What just happened in Lebanon?
Israeli terrorism has pushed an all-out war between Hezbollah and the Zionists another step closer.
In an act of pure terrorism, Israel rigged thousands of communication devices (known as pagers, which were in use before mobile phones became ubiquitous) used by Hezbollah operatives and exploded them simultaneously across Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday evening. Nine deaths have been reported so far, including a 10-year-old girl, while thousands are admitted in hospitals across Lebanon. More than 400 people are reported to be in serious condition. Many of those injured have lost limbs and parts of their face as they were reading the devices when they exploded.
The nature of these thousands of simultaneous terror attacks meant that anyone anywhere near these rigged devices was in mortal danger.
Videos and photos emerging from Lebanon have shown how unsuspecting people were either hurt grievously or lost their lives. One video shows a man shopping for fruits when the device exploded either in his pocket or a bag he was carrying, causing him to fall on the floor and in terrible pain as nearby shoppers flee.
Another video shows a man checking the device in his pocket at a cashier when it goes off, causing him to fall violently.
Within hours of the simultaneous attacks, Hezbollah issued a statement apprising the incident:
At approximately 3:30 PM on Tuesday, 17-09-2024, several communication devices known as “pagers” carried by a number of workers in various units and institutions of Hezbollah exploded. These explosions, whose causes still remain unknown, have resulted in the martyrdom of a young girl and two [of our] brothers so far, and have injured a large number of others with varying degrees of severity.
The specialized units in Hezbollah are currently conducting a comprehensive security and scientific investigation to determine the causes of these simultaneous explosions. Medical and clinical teams are also treating the wounded and injured in several hospitals across different Lebanese regions.
In a later statement, the Lebanese resistance group laid the blame on the “Israeli enemy”:
After examining all the facts, current data and available information about the sinful attack that took place this afternoon, we hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression that also targeted civilians and led to the martyrdom of a number of people and the injury of a large number with various wounds.
It is important to emphasise that Hezbollah isn’t an exclusively fighting force. It is a legitimate political party with multiple members in the Lebanese parliament. It runs civil institutions like hospitals, schools, and charities, with civilian workers who are all Hezbollah employees.
The Israeli attack didn’t differentiate between a Hezbollah fighter and a Hezbollah hospital employee. The 10-year-old dead girl was likely playing with her parent’s pager when it blew up and killed her. This was an indiscriminate attack, a textbook definition of terrorism.
There is still no clarity over how the operation was executed by the Israelis, whether they carried out some kind of a hack or explosives were implanted on all such devices.
Notably, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has repeatedly warned his cadre against using mobile phones for their potential to be used as surveillance devices to detect their locations. In his address on February 13 this year, he called them a “deadly agent”:
The mobile phone is a listening device, so we ask our brothers in the border villages and all of the south, especially the fighters and their families, to do without their mobile phones for the preservation and safety of people’s blood and dignities. The mobile phone is a deadly agent that provides specific and lethal information.
However, his warnings didn’t say anything about implanted explosives on pagers or their potential to be rigged in such a way that they would dangerously explode.
Former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden estimates that the series of simultaneous explosions are a result of implanted explosives. He wrote on Twitter:
As information comes in about the exploding beepers in Lebanon, it seems now more likely than not to be implanted explosives, not a hack. Why? Too many consistent, very serious injuries. If it were overheated batteries exploding, you’d expect many more small fires & misfires.
According to musician, researcher, and pro-Palestine activist Lowkey, the exploding devices were manufactured by Motorola, a company in bed with the Israeli defence establishment. In a Twitter thread, he explained the deep entrenchment between Motorola and the Israeli security apparatus. The main takeaway is that Motorola in collaboration with the Israeli military built a network in-house use that would “prevent counter-surveillance by resistance forces in the region.”
The details of this case of exploding devices will likely only be revealed once Hezbollah conducts its investigations.
Israeli propagandist and pretend-journalist Barak Ravid, who previously had a stint with the IDF and was an Israeli army reservist until March 2023, wrote in Axios that the terror attacks were green-flagged by Netanyahu and senior Israeli ministers:
The operation was approved earlier this week during security meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior members of his cabinet and the heads of the security services, a source with knowledge said.
