The news out of Lebanon yesterday - that thousands of pagers issued by Hezbollah to its members exploded simultaneously, killing a few and injuring thousands - makes one wonder: what's next?
I don't believe Israel would have destroyed Hezbollah's supposedly secure internal communications network just to "send a message" (although I had to laugh at a cartoon showing exploded pagers with the caption, "Can you hear me now?"). That would be to reveal one of its most sophisticated intelligence and sabotage operations for no good reason. It's not as if Hezbollah needed any reminder that Israel is on the verge of open war in Lebanon - that's been made very clear in public statements by Israeli political and military leaders in recent weeks. This is far more likely to have been a precursor to some additional action, possibly military, to which Hezbollah will be much less able to respond, because it can't alert its fighters quickly and securely enough.
It may also be a warning to Iran. An Iranian-funded underground weapons factory in Syria, making missiles for delivery to Hezbollah, was destroyed by Israeli ground troops last week, demonstrating that Iran and its allies can't stop Israel destroying their supposedly secret facilities almost at will. Iran controls, funds and arms Hezbollah. Is yesterday's attack a message to Iran that its surrogate forces are as vulnerable as its arms production facilities?
By the time you read this, further developments may have taken place. All we can be sure of is that the various sides in the Middle East hate each other with a virulence that many in the West simply can't understand. Many extremists on all sides there regard it as (literally) a holy war to eradicate each other. The "pager war" is merely the latest in a long, long line of hostilities that shows no sign of ending. Please God, let it not lead to an all-out meltdown in that part of the world, complete with an exchange of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons (all of which are held by different parties to the conflict). There will be no winners if that happens . . . only victims.
Peter
20 comments:
Israel is reported to be using pager exlplosion related images from news and social media, data on hospital admissions and a whole lot of etcetera to gain detailed knowledge about Hesbollah's personnel and structure.
I have to admit - it's a pretty clever tactic.
I sincerely hope the final readout message was, "yippee-ki-yay, MF."
A masterful move on the part of Israel. Taking terror to the terrorists. Now they will see any supplied device as a potential plant by the enemy. The memory of the threat will last long after the capacity to boobytrap communication tools is prevented. The Israelis have been threatened by the Houthis firing missiles and perhaps they want to neutralize the hezbollah front in advance of counterattacking the Houthis. If they can pull off individual attacks via rigged pagers on such a massive scale, the Iranian mullahs might hesitate to join the scrum right now. Israel has already demonstrated that they're not really safe in Tehran, and they aren't ready to die yet despite the promise of Heaven. And quite a few people are looking at their smartphones today and wondering what else these black boxes might do.
rick m
I wonder how many of our military workers who have been issued phones and pagers now look at them askance and debate whether or not to carry them anymore. I certainly would wonder and probably decide to just leave it in my desk drawer where it won't bother anyone. especially me.
It points out that all connected devices with lithium batteries can be remotely controlled to over heat and burn.
Musk a few years ago enabled Tesla cars batteries for extended range for a hurricane.
If mossad can do it so can anyone shortly.
Amusing that even your desktop has a lithium battery installed to keep the internal clock running during unplugged situations.
In today's news (insert your town here) a cellphone malfunction burning down a noted bloggers home.
Still funny?
overheating lithium batteries (especially small ones in pagers) may heat up, but they won't explode
and you aren't going to be able to time any overloading of batteries, or trigger a message within seconds of them.
@Peter, who are the idiot Jews who are clamoring for extermination of all Muslims (who outnumber then several hundred to one)
There are ones who are far more willing to fight than others, but I am not aware of any who claim they want to eliminate the entire population of the 50 or so Muslim countries.
to paraphrase Dennis Prager, if the Muslims put down their weapons, there would be peace in the middle east. If the Jews put down their weapons, there would be the peace of the grave as after all Jews were killed.
David Lang
In the words of Mel Brooks: "Comedy is when you fall in an open sewer and drown. Tragedy is when I get a paper cut."
It is always funny, till it happens to you. (See Bill Cosby, Fat Albert, and the Frankenstein Statue.)
Not the first tim Israel has done this. They once got a rigged w/c4 phone into the hands of an enemy agent & detonated it in his ear.
Hezbollah fires thousands of rockets into Israel, and that barely gets a mention in the news. Israel fights back with cleverly targeted tactics, and they're "evil genocidal maniacs". The newsweasels never change.
And now walkie-talkies are exploding. Terrorist paranoia must be ramping up to unheard of levels.
A couple of points... First, it's now known that that the pagers used alkaline batteries. Second, even lithium batteries can't be nade to instantly explode by an incoming signal; it's pretty well established that the pagers (and now, walkie-talkies) were preloaded with explosives, which *can* be made to explode by an incoming signal. So unless you think that every cellphone includes explosives as part of the package (the ones I've replaced batteries in, including a couple of smartphones, certainly didn't), they can't "do it to us". We're almost certainly OK WRT that problem, at least for now.
"Second Wave of Blasts Sweep Through Lebanon as Hezbollah Walkie-Talkies Suddenly Explode"
https://thelibertydaily.com/second-wave-blasts-sweep-through-lebanon-as-hezbollah/
Indeed. Consider that Messiah said He wasn't coming back until His nation asked Him back....the devil therefore wants to exterminate all Hebrews, to forestall his own doom. See Psalm 2.
Yes. The Hezbollah are shooting rockets into Israel hourly. At some point Israel will save screw it and conduct a major bombing campaign. I don't think that they will use canned sunshine…
According to this - https://www.timesofisrael.com/use-it-or-lose-it-israel-reportedly-set-off-pagers-amid-fears-plot-was-exposed/ - it seems that some Heznoballah members had become suspicious so Israel figured it was use it or lose it.
If true this would explain why they did it now and didn't immediately follow up with an invasion. This was the kind of thing you'd love to do to an enemy ten seconds before the tanks roll and the bombs start falling, not randomly in the middle of an afternoon with no follow-up.
There was no target designation or identification whatsoever. The only "precaution" taken was that the pagers only exploded when someone (anyone) tried to stop the vibrating and beeping. Which is why children died as well, and innocent people standing near the "targets" were severely injured as well. Indiscriminate use of explosives without regard for possible "collateral damage", or even with the intent of causing maximum carnage and collateral damage? That's called terrorism. And they've been blowing up solar power systems and iphones as well, apparently. The people who arranged this "tactic" and the people who approved it are moronic monsters. Stupid and evil is a dangerous combination.
Ah yes - the Grim Beeper comes calling ...
"There was no target designation or identification whatsoever."
Believe whatever you wish, but that seems to be incorrect. The pagers were reportedly bought by Hezbollah terrorists, for Hezbollah terrorists; they were not for sale or distribution to anyone else. That is as close targeting as is possible in this scenario.
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