September 17, 2024

"Hundreds of pagers blew up at the same time across Lebanon on Tuesday in an apparently coordinated attack that killed eight people and injured more than 2,700..."

"... health officials said on Tuesday.... Hezbollah said that pagers belonging to its members had exploded and accused Israel of being behind the attack. The Israeli military declined to comment. The wave of explosions left many people in Beirut in a state of confusion and shock. Witnesses reported seeing smoke coming from people’s pockets, followed by small blasts that sounded like fireworks or gunshots.... Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said... many of the victims had injuries to their faces, particularly the eyes, as well as to their hands and stomachs.... Three officials briefed on the attack said that it had targeted hundreds of pagers belonging to Hezbollah operatives who have used such devices for years to make it harder for their messages to be intercepted. The devices were programmed to beep for several seconds before exploding, according to the officials...."

171 comments:

cfs said...

How creative! Are there any reports of pages exploding in the US or other western nations?

RideSpaceMountain said...

Info seems to suggest that the lithium-ion batteries in the pagers exploded, not a chemical explosive planted surreptitiously. In other words, the batteries themselves were tampered with to produce the chemical reaction needed on command.

Now that is some devilishly clever thinking. I like it.

Ice Nine said...

Move over, Stuxnet.

(Is it wrong to laugh my ass off?)

Lawrence Person said...

I see no reports that the batteries themselves were tampered with. I think it more likely that Israel found a flaw in the pager's permissions and recharging firmware, and used that to trigger an explosion.

tcrosse said...

Imagine if they could set off all the Teslas.

Leland said...

"The blasts appeared to be the latest salvo in an 11-month conflict between Israel and Hezbollah"
A statement made by the NYT without citing evidence that it is a salvo between anybody. Let me cite the NYT from earlier in the article: "pagers belonging to Hezbollah members exploded across Lebanon"

Dave Begley said...

Pure genius. One of the greatest Mossad operations ever.

n.n said...

Synchrized self-abortions are fashion-forward statements, but the collateral damage is simply selfiesh.

PM said...

What a game-changer.

Dave Begley said...

Give Mossad a standing ovation!

jae said...

Did you think repeating it three times made it true?

Lilly, a dog said...

Leave out how you feel about the recipients of the attack. No government should be able or willing to do this.

rhhardin said...

It's probably the equivalent to the IBM 7090's "HCF" (halt and catch fire) command, available only in assembler.

Kalli Davis said...

"Hey there buddy, looks like you gor a flamethrower in your pocket."
- heard on the streets of Lebanon

RideSpaceMountain said...

Don't worry tcrosse, after the 2026 kill-switch in cars is implemented, everyone who doesn't own a Tesla will also have that privilege.

Gusty Winds said...

Pagers are so 1990's. Who still uses a pager?

Gusty Winds said...

Did the payphones blow up if they put in a coin?

Chest Rockwell said...

Hezballess

Chest Rockwell said...

People who are afraid of getting their cell phone signal droned.

Chest Rockwell said...

Perhaps, but the videos I'm seeing on X suggest otherwise. They're very powerful explosions.

RideSpaceMountain said...

Ever seen a Tesla dumped in a pool Chest? It will come out sooner or later, but whatever it was, that was sharp.

Chest Rockwell said...

Can you elaborate? Why is this attack beyond the pale? It's far better than raining missiles down on people, much less genocidal terrorists.

Maynard said...

Hezbollah uses flip phones and pagers because they think they are harder to trace or hack than smart phones. Somehow the Israelis were able to insert malware into their new shipment. Apparently, the malware was able to cause the lithium batteries to explode. Lots of terrorists won't be hearing the calls to prayer anymore.

This is brilliant, but I am going to put my iPhone on speaker from now on.

Michael K said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
RideSpaceMountain said...

"cowards fight like this..."

There is no fairness in war. If you're going to shoot thousands of rockets at someone, you better be ready to lose your balls.

Robert Marshall said...

"Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said " ... "Help, my a$$ is on fire!"

Chest Rockwell said...

I've seen lithium ion batteries explode, but it's usually incendiary, not necessarily explosive.

Dixcus said...

Say, in UN compounds, NYTimes news rooms, or DNC headquarters?

rehajm said...

Clever. War is heck…

Rabel said...

I'm hoping it turns out that they were able to plant a small explosive during manufacture because if it's possible to make an ordinary cell phone or beeper battery explode remotely without such preparation then we have a big problem.

Ice Nine said...

Hezbollah: Genital mutilation isn't just for little girls anymore.

Goju said...

Mossad is unavailable for comment. All agents are presently busy calling pagers. Please leave your pager number at the boom sound.

Vance said...

Democrats everywhere in mourning.... anyone checked on Inga or Rich to see how they are dealing with the loss of their loved ones?

Todd said...

"cowards fight like this..."

LOL!!! No. Cowards are combatants that wear no uniform, hid in houses of worship, pre-schools, schools, hospitals, residential areas, and crowds while launching attacks on civilians and NOT caring who they kill or injure as the ENTIRE country of Israel is their enemy. This "event" caused minimal collateral damage and will have effects beyond those immediately effected.

The original author of this comment needs to re-think those they have sympathy for as they are "the baddies".

William said...

It's quite a feat. Does anyone have any idea how such a thing is even possible?.....I wonder if any of the wounded will re-evaluate their dedication to the cause? Is there some point where they say enough is enough. They will certainly become more paranoid which is not the same thing as being prudent.

Lilly, a dog said...

Do you carry a device with a battery? If the Israelis can pull this off, then so can our government. And they won't be targeting Democrats.

Temujin said...

Israel is one of the most tech-advanced countries in the world. As small as they are, as surrounded as they are, and as constantly under attack as they are, it leaves a certain edge to the people there. A certain mindset that is always urgently thinking outside the box and moving ahead when others would have years of meetings in comfy rooms to discuss it.

The worry is...once this knowledge gets into the hands of everyone else- and it will at some point, how many of you will want to spend time on your computers, or in your cars, or with that phone in your pocket, or by your ear?

The brave new world continues...

RideSpaceMountain said...

Yes. We do.

Eva Marie said...

Temujin says:
“The worry is...once this knowledge gets into the hands of everyone else- and it will at some point, how many of you will want to spend time on your computers, or in your cars, or with that phone in your pocket, or by your ear?”
Scott Adams said today we are one drone attack from ending all large open arena, open space events. Life will change but we will adapt and survive

Chest Rockwell said...

Well, considering we don't know how it was done, then you're being premature. I highly doubt they exploded the batteries. I suspect they were able to pull this off because Hezbollah is a corrupt terrorist organization running a corrupt country that's populated with sectarian and suspicious people . It's easy to pay people off and look the other way.

n.n said...

Paging Hamasidols. You're 72 virgins are ready. Don't answer that. It's misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. Hello? Moron. Boom.

n.n said...

Progress is an [unqualified] monotonic process: one step forward, two steps backward.

Chest Rockwell said...

WSJ is saying that Hezbollah received a shipment of new pagers in the preceding week. So it's almost certain that Israel planted an explosive in them and software to detonate.

Dr Weevil said...

Stupid 'Derve' - too stupid to know she's been banned - doesn't seem to know that Hezbollah has been openly and repeatedly violating "rules of war that protect civilians" for decades, aiming rockets at Israeli civilians. Israel is just enforcing the "ignore them at your peril" advice.

tim in vermont said...

Sounds like an act of war against a neighboring country that Israel saw as a threat. Where have we heard this before?

Joe Bar said...

This is simultaneously scary and amazing.

Joe Bar said...

This is simultaneously scary and amazing.

Leland said...

If you are going to play the blame game, then come with evidence that it is an attack and how exactly the attack was carried out. Otherwise, leave out how you feel about the recipients of the attack when you decide that is an attack and who did it.

n.n said...

