A foreign source said that the sophistication of last week’s attack was ‘relatively low-level’ and that Israel still has more dramatic abilities.
By JNS
Each of the Hezbollah communication devices that exploded in Lebanon last week was individually detonated, with Israeli intelligence knowing exactly which terrorist operative was being targeted, his location, and whether others were in close proximity, Israel’s Channel 12 reported on Saturday night.
Citing Israeli and foreign sources, the channel said that Jerusalem went to great lengths to ensure that only Hezbollah terrorists carrying the devices would be hurt.
Thousands of terrorists were wounded and dozens were killed in the mass pager and radio communication blasts that rocked Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, with the Iranian-backed terrorist organization immediately blaming the Jewish state for both attacks.
The Israel Defense Forces has declined to comment on the two waves of explosions—the first of which came hours after the Israeli Cabinet added the return of residents displaced from their homes in the north to the country’s war goals, bringing a major clash with Hezbollah closer.
“Each pager had its own arrangements. That’s how it was possible to control who was hit and who wasn’t,” Channel 12 News quoted an anonymous “foreign security source” as saying.
“They knew who he was with and where he was, so that the vegetable seller in the supermarket would not be hurt” when a device exploded on the Hezbollah man next to him, the source said, in reference to footage in which a terrorist was apparently blown up by his pager in a supermarket aisle.
The report said that Israel manufactured tens of thousands of pagers with the knowledge they would be thoroughly examined by Hezbollah, including through inspections by sniffer dogs searching for explosives.
Ronen Bergman, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth, told Channel 12 that the operation started during a previous government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and under the direction of Mossad director Yossi Cohen, who led the intelligence agency between 2016 and 2021.
Bergman said that the entire project was devised by a young female intelligence operative stationed “somewhere in the Middle East.”
Maj. Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin, who headed the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate between 2006 and 2010, said Jerusalem’s goal was to cause Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah to realize that his attacks on Israel “are costing him more than he’s gaining,” including his support in Lebanon.
For this reason, the outcome where thousands of Hezbollah terrorists were severely wounded rather than killed was regarded as “preferable” by Jerusalem, due to the pressure this placed on Lebanon’s hospitals, which it hoped would raise domestic opposition to Hezbollah.
A foreign source said that the sophistication of last week’s attack was “relatively low-level” and that Israel still has more dramatic abilities.
After the report aired on Saturday night, Eyal Hulata, who was Israel’s national security adviser from August 2021 to January 2023, confirmed that “there are more capabilities like these,” saying that thousands of Israelis had been working for years to thwart Iran’s regional proxies.
Hulata’s comment echoed remarks by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Wednesday, when he said that the Jewish state has “many capabilities that we have not yet activated, I repeat, we have not yet activated.”
The IDF is making “excellent achievements together with the Shin Bet, together with the Mossad,” Gallant said.
“The prime minister, the [IDF] chief of staff, the head of the Shin Bet, of the Mossad, and the defense minister, all of them are participating in a joint effort, with one goal in mind, to bring the residents back home,” he added.
Hezbollah has attacked Israel nearly daily since Oct. 8, 2023, firing thousands of rockets, missiles and drones. The attacks have killed more than 40 people and caused widespread damage. Tens of thousands of Israeli civilians remain internally displaced due to the violence.
Three people were wounded on Sunday morning when Hezbollah fired 85 projectiles across the border in what it said was in response to the pager attacks.
Hezbollah took responsibility for the launches, stating that it had sent “dozens of Fadi 1 and Fadi 2 missiles” at the Ramat David Airbase and a Rafael Advanced Defense Systems facility near Haifa. This reportedly was the first time since Oct. 8 that it has used this type of weapon.