing the rate of settlement expansion, then he diverted troops from Gaza to the West Bank to put down the unrest, he literally let Israel's guard down.

        His only hope of staying in power and out of jail is to keep the wars going until folks forget about his culpability for Gaza. Bonus points if he can stir up a bigger mess and help get Trump back in office.

    • by Entrope ( 68843 )

      No. Nasrallah wanted to protect Hamas. He didn't want peace, as your quote makes clear. He was stalling for time and refusing to advance negotiations so that his minions could continue to fire rockets into Israel, like the one that killed a dozen Druze children at a soccer field.

    • During these so called peace negotiations, did Hezbollah stop launching the missiles they've been launching at the Israeli civilian population for nearly a year, from positions they're not supposed to be in per the last peace agreement?
      There is always going to be communication between two sides in a conflict, that doesn't mean one side is obliged to stop unilaterally in hopes of something coming from the other side.
      Just a few days ago a representative of the Iranian government visited Lebanon and said the l

  • ...don't be so quick to drink that glass of wine. Especially when the wine seller happens to have the kind of wine you like.
  • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday October 06, 2024 @12:10AM (#64843333)

    I mean, suddenly a device that meets all your needs and then you do not even open one and have a look at the design when you buy 5000? I would do that just to see how far I can rely on it. And the Walkie-Talkies are supposedly being used for 9 years and nobody noticed something was off when some inevitable broke and were opened to try to repair them? Even if the explosives were hidden in the batteries, weight might have been off, and capacity must have been rather badly off. This is stuff you can verify with a kitchen-scale, a $20 multimeter, the Internet and a few hours of time.

    Somehow I think this is just the propaganda story the Mossad wants us to believe. If Hezbollah were this terminally stupid, they would have stopped to exist a while ago. On the other hand, there are examples of large organizations being _this_ stupid and worse and surviving long-term, and these are religious fanatics so a lot dumber on average than even ordinary people and generally highly arrogant. So I really do not know what to think here.

    • by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Sunday October 06, 2024 @03:36AM (#64843451) Journal

      I think your estimate is way off.

      How much explosives do you think it was? A gram of RDX would probably do the job. That's not hard to hide. Could do it as a percent or two of the battery, depending on the size, and really who's going to notice if a device underperforms the manufacturers specs in battery life by a few percent? You could probably make fake capacitors filled with the stuff. Who's going to notice a handful of fake caps, a hv cap and the low power magnetics required to charge it for the detonator?

      You could check maybe with a scale and a multimeter if you knew exactly to look for. As a general sweep looking just in case? Not a chance.

  • No one knows Gambit is Jewish.
  • Imagine (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bazorg ( 911295 ) on Sunday October 06, 2024 @04:45AM (#64843525)

    If this is what Israel can achieve with handheld devices, can you imagine what China can do with BEVs?

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