Shalom from Galilee! You know, sometimes you look at the events happening around you and all you can do is sit back and say, “Oh, my goodness.” I mean, seriously! If you’ve read my thrillers, you know what a great fan I am of the Mossad and how highly I think of their skillset. But the events of Tuesday and Wednesday? Again, oh my goodness!
It was 3:30 PM, Tuesday afternoon. All the Hezbollah leadership and mid-level guys were out doing their Hezbollahy things – buying some fruit, visiting family, torturing prisoners. Suddenly, their pagers went off. Yes, you read that right. Their pagers, just like what happens to millions of people every day all around the world, or at least it did back in the 90s. The message was an error code that kept the device beeping and vibrating for ten seconds. Some lifted their pagers up so they could read the code before clearing it. Others just figured there was a problem and cleared the code while the device remained on their belts. As soon as they pressed the clear button, the devices exploded.
It was ugly. Many had their waists severely burned. Others had others parts of their nether regions seriously and permanently compromised. The ones who got the worst of it, though, were those who were trying to make out the numbers on the tiny LED screen. Many of them were blinded. Others lost their lives. It was the most direct, well-planned, and perfectly executed cyberstrike of the modern era. More than 4000 Hezbollah terrorists were wounded initially, and at least 11 were killed. Four hundred of those wounded are in critical condition, more than 500 lost their eyesight, and 18 high-ranking terrorist commanders were injured.
This all started with Hassan Nasrallah, head of Hezbollah, calling on his minions to abandon their cell phones, because they could be tracked. He encouraged them to go back to low tech communications, like pagers. So, the terrorist organization put in an order with a Taiwanese company who subbed the order out to a Hungarian company that just might have been tied in very deeply with the Mossad. Hungary, by the way, claims the devices were never in their country. But one way or another the order was fulfilled, with a free bonus to 5000 of the pagers – 20 grams of PETN explosives. Once completed, they shipped them to Lebanon where they were distributed to various levels of leadership. Soon, all the cool terrorists were sporting them on their belts. The run-of-the-mill terror-guys didn’t need them, because they just follow the orders of their bosses.
Then came 3:30 PM, the alerts, and the explosions. It happened all across Lebanon and even into Syria. Lebanese terrorists were taken down. Some Syrians were hit. Even Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, lost an eye and had his other severely damaged. Strange that an Iranian ambassador would be carrying a Hezbollah pager, don’t you think? The Iranian connection goes even farther with the son of Ali Maruf Hejazi, the Iran Supreme Leader’s representative in Lebanon, seriously injured in both of his eyes when his Hezbollah pager blew up. Later in the day yesterday, Al-Hadath, a Saudi newspaper, reported that 19 members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were killed by the pagers in Syria and another 150 were injured.
Back in Lebanon, it was chaos for Hezbollah. They had ditched their cell phones and now their pagers had blown up. Thankfully for the terrorists, many of the leaders who had survived the attack still had their hand-held radios. They were large and a little clunky, but they kept them connected.
Then Wednesday came, and it all started happening again.
But this time, the explosions were bigger because those hand-held radios the terrorists still had were bigger. Bigger devices, more explosives. Sixty buildings, 15 cars, and dozens of motorcycles were damaged or destroyed by the hundreds of blasts. First reports said that 14 people have been reported killed and more than 450 injured. Hezbollah is at a loss. Their communications have broken down. They’d try to send smoke signals, but they’re probably concerned that the Mossad somehow poisoned their wood to emit deadly fumes. They are truly at the point that Nineveh was when the prophet Nahum wrote that they are “empty, desolate, and waste! The heart melts, and the knees shake; much pain is in every side, and all their faces are drained of color.” That is a very apt description of many who are in Lebanon’s overfilled hospital rooms today.
