Hezbollah Members Attacked with Pagers and Walkie Talkies: Effective precision strikes sends almost 3,000 messages

On September 17th, 2024 approximately 2,750 Iran backed Hezbollah members were either killed or wounded when the pagers they had on their person exploded. These were precise attacks, and numerous videos show that only the people wearing the pagers were killed or injured. [1]

Israel admitted responsibility, but these attacks are part of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict that started, well...in the 2006 Lebanon war, but these attacks are in response to the Hezbollah firing guided rockets and artillery shells at Israeli positions in the occupied Shebaa Farms on the 8th of October, 2023.

These rocket attacks were in solidarity with Palestinians after the Hamas attack on Israel a day earlier. Israel did launched drone strikes and fired artillery at Hezbollah positions near Lebanon’s boundary with Israeli occupied Golan Heights.

Northern Israel is in an on-going conflict with Hezbollah, and this has resulted in almost 96,000 people having to evacuate their homes. In Lebanon, about 111,940 citizens have been displaced.

Hezbollah has made clear they have no intention of stopping attacks on Israeli targets, until Israel stops its attacks and military operations in Gaza. As we can see, Israel has not instigated any of the attacks against them, and these recent pager and now walkie talkie attacks appear to be justified.

WHAT IS HEZBOLLAH?

Hezbollah is an Iran backed, Shiite Muslim militant group based and operating in Lebanon. Hezbollah was founded during the 1975 15 year Lebanese Civil War, and was in direct opposition to Israel with a declared resistance to Western influence in the Middle East.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies have said that, “Hezbollah is the world’s most heavily armed non-state actor.” With its deep-rooted alliances with Iran and Syria, Hezbollah has become quite an effective, military force, and formidable enemy of Israel.

With border conflicts rising between Hamas and Israel, Hezbollah seem to be opening a new battlefront by including itself in the ongoing Israel-HAMAS war.

But I digress. After Israel assassinated Hezbollah founder and leader, Abbas al-Musawi in 1992. Hassan Nasrallah took over as secretary-general and is now the Hezbollah leader. Nasrallah now oversees the seven member Shura Council and its five sub-councils [the political assembly, the jihad assembly, the parliamentary assembly, the executive assembly, and the judicial assembly.]

According to the US state department, it estimates there are tens of thousands Hezbollah members and global supporters. Hezbollah controls a lot of the Shiite majority areas of Lebanon along with parts of Beirut, Southern Lebanon the eastern Bekaa Valley region.

Don’t let the fact Hezbollah is based in Lebanon fool you, and don’t think their terrorist activity is restricted to the Middle East either. The Hezbollah manifesto clearly states, “The American threat is not local or restricted to a particular region, and as such, confrontation of such a threat must be international as well.” Hezbollah has been accused of acts of terrorism perpetrated in Africa, the Americas and Asia along with attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets in Israel and abroad.

Iran is noted as providing the majority of Hezbollah’s training, weapons and funding to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars per year. They also get some support from the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, but money also comes from finances from legal businesses, international crime enterprises, and the Lebanese diaspora [descendants of Lebanese immigrants who, voluntarily or as refugees, emigrated from Lebanon to non-Arab countries].

In 1997, the US designated Hezbollah as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and labeled several members as “specially designated global terrorists,” which resulted in sanctions against them.

SANCTIONS, HUH?

The Obama administration provided “aid” to the Lebanese military in hopes it would diminish Hezbollah’s credibility as the country’s most capable military force [I’m not making this up], but the fact that Hezbollah joined the Lebanese Military in efforts to defend Lebanon’s Syrian border against the Islamic State and al-Qaeda affiliated militants caused the US Congress to be hesitant to send more money to Lebanon for fear Hezbollah would get their hands on the money. I can’t make this up. Seriously….I can’t.

In 2015, the US Congress pass the Hizballah International Financing Prevention Act. This act sanctions foreign institutions that use US bank accounts to finance Hezbollah. In 2018, lawmakers amended the act to include additional types of activities.

President Trump took it step further and sanctioned some Hezbollah members of Parliament as part of its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran. This action disrupted Iran’s economy, yes, but with its self-sufficient proxies, Iran weathered the worst of the sanctions with little trouble.

The Biden administration also got involved by continuing to sanction individuals linked to Hezbollah financial networks. In 2021 the US Treasury department announced sanctions against an international finance network suspected of laundering tens of millions of dollars via regional financial systems that helped Hezbollah and Iran.

The EU took a less aggressive stance and did nothing more than simply tell the world what it already knew, and that was that Hezbollah is a Terrorist Group that does bad things globally. Parts of the Middle East did try to hit Hezbollah’s wallet too, but as we now know, Hezbollah has streams of income, and are heavily funded from sources countries can’t touch.

THAT’S WHY “ISRAEL” DOESN’T PLAY

Right, so back to the main topic. Thousands of Hezbollah members wearing pagers, and as of this writing, using walkie talkies getting seriously injured or killed from said devices exploding. Again, there are videos showing this happening, and in these videos, we can see bystanders NOT being harmed by these mini-explosions. These are precision attacks that are proving quite effective.

According to reports issued soon after, Hezbollah ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan, and they were to be shipped directly to Lebanon from Taiwan. However, a “spy agency” is allegedly to have intercepted these pagers and tampered with them.