It took place a day after U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein visited Israel and warned Netanyahu of the consequences of a major escalation in Lebanon.
On Tuesday, Netanyahu and Israel’s Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant spent several hours at the IDF command center in Tel Aviv, an Israeli official said.
Prelude to an all-out war?
This marks the most serious escalation yet since Hezbollah and Israel started a daily exchange of fire on October 8 last year. This is as close as one can get short of an open declaration of war, which Israel already sort of did on Monday, when Netanyahu added the return of settlers in the Israeli north as one of his war goals.
According to The Times of Israel:
“The safe return of the residents of the north to their homes” has now been added as a fourth objective to the war, the PMO said in a statement.
“Israel will continue to act to achieve this goal,” the statement said following a late-night meeting of the security cabinet in Tel Aviv.
The only way for the settlers to return to their homes would be the end of the genocide in Gaza. Hezbollah has made it abundantly clear time and again that it opened its support front for the Palestinian resistance in Gaza; the day Israel closes its Gaza slaughterhouse, Hezbollah’s guns will fall silent and Israeli squatters in the north could go back to their stolen dwellings in the historic northern Palestine.
However, Israel has shown no appetite for a ceasefire — continuously foiling any chance of reaching an agreement with the Palestinian resistance for an exchange of prisoners — and has continued to escalate tensions with Hezbollah. In such a situation, the only possibility of the settlers returning to the north would be a decisive win in a war against Hezbollah.
In effect, Netanyahu wants a full-scale war with Hezbollah. This latest escalation appears to be a step in just such a direction. The build up has been there all week.
A report in The Times of Israel from on September 14 said that top Israeli defence officials remain keen on “a major operation” in Lebanon: “Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and IDF chief Herzi Halevi this week warned that Israel needed to turn its focus to Lebanon and prepare for a major operation.” The paper added: “An unnamed security source told Channel 12 news Friday that Israel ‘should prepare for a long war’ in the north that could incur heavy costs.”
Two days later, Israeli war minister Gallant told US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin that a war is imminent in so many ways. “The possibility of a settlement in the north is passing. Hezbollah continues to tie itself to Hamas. The direction is clear,” Gallant told Austin.
Yet Gallant’s head has been on the chopping block because he isn’t belligerent enough for a war with Hezbollah.
Recent history
Israel has been keen on launching a full-scale war with Hezbollah for months, but the simmering tensions have remained relatively contained as the two sides have exchanged daily blows. The Israelis have killed over 400 Hezbollah fighters since the Lebanese resistance opened its support front for the Palestinian resistance in Gaza on October 8. In return, Hezbollah’s attacks on the Israeli north has rendered the region a veritable ghost town as hundreds of thousands of squatters have fled and are being rehabilitated in various hotels across Israel.
Tensions have heightened every now and then as Israel has continued a campaign of assassinating top Hezbollah officials. The killing of top commanders Abu Talib and Hajj Abu Nimah in June and July, respectively, saw intense retaliation from Hezbollah as it increased its area of attacks and scorched northern Israel with intense firing.
But it didn’t deter the genocidal Israelis. They subsequently killed Nasrallah’s right-hand man Fuad Shukr on July 30 by bombing a residential building in the Dahiye suburb of Beirut. This time Hezbollah’s retaliation came three weeks later when on August 25 it launched over 300 low-cost rockets to overwhelm Israeli defences before firing drones to their intended high-value military targets in Glilot and Ein Shemer. The former houses the elite Unit 8200 while the latter is an air base.
The extent of the damage caused by Hezbollah’s strikes were never made public, as Israel put a gag order on reporting on the events of the day. However, it has been suspected that the damage was significant. A report in the Lebanese outlet Al Mayadeen, citing “European security sources” said that Hezbollah’s attacks killed 22 officials and injured dozens more.
