It All Started Two Years Ago: The Alleged Israeli Involvement in the Planning of the “Pager Bomb” and Past Precedents Made into a Movie

Thousands of pager-style communication devices exploded in Lebanon on the 17th of this month. Twelve people were killed, including members of the Islamic Shiite militant group Hezbollah, and more than 2,700 were injured.

On the following day, the 18th, a transceiver and other equipment exploded near the capital Beirut, killing 20 people and injuring more than 450. The shocking attacks, which used general communications equipment, prompted UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to express strong concern, saying, ‘There is a serious risk of a dramatic escalation.'” (International Correspondent)

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in the series of attacks, but Hezbollah has suggested retaliation, claiming that Israel is responsible. Amid fears of an expanding front with Hezbollah, which has expressed solidarity with the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, international journalist Toshihiro Yamada analyzes, “The Mossad must be involved in this operation. Mossad” is Israel’s intelligence agency and is considered to be the second most sophisticated spy group in the West after the CIA.

Bomb Attacks of the Past Made into Movies

Using communication devices as bombs is an unfamiliar method, but according to Mr. Yamada, “Israel has long been good at using communication devices in attacks.

The most famous was in retaliation for the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Mossad attacked Mahmoud Hamshari, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, who was stationed in France, by planting a bomb in his home telephone. This retaliation was made into a movie directed by Steven Spielberg. Similarly, cell phone bombs were used in the 1996 assassination of Yahya Ayyash, a Hamas bomb maker, by the Israeli Public Security Agency.

Compared to these attacks, the current attack is unique in that the bombs were detonated simultaneously without specifying the target. The purpose was to demoralize Hezbollah while minimizing collateral damage to civilians because of the small amount of explosives used compared to air strikes.”

Mossad is also skilled in IT warfare, and between 2009 and 2010 destroyed uranium enrichment centrifuges at an Iranian nuclear fuel facility using only a cyber attack with a computer worm called “Stuxnet. The technology is evolving day by day, and the one used to assassinate Dr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the head of Iran’s nuclear program in ’20, was an AI-controlled machine-gun type killer robot, which was operated via satellite communication.

In the face of Mossad’s high technological capabilities, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, concerned about the risk of his location being discovered by tapping his phone or using GPS, announced a policy of using pagers for communication from around February. This has been taken in stride.

But how was it possible to plant explosives in thousands of pagers? This operation, described as a modern-day “Trojan horse,” actually began more than two years ago. Mr. Yamada continues.

Although the address of the manufacturer, Hungarian company BAC Consulting, is in the 14th district of Budapest, the government claims that it has no manufacturing base in Hungary, so we have no choice but to assume that it is a paper company. According to the New York Times, BAC began exporting pagers to Lebanon in the summer of 2010, and increased the volume of exports this summer after Rabbi Nasrallah called for an end to the use of smartphones.

It seems that Israel was also having BAC Company do its usual business in preparation for the disguise operation, and that it was also operating at least two other separate paper companies. In addition to having high-performance explosives planted at the manufacturing stage, it is suspected that there were spies within Hezbollah who were able to influence Hezbollah’s decisions on where to purchase the pagers, right from the stage when Hezbollah placed the order.”

The Key to the U.S. Presidential Election

The fear that communication devices have been used in a series of attacks is great, and the militants’ means of communication should be cut off and they should be driven into a corner.

What will happen in the Middle East in the future? Mr. Yamada believes that the outcome of the U.S. presidential election will have a major impact.

If Harris is chosen as the candidate, he will continue the Biden administration’s line on Middle East policy,” he said. However, former President Trump is close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and if he is reelected, his influence on neighboring countries will make it easier for Israel to move, and the conflict between Israel and its neighbors is likely to subside.

On April 20, the Israeli military announced that it had bombed the Lebanese capital of Beirut, killing Commander Ibrahim Akil, a senior member of Hezbollah’s military wing. As if in response to Israel’s growing militancy, Hezbollah declared unrestricted warfare. The war continues to escalate into a quagmire.