This alleged spy agency replaced one of the double A batteries with a similar sized and shaped explosive device. This modification went unnoticed, even after reaching its destination in Lebanon.

This hypothesis was created after it was reported that the pagers had a 20 grams explosive device in them, and a double A battery weighs about 23 grams, so this is the only part of the pager that could have been successfully disguised. Again, this is theoretical, but it does have substance to it.

There is further belief that there was a timing mechanism in the pagers, but again, that’s only theory at this point. Judging from the timing of all the explosions, however, it appears to be plausible and credible.

This ingenious tactic is so good, Hollywood would have had a hard time selling it actually possible to pull of in a Jason Bourne movie. Let’s be honest, the majority of the population will have to tell their children or grandchildren what a pager is, and how they work. But this is exactly why Hezbollah must’ve thought pagers were the best choice for what they wanted.

Hezbollah started using pagers as a means to communicate without the risk of being tracked or listened to. This decision was made after the Lebanese militant leader Fuad Shukr was assassinated for his role in a rocket attack that killed 12 people in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

This assassination was accomplished after the Israeli spies hacked into the Hezbollah mobile network in Lebanon. Fuad Shukr resided in a Southern Beirut [a Hezbollah stronghold], fortified 7 story building. This building was not only Shukr’s home, but was also a Hezbollah base of operations.

Shukr’s office was on the second floor, and this is where he was, more than likely coordinating Hezbollah operations, and communicating via Online accessed devices. What Shukr didn’t know, was that Israeli Intelligence officers were monitoring his Online activities.

During this monitoring, the Israelis intercepted a mobile phone call, and this played a pivotal role in their assassination plot.

The intercepted call allowed Israeli spies to manipulate the call and deliver a false directive for Shukr to go to his residence on the building’s top floor. The false call convinced Shukr that it was important for him to return to his residence, thereby isolating him and ensuring the strike would be the most effective.

The moment is was learned Shukr was in his 7th floor apartment, an Israeli jet was ordered to the building where it dropped a laser guided bomb. The entire 7th floor was devastated, and Fuad Shukr was killed. A few other residents on the same floor were injured, but Shukr was the only one killed.

There were other successful attacks against Hezbollah allegedly carried out by Israel, and this is why Hezbollah came up with the genius plan to use antiquated communications technology. On paper, the pager plan looked great, and it would have worked too if it weren’t for that meddling spy agency.

FOOL ME ONCE

The success of the pager attacks was amazing. Think about it. Even though all of the Hezbollah members attacked didn’t die, the psychological effect of said members, and the innocent bystanders around them was amazing.

The fact that few innocent bystanders were hurt is also fascinating. Even though there’s no shortage of antisemitic people who are talking smack about Israel and these tactics, they can’t accuse Israel of intentionally endangering innocents. That’s the genius of these attacks, and it will have a lasting effect.

However, there are a couple of things we can be sure of. One, now that it’s know the pagers blew up due to a spy agency manipulating the devices, and not because they had manufacturer defects. Hezbollah won’t demanding a refund from Taiwan, nor will they give Taiwan a negative customer review on Yelp.

And, now that it’s globally known that pagers can be used as weapons, Hezbollah countered this tactic by purchasing Walkie Talkies from an unknown source [just a guess, but maybe TEMU?]. The walkie talkies were identified as a the IC-V82, a discontinued model made the Japanese firm ICOM.

Guess what. Those walkie talkies also blew up the day after the pagers in three areas of Lebanon; Beirut, the Bekaa Valley and Southern Lebanon, killing 20 people and injuring over 450.

THE GLOBAL RESPONSE

Was swift and predictable. The Lebanese government condemned the attacks and international organizations expressed concern, but otherwise didn’t have much to say about them. The US government immediately denied any involvement whatsoever and that was pretty much about all it had to say.

As of this writing [September 19, 2024] things remain tense in Lebanon with reports of Israeli airstrikes targeting Hezbollah infrastructure sites. Lebanon’s military is on high alert and the Lebanese Health Ministry set up emergency response centers to treat the injured.

And of course, Hezbollah has sworn revenge for the attacks, but any idiot and his uncle could’ve seen that coming a mile off. Maybe this is why Israel continues to attack Hezbollah and HAMAS targets after these attacks. They ain’t playing.

DO KEEP IN MIND

One thing that the people of the globe needs to remember is the targets of these attacks were verified members of Hezbollah. A very large, well armed, terrorist organization responsible for global attacks on innocent civilians as well as military targets.

With the rampant antisemitic activities going on around the world, and the support for another terrorist organization named HAMAS, cleverly disguised as support for Palestine, it’s easy to see massive support for Hezbollah forming as a result of these strategic, and necessary attacks on Hezbollah members.

All the Israeli attacks on HAMAS and Hezbollah were self-defense responses to unprovoked attacks by both these terrorist organizations. It’s been forgotten that countries have the right to defend its people, homeland and borders from attacks. Israel just gave the world about 3,000 not so subtle reminders of this fact. [TMR]

[1] Footage shows Hezbollah members' pagers exploding

Thomas Ryan is an Independent Columnist based in Florida. He focuses primarily current events and politics, but is versatile and open to new challenges. Comments are always welcome, and Thomas enjoys interacting with readers and followers. And sharing these columns is appreciated.