Israel has injured thousands across Lebanon, with hundreds in critical condition and dozens more dead, this week in two waves of simultaneous explosions of electronic communications equipment targeting Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists.
The blasts — which may have killed 19 and wounded 150 of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members — started on Tuesday afternoon around 3:30 p.m. local time when pagers used by Hezbollah started beeping with a message from their leadership.
After a few beeps, the pagers simultaneously exploded across the country, blinding hundreds, tearing off limbs, and leaving gaping holes in bodies.
The messages that the devices received were not from Hezbollah leadership; they were from Israel’s intelligence and military apparatus, and they were part of a multi-year plan.
There was initial confusion as to what happened when the explosions were reported. Various news reports said that malware had potentially been uploaded to the devices, causing the batteries to overheat and explode. Then reports surfaced claiming a small amount of highly explosive material had been placed into each device after Israel intercepted the devices after they were manufactured by a Taiwanese company.
However, none of those reports were accurate, according to a New York Times report that revealed that Israel never intercepted the pagers — it made them.
Hezbollah has forced tens of thousands of Israelis to evacuate their homes in northern Israel since October 7 as the terrorist group fires drones, rockets, and missiles on a regular basis — having fired many thousands in nearly 12 months.
Israel has responded with precision strikes, killing more than 300 top Hezbollah commanders and numerous lower-level terrorists.
Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah pushed for the terrorists to abandon their phones and switch to low-tech pagers to avoid being tracked by Israel. Nasrallah had bragged that his strategy would “blind” Israel.
However, unbeknownst to Hezbollah, Israel had been secretly manufacturing the pagers that Hezbollah was buying for years.
The Taiwanese company Gold Apollo had contracted with a company called B.A.C. Consulting in Hungary to manufacture the pagers. B.A.C. Consulting was one of three shell companies that Israel created to mask the true manufacturer of the communications equipment: Israeli intelligence.
B.A.C. Consulting created real pagers for numerous customers to create the perception of a legitimate company in order to get picked up for the contract to produce the pagers for Hezbollah.
The pagers manufactured for Hezbollah were separate from those made for other clients, the report said. The pagers that Hezbollah received “contained batteries laced with the explosive PETN” and began shipping in 2022, the report said.
After the first round of explosions on Tuesday, Israel struck again on Wednesday, detonating Hezbollah’s backup communications equipment: walkie-talkies.
The explosions from the walkie-talkies were significantly larger than the explosions from the pagers because the devices were larger, meaning they could be packed with more explosive material. Videos posted online showed entire apartment units blown out and numerous cars engulfed in flames.
After the second wave of explosions, many in Lebanon threw their phones away, turned them off, or removed the batteries.
The walkie-talkies that Hezbollah used appeared to be from the Japanese telecommunications manufacturer Icom; however, the company said that the model Hezbollah was using had been discontinued for a decade.
The company said that it had warned consumers for years that the model of radios that Hezbollah purchased were counterfeits.
One of the goals behind the second wave of the attack was to “increase paranoia and fear in Hezbollah’s ranks, in an attempt to press the militia’s leadership to change its policy regarding the conflict with Israel,” Axios reported.
IDF Chief of Staff, Lt. Col. Herzi Halevi, said that Israel was “very determined to create the security conditions that will return the residents to their homes, to the communities, with a high level of security, and we are ready to do all that is required to bring about these things.”
He warned Hezbollah: “We still have many capabilities that we have not yet activated. We saw some of these things here, and it seems to me that the readiness is good and we are preparing these plans going forward. The rule is that every time we work on a certain stage, the next two stages are already ready to advance. At each stage, the price for Hezbollah must be high.”