Cecile's scalpel suggests that Hamasidols are either a defective lever of em-pathetic choice or a progressive "burden" for their patrons.

Dogma and Pony Show said...

Any word on whether remote detonation is a contingency covered by the product protection plan?

Democratic Paychecks for Perks/ Dems for Demolition of Democracy/ fake-cares 4-U said...

pagers? are pagers still a thing?

RideSpaceMountain said...

NO REFUNDS!

Dr Weevil said...

Hezbollah has been committing terrorism against Israel from Lebanese territory for decades. Israel has a perfect right to strike back. What about Lebanon? It's been a principle of international law since the Caroline Affair (1837) that if a non-government group A is attacking country B from the territory of country C, and country C does not prevent those attacks, B has a right to fight back even if it has to invade country C to attack group A. It doesn't matter whether country C is willingly or unwillingly allowing A to use its territory. Here A is Hezbollah, B Israel, C Lebanon.

Heartless Aztec said...

If the Israeli's did it to them, Hamas, Hezbollah, et all can reverse engineer it back. I'm thinking I want my old rotary phone back.

ron winkleheimer said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFlCD5CYAcU

gspencer said...

"Allah? Allah? Can you hear me? It's Abdul. This phone, it's ringing in my ear. Can you hear me? I can't hear you. Allah, please send the 72 houris. I'm waiting here by the phone even though it continues to breathe fire in my ear. Allahu Akbar."

Lazarus said...

I had to turn off the local talk radio guy. Too much glee over things like this is ghoulish and in poor taste.

Wince said...

Every year the CPSC reports how many people die from disposable cigarette lighters. Add this to the ways to die,

Car crash, ptomaine, disposable lighter
A bus plunge, avalanche, a vinegar cider
Free-fall, motorcycle, hang-glider

narciso said...

Human resources will be receiving a stern letter

Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...

כל הכבוד, המוסד!

Pat said...

I suggest looking at the actualvideos. They don’t look like battery explosions. SOMEBODY more likely planted bombs in these along with a method to trigger them.

Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...

= Very well done, ha-Mossad ... but when I shift the keyboard to Hebrew it has problems with ? and !

Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...

Probably pre-installed malware.

Wa St Blogger said...

When I first saw this, I imagined a James Bond movie and thought that if I saw that in a movie I would credit to over-active imagination of screen writers. No way that could happen! When almost all of your enemies are, in effect foreign spies, asymmetrical solutions are necessary for your survival. In normal warfare, when someone operates as an enemy without a uniform, execution was considered an acceptable response.

FullMoon said...

Holy crap! Not Samsung I hope

FullMoon said...

It's not a bug, .....

Paul said...

They could make all plastic cell phones out of plastic explosives and, when needed, specific ones blow up..

Sleep tight folks! Beep beep beep...

Big Mike said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Big Mike said...

I agree.

hombre said...

Bullshit! Hezbollah dumps thousands of exploding rockets on population centers in Israel.

RideSpaceMountain said...

It's in Mossad's own Motto, which in turn is taken from Proverbs:

"By deception shall you do war"

Iman said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
amr said...

Looking for a Reference to Ice Cube's "Today Was a Good Day":

Halfway home and my pager still blowin' up
Today I didn't even have to use my AK
I gotta say, it was a good day

Link direct to the line in the song.

Dr Weevil said...

Someone on Twitter said that Hezbollah has murdered 25 Israeli civilians and 21 "security personnel" (military + police?) with their rockets - I think they mean since last October 7th - and driven 60,000 Israelis away from their homes for many months. This is not in fact a disproportionate response to terrorism on such a scale.

BUMBLE BEE said...

Fascinating!

Iman said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
narciso said...

https://twitchy.com/samj/2024/09/17/pager-explosion-memes-n2401081

Dixcus said...

Who's "we" kemosabe? THEY have a big problem. We have some laughs coming.

Iman said...

