I didn’t think Mossad admitted its involvement in “Beepergate“: the dissemination among Hezbollah of pagers and walkie-talkies that exploded on a signal last September. It was key in demoralizing Hezbollah as well as eroding its power, and was cleverly targeted to avoid collateral damage. Apparently now we know that Mossad did this, since two ex-Mossad agents admitted it, and their story was shown on “60 Minutes” this week. It’s also recounted in the Times of Israel.
Here’s the 60 Minutes episode. What’s new: the walkie-talkies were disseminated ten years ago, but weren’t triggered until a few months ago. Since walkie-talkies are used only in battle, Mossad began to weaponize pagers as well. A series of shell companies in Taiwan and Hungary were set up to sell the devices to Hezbollah (they had exploding batteries) while completely masking Israel’s involvement.Multiple tests were done by Mossad to ensure that only the carrier of the pager (a Hezbollah fighter) would be injured. A big internet campaign was mounted to tout the advantages of the exploding beepers, which were larger and thus more cumbersome than conventional beepers.
To get the pagers only into the hands of Hezbollah, Mossad hired the woman who usually sold pagers to the terrorists. In toto, 30 Lebanese died and 3,000 were injured, almost all of them fighters. Yes, a few civilians were hurt, including children. But the vast majority of those injured were terrorists. All in all, the targeted episode was quite successful. It didn’t single-handedly bring about the cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israel, but Hezbollah and its controlling state, Iran, have been set back on their heels.
The Toi article pretty much replicates what’s in the video, but I’ll emphasize one bit:
the psychological effect the attack had on Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was a “tipping point of the war,” Gabriel said.
He asserted that the veteran Hezbollah leader saw pagers exploding and injuring people who were right next to him in his bunker. Asked how he knows that, Gabriel said, “It’s a strong rumor.”
Two days after the attack, Nasrallah gave a speech.
People watch the speech of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as they sit in a cafe in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)“If you look at his eyes, he was defeated,” Gabriel said. “He already lose the war. And his soldier look at him during that speech. And they saw a broken leader.”
In the days after the attack, Israel’s air force hit targets across Lebanon, killing thousands. Nasrallah was assassinated when Israel dropped bombs on his bunker.
By November, the war between Israel and Hezbollah, a byproduct of the deadly attack by Hamas-led terrorists in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, ended with a ceasefire.
Even given all the precautions, Leslie Stahl has the moxie to ask one of the ex Mossad agents whether this episode might make Israel worry about its “moral reputation.” Some question!
I still can’t think of this operation as anything but sheer genius.
Agreed – it’s difficult to imagine a better targeted attack.
I agree it is genius. It’s incredible that in the ten years that these devices were supposedly “embedded” with Hezbollah operatives, that not a single one of them was serviced or taken apart, or that one would have fallen onto concrete and broken open, or been accidentally flattened by a motor vehicle, exposing its contents. It’s simply incredible! Rechargeable batteries don’t typically last ten years, but I imagine that the batteries were a standard size “clip on” type module, so disassembly would not be needed to replace that.
“… whether this episode might make Israel worry about its moral reputation.” The double standard is plain to see!
To think that not too long ago, we (the U.S.) were killing thousands of civilians in Iraq, with heavy but precision bombing in urban areas, in a war with very questionable justification.
No kidding. That unwarranted act of aggression, its destabilizing effects on the region, tremendous loss of life, the number of US National Guardsmen left with debilitating PTSD, all for naught. A real low point in US history. The demonstations around that were called for!
It was the greatest antiterrorist operation ever carried out!
Good piece by Leslie Stahl. And absolute brilliance on the part of Mossad. It’s amazing that the ten-year-old walk-in-talkies still functioned!
Agree with everyone else, this was the greatest operation ever.
I read, and have no way of knowing if it were true, that the pagers also were used for intelligence gathering and were only detonated after there was a chance that the “jig was up” and the operation was compromised. I am a type one diabetic and wear an insulin pump. When I travel by air my pump is always a issue with TSA. I usually have to take my pump free from my body, remove it from its silicone case and rub my hands against it vigorously. After that the TSA swab my hands to check for explosive residue. I wonder how many of these explosive devices made it onto commercial airliners. I wonder if this could be reverse engineered to be used in terrorist attacks by radicals in the future.
In the book Relentless by Mark Greaney (kind of a Tom Clancy/Jack Ryan kind of thriller) on pages 338-339 an op is described where burner cell phones are purchased, changed to add tracking devices, then repackaged and slipped into DHL shipments so they would appear in stores the terrorists frequented. This 2021 book had a hint of the successful strategy used this year. Since the “bomber pagers” were 10 years old (I agree this is a long time) before exploding in 2024 one wonders whether the idea had been circulating for a while.
Intriguing – I’d imagine if an enemy was relentless enough – just pushed you so so so much, on so many levels – any rational person would seek such a precise, unmistakable defense that would make their enemy … get the hint, or something.
I recall reading a detailed article about these pagers several months ago. It said that the explosive was not in the batteries.
Supposedly, the explosive had properties that made it precision-moldable, and it looked like a completely normal-looking piece of plastic separating the batteries. Found it –
https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS/HEZBOLLAH-PAGERS/mopawkkwjpa/
The Grim Beeper episode (great movie title btw) is possibly the first time in the history of warfare that an attack was able to take so many enemy combatants out of the war with so few civilian collateral deaths and injuries, yet the Jew-haters (who unaccountably insist on believing the lies of Iran’s horrific theocrats and their minions over reputable Israeli and non-Israeli journalists) are horrified by this “war crime” when Iran’s proxies engage in actual war crimes every hour of every day that they are active against Israel — specifically targeting civilians, using child soldiers, taking hostages, engaging in torture, using civilians as human shields, and taking all possible steps to maximize the number of civilian deaths on both sides of the conflict. The mere fact that HAMAS recognizes the value of using human shields means they are very well aware of the moral superiority of the IDF forces given how absurd it would be for Israel to use its people as human shields. Israelis love life and go to extreme measures often at risk to their own soldiers to minimize the deaths of innocents. HAMAS leaders have proudly declared “We love death more than you love life”. They are a death cult and proud of it because they are convinced that their imaginary sky monster demands and rewards martyrdom and everyone not in their cult deserves death and eternal torture in Hell.
Well said. It was an ingenious way to take the war to the enemy with little collateral damage.