The details of how the intelligence agency (allegedly) pulled off this second feat remain murky. But it’s not the first time that Israeli intelligence assassinated someone by a hand-held device. In the early 1990s, Yahya Ayyash, Hamas bombmaker and head of Hamas’s West Bank division of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigade, was a busy young man. Known as “the Engineer”, he was responsible for making bombs that killed dozens of Israelis in at least eight suicide attacks. After a little arm-twisting, the Shin Bet convinced an acquaintance of Ayyash’s to get a certain cell phone into the hands of the terrorist so that they could listen in on his conversations. This acquaintance gave the device to his nephew, whose phone Ayyash would often borrow. Sure enough, Ayyash came by to use the nephew’s phone so he could call his father. After confirming that it was Ayyash on the line, the Shin Bet triggered 15 grams of RDX explosive that they had stashed inside the device and Ayyash was killed instantly.
But this is the first time a cyberattack on communication devices was this widespread. The rigging of the pagers and the hand-held radios is truly an intelligence feat! As of this morning, the official numbers put the dead in the two attacks at 26 and the wounded somewhere well over 3000. The unofficial numbers, however, say that already a hundred are dead, many more are wounded than officials are reporting, and hundreds of terrorists are not expected to survive.
What other nation can you imagine pulling this off? Steve Yohn and I joked yesterday that some people thought we had crossed a line of believability when we put explosives into artwork in By Way of Deception. That’s despite that plot being based on an actual attack on the Natanz nuclear facility when explosives were built into the framework of a desk that was then smuggled into the plant. But we both had to admit that loading mini bombs into thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies then having Hezbollah themselves distribute the deadly devices to their own people was beyond even our wild imaginations. And that’s just from the information that we know. Even as I’m writing this, reports are coming in that the order may have been taken by a European-based Israeli shell company, which would mean that Hezbollah actually paid Israel for all the devices that exploded. Not long after, a Bulgarian newspaper reported that a company in Sofia called Norta Global Ltd sent the pagers. We may never know the full truth. What I do know is that as a writer and an Israeli, I am giving my government and my intelligence agencies an awe-filled standing ovation.
As an Israeli, however, I am also pleading with my government to go into the north immediately. Hezbollah has been greatly weakened. They are afraid of their communications systems. Their leaders are wounded or dead. Now is the time to finish off Hezbollah for the sakes of the Israelis and the Lebanese. I know that there is pressure coming from the United States. The last thing the Harris campaign wants is an expanded battle during Biden’s tenure. But Mr. Prime Minister, you know that it has to be done! We must push hard today, so that we don’t have to push hard tomorrow. This is despite the fact that so many are against us, including the fools at the United Nations who just voted 124-14 to deny Israel of its right to self-defense in Gaza and the West Bank. I was very encouraged Tuesday, when I heard that resituating northern Israeli residents back into their homes was added to the official war goals. Of course, that can only happen when Hezbollah is disarmed and pushed out of southern Lebanon. I was also hearted when I learned late last night that the Israeli cabinet granted Netanyahu and Defense Minister Gallant the green light to take military action against Hezbollah, even if it leads to all-out war.
I understand the risk. It was a difficult week for Israel. In Rafah on Tuesday, four young Israeli soldiers lost their lives. Capt. Daniel Mimon Toaff, 23, Staff Sgt. Amit Bakri, 21, Staff Sgt. Dotan Shimon, 21, and Staff Sgt. Agam Naim, 20, were killed in Rafah when there was an explosion in the building they were in. Agam Naim, a paramedic and the first female killed in combat in Gaza, was only two days away from going on leave. Our hearts break for their families. Pushing hard in the north is going to cost more lives. I know, I have children in active service and in the reserves. But it must be done if we are ever going to have peace.
According to Ezekiel 38, when Russia comes down with Turkey, Iran, and her other allies, Lebanon and Syria will not be part of the attack. I believe Syria will be out of the fight because they’ll be dealing with the destruction of Damascus as spoken of by the prophet Isaiah:
The burden against Damascus. “Behold, Damascus will cease from being a city, And it will be a ruinous heap” (Isaiah 17:1).
What Lebanon is facing right now could possibly be the reason why they are irrelevant. Unfortunately, a fight against Hezbollah means a fight against Lebanon, because the country has allowed the terrorist organization to become so imbedded into their infrastructure. If Israel is forced to fight tooth and nail to destroy Hezbollah, the country could end up in shambles. Let’s pray that the Lord intervenes, the guilty receive justice, and the innocent are allowed to live in peace, whether they live in Israel or in Lebanon.