They put a rocket in their pocket
I said rocket
Finger in the socket
No way for them to stop it
Rocket
Why don't they just get off it
Rocket rocket rocket I said rocket rocket rocket

Let me tell you about that Hezbollah
Who I can't explain
They got one foot in the graveyard
Some rancid shit for brains

Kevin said...

Liz Lemon: I don't want you here selling beepers.

Dennis Duffy: Why not I mean you work in a business. Business people need beepers.

Liz Lemon: No they need cell phones.

Dennis Duffy: Oh yeah for now but the beeper's gonna be making a comeback. Technology is cyclical....

Dave64 said...

Mossad's new "Reach Out and Touch Someone" plan.

Josephbleau said...

Pagers use an AA battery. Not a lot of joules. The videos show a very brissant shot, like PETN or c4. So I agree they had some powder put in them before shipment.

Mary Beth said...

The next time the flight attendant tells you all to put your phone in airplane mode, please do so. If this can be done with pagers, why couldn't it be done with phones?

That's assuming it was calls to each number that triggered it and made the battery explode. If it was implanted explosives, I'm less worried about how it could be used to take down a plane, but if it was exploding batteries that were timed to go off instead of triggered by a call, I don't see how we can protect from that. I don't want to bet that none of my fellow passengers have downloaded malware that could kill us.

Political Junkie said...

Yay!

Old and slow said...

I read that the pagers were a recent shipment and manufactured in Iran.

Aggie said...

'Paging Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine....'

I'm suspecting it's not malware. I'm not an electrical engineer, but (I am guessing now) if this were the battery exploding, it could only be by some kind of massive short circuit - and the circuitry in the phone just can't support that, even as a software instruction. I'm guessing the Israelis pre-installed the charges and coded an instruction, maybe an incoming phone number recognition scheme.

If by some chance it is an exploding lithium batteries, then phones and pagers and any other radio transmitting device using lithium batteries is fixing to get a whole bunch of resisters installed in virtually every circuit.

Really interesting, seeing the Propaganda Press moaning about a little girl dying, oh think of the children! No mention of the slaughter of 1200+ civilians though, ambushed almost a year ago, featuring all ages including children and fetuses. Some of them, as tortured hostages. But I digress.

Aggie said...

Getting a call from the Mohel now ! Special today, Half Off !

Rabel said...

"We" is me and you, Kemosabe. Try to figure it out.

Aggie said...

"Your SMS messaging service may be subject to charges.......'

Michael K said...

Fortunately, I was in medical school by the time the 7090 came along. I topped out with the 704.

Michael K said...

That is why Israel is a valuable ally. We've been using Israeli technology for 40 years and more.

Michael K said...

Just avoid the Lebanon area code.

MadTownGuy said...

John Fetterman chimes in:

"I fully support efforts to target and neutralize any existential threat like Hezbollah."

Quaestor said...

"Do you carry a device with a battery?"

I felt the urge to treat Lilly to an in-depth essay about the sad history of peacekeeping by banning stuff that goes boom. But I'd rather just go out and enjoy a beer. Suffice it to say, that which prevents a government from harming the citizens is not the unavailability of exploding pagers. If one fears the prospect of Kamala's CIA detonating your iPhone, the solution is not hiring someone to scan your device for traces of TNT. It's to make bloody certain her filthy hands are far from the levers of power and the dissolution of the CIA.

Sprezzatura said...

Seems like a lot of phones exploded.

I often tell people that Hamas et. al. are terrible because they indiscriminately (and often purposefully) murder innocents. But the US and Israel spend a ton of time and effort such that only non-innocents are targeted.

Hopefully Israel made sure that only terrorists ended up with these phones.

Giving up the high ground of only going after terrorists would not, strategically, be a good idea. Becoming a terrorist to beat a terrorist is not so good. IMHO.

Spiros said...

So much of Palestinian fascism (and woke ideology) combines "big" theories like Jewish world domination and "little" theories" like the Israelis use booby trapped dolls to randomly kill children. The Israelis also use exploding pens to kill lawyers, poison the water supply to keep Palestinian women from reproducing and so on. But in this case, there is no dumb ass conspiracy. The Israelis really did use exploding pagers to achieve a tactical and strategic goal.

paminwi said...

Good for Mossad. These guys are very good at what they do.

paminwi said...

Excuse me but this action targeted Hezbollah. Terrorists, you know? Better than rockets raining down on a market killing anyone & everyone. Besides many didn’t die they just their balls blown off. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer group of people. Who needs them to procreate anyway?

Narr said...

test

lonejustice said...

My wife spent 3 weeks in Israel a number of years ago, staying with a high school friend of hers who now lives in Jerusalem. She brought me back my favorite T-shirt which reads "Mossad -- It's never an accident."

Quaestor said...

"I'm suspecting it's not malware. I'm not an electrical engineer, but (I am guessing now) if this were the battery exploding, it could only be by some kind of massive short circuit"

A lithium battery can ignite if charged at an amperage significantly higher than its specified maximum input, but they don't explode. Nor do I know a way to overcharge a pager without the device being hardwired to a power supply. I conclude these explosions were chemically sourced. This has been possible for many decades, but the device needed to be large to contain the explosive and yet still function as expected. I think the PanAm flight brought down over Scotland was destroyed by a Semtex charge concealed inside a cassette recorder. A pager, however, was considered too small to contain a bomb and remain functional.

I believe Israeli chemists have developed a highly stable form of plastic explosive that has both the strength and resilience to perform as a structural polymer. In short, the shell of theses pagers were intrinsically explosive.

JK Brown said...

Sounds like they had a software activated battery short. The explosion happened as the pager was receiving and alerting the user. They got a lot of hands and fingers, a few faces since people were interacting with the device when it heated and burst.

"A Hezbollah official who spoke on condition of anonymity told The Associated Press that the handheld pagers, a new brand used by the group, first heated up, then exploded, killing at least two of its members and wounding others."

narciso said...

https://x.com/persianjewess/status/1836159727799312544

Derve Swanson said...

Yay yay more death and destruction...
Errbody hit the tip button; come in for the good times...
Yay yay more death and destruction...

loudogblog said...

A classic example of thinking outside the box.

loudogblog said...

Lithium batteries don't explode like that. They just burn intensely. There had to be some kind of explosive charge installed into the pagers.

loudogblog said...

Lilly, this is perfectly acceptable since Hezbollah started a war with Israel. Civilians were not specifically targeted.

boatbuilder said...

If I understand the last sentence of the article quote correctly, the reason that the phones "exploded" was because Hezbollah had constructed and programmed them to do precisely that, after beeping for several seconds, so that the "operatives" could dispose of them (and perhaps use them as weapons?) if caught (or killed? could Hezbollah have triggered them if they needed to?)

~ Gordon Pasha said...

Nice, Commander Salamander issues a caveat though: https://x.com/cdrsalamander/status/1836105537303322828

boatbuilder said...

Pro-rated, and only if you sign on for another two years.

Quaestor said...

"Yay yay more death and destruction..."

Derve only complains when the terrorist get it in the neck, which is typical for a Trump-hater.

boatbuilder said...

Read the last sentence of the quoted article. Hezbollah programmed the phones to "explode." It's not a battery issue. Just bad timing...

boatbuilder said...

So that big buy I made on Nokia stock is going to turn out like all of my other big buys? (Just kidding--after picking dead wrong for a long time, it's strictly index funds for me).

Aggie said...

or maybe, inside the box.....

Quaestor said...

boatbuilder writes..."If I understand the last sentence of the article quote correctly, the reason that the phones "exploded" was because Hezbollah had constructed and programmed them to do precisely that, after beeping for several seconds, so that the "operatives" could dispose of them..."

If that were true, why didn't the "operatives" throw them away when the beeping started? To ignore the beeping would be like pulling the pin of a live grenade and then sticking it in your pocket. We all know that the competence of NYT employees has cratered over the last 20 years to a level that would chagrin the faculty advisor of a high school newspaper, so don't blame yourself for the difficulty of comprehending what NYT publishes. However, if Hezbollah was equipped with pagers that could double as grenades, which seems harebrained to me, it's possible that Israeli hackers found a away to surreptitiously alter the firmware to cause the pagers to explode at a set date/time and not beep beforehand.

As we have seen on numerous occasions dating back decades, Mossad operates a magnificently effective and deep-rooted network of agents and sympathizers inside Iran. I think Israel used that network to manufacture those pagers in compliance with their intentions to terrorize the terrorists.

boatbuilder said...

Maybe you are correct. But that is what the article says.

Perhaps whoever triggered the phones to blow up also programmed them not to beep this time.

But if Mossad could make the phones blow up, couldn't they also use them to track the Hezbollah operatives? It's clever and satisfying to blow up the enemy, but doesn't this blow the cover?

I'm considering the possibility that this was an "own goal" by Hezbollah.

Aggie said...

Information is beginning to trickle in....

The Pager 2-step

Aggie said...

"Sky News Arabia quotes sources saying that today’s large-scale pager attack in Lebanon was possible because the Mossad spy agency got hold of Hezbollah’s communication devices before they were handed over to the terror group.

The Israeli spy agency placed a quantity of PETN, a highly explosive material, on the batteries of the devices, and detonated them by raising the temperature of the batteries from afar, the source says.....
'

Quaestor said...

If Hezbollah wanted an easily concealable explosive device it's operatives could carry and use as a bomb or grenade, why incorporate a pager into it? Without the transceiver innards, a far more powerful weapon could be contained in that volume. It could be made to look like an innocent pager and still be packed with enough RDX to kill everyone in a cheap tenement living room.

Achilles said...

I agree with Lily. I have no idea why people are so jubilant right now. You all are nuts.

Achilles said...

No reports yet. I cannot understand why people are happy about this.

Achilles said...

Anyone who is cheering this is nuts.

Quaestor said...

I knew it. Count on the Post to get the story straight and clear. NYT is a reliable on as fish wrap, and only if the fish as already rotten.

Quaestor said...

Nuts are we? Anyone who is not cheering this is an antisemite and a tool of the mullahs. Do you agree, Achilles?

Skeptical Voter said...

Mohammed is that a pager in your pocket or are you just glad to see us? Asking for the 72 virgins.

RideSpaceMountain said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
RideSpaceMountain said...

Ah PETN, my old friend. Personally I was bummed when we started moving away from detcord to shock tube, but costs are costs. As I said earlier, very clever, and Mossad has clever in spades.

Quaestor said...

Sorry for the typos at 7:59

Quaestor said...

It was also very cunning to incorporate the nitropenta into the batteries. Lithium typically burns very hot, but not explosively. But pulverize it, such as one could expect in a PETN detonation, and just like coal dust, it can be very nasty.

Witness said...

making thousands of pagers explode is a terrorism, no matter who did it

Oso Negro said...

Achilles, I believe I understand your concern - escalation. But how much more enraged and murderous can people become who are already enraged and murderous? Sometimes an enemy needs to know they can be fucked with also. In my Dad's time in Korea, the Chinese castrated some American prisoners. The GI's retaliated by cutting the heads off some Chinese prisoners, putting their heads on stakes, and using their loudspeakers to invite them to come over and join their friends. On a practical note, fewer non-combatants were injured in Lebanon than would have been if tanks and jets were used.

Drago said...

That must have been uncomfortable for you given your democratical party's embrace of Hamas and islamic supremacists.

Robert Marshall said...

"making thousands of pagers explode is a terrorism, no matter who did it"

1. What is or is not "a [sic] terrorism" does not depend on "who did it." It depends on what was done.

2. An attack is "terrorism" when is is aimed primarily at civilians, non-combatants, and is designed to cause terror in the targeted population, rather than to attain a legitimate military objective.

3. From what is being reported, this attack was precisely aimed at Hezbollah operatives for whom these pagers were a tactical communication tool, operatives who are engaged in a form of warfare against Israel. Any collateral damage, such as one of their kids picking up dad's pager and getting fingers blown off, would be truly collateral, not intended, but not fully avoidable.

Maynard said...

How did the Mossad carry this operation out if they actually put plastic explosive in thousands of pagers? The pagers were made in Iran, from what I have heard.

Quaestor said...

Maynard, see my 7:41 comment.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Well, @Achilles, as every single member of Hezbollah is a terrorist piece of shit, and as every decent human being wants all terrorists dead or crippled, it should be obvious why we find this laugh out loud funny, and incredibly awesome.

Hezbollah recently murdered a dozen children by randomly launching rockets into Israel. Oh, let me guess, you hate Jews, so you don't have a problem with that, and don't understand why the rest of us do, either

John said...

Quaestor said: "Mossad operates a magnificently effective and deep-rooted network of agents and sympathizers inside Iran. I think Israel used that network to manufacture those pagers in compliance with their intentions to terrorize the terrorists."

I hope they got their operatives out of Iran.

Yancey Ward said...

If Ukraine managed to poison 3000 Russian soldiers by spiking their rations with fentanyl is that terrorism?

Maynard said...

Quaestor,

If that is true, the Iranian counterespionage police are rather incompetent, don't you think.

If they are that bad at their jobs, I will worry less about their nuclear program.

mikee said...

Truly there is nothing new under the sun. Gregory Peck in The Chairman (1969) has an implanted transmitter to allow the US to eavesdrop on his meetings while he is in China. It is of course fitted with a small explosive device controllable by his handlers, in case of his capture or other necessity. In the movie a serious discussion is held about using it to kill Mao when Peck meets him. There is only a small difference of technology from that ancient Cold War movie and what the terrorists experienced in Lebanon. And who knows how many Hezbollah pagers Israel has compromised into spy devices for Mossad, as well as kaboom devices?

Mason G said...

Rashida Tlaib Uninjured After Her Pager Mysteriously Explodes

https://babylonbee.com/news/rashida-tlaib-uninjured-after-her-pager-mysteriously-explodes

Butkus51 said...

Evidently a lot of balls were harmed today. So much for the 76 virgins.

TickTock said...

Hee, hee,hee

mikee said...

One other important point: Every injured person is now clearly identified for Mossad as a Hezbollah member who is important enough to have this kind of pager. Even if it was a family member injured picking up a pager for good old Dad, Dad is still identified for Mossad. Let the individual targeting of all injured Hezbollah members commence!

Freeman Hunt said...

This is brilliant. How do you target terrorists who live embedded with civilians while harming as few innocent bystanders as possible? Someone came up with an answer.

Achilles said...

If they intercepted 1000's of pagers Hezbolla ordered and installed explosives in them that is OK and Hezbolla is dumb.

If they used standard hardware to sabotage them that could target anyone then that is not good.

Big Mike said...

It’s called war, you know. And the Arabs should just surrender because the more we learn about what was done and how it was done the more obvious it is that the Jews totally outsmart them.

Ralph L said...

With all those lithium injections, they'll never be bipolar again. A lucky few won't even be unipolar.

AndrewV said...

Even if they didn't have anything to do with it, I would imagine that the guys in the Hezbollah IT department aren't long for this world in the search for a scapegoat.

The Real Andrew said...

Final message they received: “We regret to inform you that your free subscription has run out.”

Iman said...

They left their balls in el segundo

Rusty said...

Hmmmm......................................anyway.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Mikey and Freeman have nailed it here. The Mossad was able to plant PETN in a shipment of 1000s of pagers and when they went off simultaneously it: (1) identified the Hez militia embedded in society, (2) revealed their family, friends and occupations, (3) provided intelligence that could be gathered via hospital admitting records, social media posts and news reports, that (4) has allowed Israel to create a detailed Social Graph of Hezbollah.

My belief is that when an entity engages in asymmetric war, they put their "warriors" at risk, FAFO. In videos posted you can see it was almost entirely the "undercover" Hez operatives that were affected.

Rocco said...

I wonder if the pager text that triggered the explosions was “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice”

Robert Cook said...

Such columns as this reconfirm that the great majority of Althouse's readers are moral monsters, eager to cheer on ghastly murder of individuals and en masse, as long as the murdered are part of the officially categorized "bad guys," and the mass murderers are deemed to be the official "good guys."

Freeman Hunt said...

Would you prefer Israel send missiles? This is about as targeted a strike as it gets.

gilbar said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
gilbar said...

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/new-details-in-hezbollah-pager-attack-point-to-supply-chain-breach-by-israel-8cd76a60?mod=latest_headlines
Hezbollah Walkie-Talkies Blow Up Across Lebanon in Second Wave of Attacks
Hezbollah was hit Wednesday by another wave of exploding devices, as walkie-talkies used by the group blew up in homes, cars and operatives’ hands across Lebanon, people familiar with the matter said.

Robin Goodfellow said...

A-TNT

gilbar said...

Robert? now tell about Oct 7th? Any means Necessary.. right?

Oso Negro said...

Morals are a nicety for peacetime Robert, and have no place in existential struggle.

PM said...

No wonder passenger air carriers stopped allowing lithium batteries to be shipped in their holds. One bad apple spontaneously combusts and bang-o.

J. D. Canals said...

BRAVO!!!!

Robert Cook said...

"Robert? now tell about Oct 7th? Any means Necessary.. right?" No, but wholesale and indiscriminate bombing, shooting at, and killing masses of the citizenry is a war crime. (This is not to forget the decades of oppression and periodic outbreaks of violence against the Palestinians by their oppressors in the Israel government. If we were to tell this story from OUR point of view, the Palestinians are the oppressed US settlers and Israel is the merciless butcher King George III. You can be sure the Brits justified their oppressive violence against the crimes performed against the Crown by the US settlers. All war is murder, wanton murder and cruelty. All involved are made--to a degree--inhuman. Those blessed by the angels and those damned to be and live with the devils is largely a matter of one's perspective and vested interests.

Dr Weevil said...

Robert Cook thinks Hezbollah are only "officially categorized" as "bad guys", and can't admit that they are in fact terrorists, murderers, and war criminals, who mostly target civilians in Israel. Here are pictures of 8 of the 9 killed yesterday by exploding pagers: link. Notice what they have in common? All male, all military age (no children or old men), all militarily dressed, all bearded. Looks like the targeting was very precise.

Not cheering, or at least approving, the deaths of these brutal terrorists makes you a moral monster.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Obfuscating a deliberately disingenuous and, face it, pointedly partisan attempt at moral equivalence with a shitload of historical ignorance. Lame, Bob.

Robert Cook said...

Nope. It's entirely apt. In fact, the Palestinians had it worse under the Israel government than did the US settlers under the English King.

Rusty said...

You're the last person to lecture anyone about morals. You're an unprincipled buffoon.

Zev said...

The professional Israel-haters are pretending to be upset that some civilians were hurt.
They're fine with Hezbollah shooting 1000s of rockets at civilian town all year, but this is a bridge too far.

Rusty said...

No they didn't. You're lying. If it were true there would be no Palestinians in Israel.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

They set up a pager company, that had a license from a Taiwanese pager company. They they proceeded to make Pagers for years.
Then they got Hezbollah to order ~4000 pagers from them.
Special pagers, that let the Mossad know where they were, all the pages sent, all the pages received, oh, and that would blow up on command.
The latest story I've heard is that some Hezbollah members started to get suspicious about the pagers, forcing Israel to give up the intel source and blow them all up

Glad to see you're not upset that Israel targeted terrorists, and I apologize for the charges