The true extent of the damage is unlikely to be revealed anytime soon, but the subsequent resignation of Brig. Gen. Yossi Sariel, the commander of the IDF’s Unit 8200, was interpreted as an admission of significant damage caused by the August 25 operation.
Nasrallah declared the attacks — which he termed the “Day of Arbaeen” operation — a success.
What happens next?
Israel has undoubtedly hurt Hezbollah considerably with its terrorism today. It’s unlikely that the Lebanese resistance was expecting its closed communication channel to be compromised to such a degree that it would be exploited so spectacularly. Hezbollah will still need some time to assess the full scale of its losses and intelligence failure that led to such an unprecedented attack.
Faced against an immoral, unethical, terrorist organisation masquerading as a country, Hezbollah has shown considerable restraint for nearly a year. It is unlikely that it will take its gloves off now, without a full assessment of its failures.
Amal Saad, a historian who has extensively researched Hezbollah, believes that today’s Israeli attack is supposed to act as a deterrent for the Lebanese resistance against launching a full-scale war. “The operation appears to have been designed as a major spectacle potentially serving dual purposes: to demoralise Hizbullah’s cadres and instill uncertainty while acting as a coercive deterrent aimed at altering their force positioning along the border,” she wrote on Twitter.
Axios’s pretend-journalist Ravid outlined the same thinking on the Israeli side:
The Israeli operation was aimed at undermining Hezbollah’s confidence and creating a feeling in the ranks of the militia that it is totally penetrated by Israeli intelligence services, the source said.
As has been the norm with the members of the Axis of Resistance when dealing with Israeli terrorism over the past year, Hezbollah’s response is inevitable. It said as much in its communique announcing Israel’s hand in the terror attacks:
This treacherous and criminal enemy will certainly receive its just punishment for this sinful aggression, from where it expects it or not, and Allah is witness to what we say.
It remains to be seen when that “just punishment” comes and whether it sets the Middle East alight after being on the burner for nearly a year.
This is my 100th article on this Substack!
When I wrote the first one in the first week of this (still ongoing!) genocide with a restless mind, seething anger, teary eyes, and a broken heart, I never thought that I would still be here 11 months on. I don’t think any one of us would have thought that a live-streamed genocide with some of the most brutal and depraved acts of the Israeli genocidaires played out and extensively documented in full view of the world could have gone on for this long. Yet, here we are, nearing the first anniversary of a genocide in the year 2024 when no one can claim they didn’t know.
I started this project primarily to tell my readers — who, all thanks to God, have grown beyond my wildest imagination (I didn’t have an email list; the first newsletter went to just one email: my own) — about the sufferings of the Palestinians, who, in the most twisted inversion of reality imaginable, have been portrayed as the aggressors while the Israeli butchers and their Western arms dealers have been portrayed as the good guys for over a century.
This newsletter is also an attempt to counter the all-pervasive nature of Israeli propaganda courtesy of the Zionist capture of every global institution of any following (I have a half-completed piece discussing the deeply-entrenched nature of Israeli propaganda lying in my drafts folder for over five months now! I hope to get back on it soon).
Call me naïve, but I never thought opposing a genocide would cost me my job (my only source of income). I learnt my lesson the hard way. Nevertheless, I remain committed to the idea with which this project started and will keep telling the Palestinian story from all the aspects that I have a decent grasp on.
Your readership and feedback have been invaluable on the nearly quarter of a million words I have produced so far. Some of your comments have brought tears to my eyes. I will remain forever grateful to you for spending valuable minutes of your life reading my words and leaving comments about their impact on you. I can’t thank you enough. I plan to ramp up my output in the coming days and weeks, and hope that you will stick around with me for there is still some distance to go — but much shorter than on October 6 — before Palestine is free, from the river to the sea!
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Thank you!
Israel's war with Hezbollah looks imminent
On Tuesday, June 18, Hezbollah released a bombshell of a video. The nine and a half-minute footage shot from a reconnaissance drone showed that the Lebanese resistance had completely mapped out the Israeli port city of Haifa, including all its military installations, fuel reserves, warships, submarine stations, weapons manufacturing factories, the Iron …
I'm not sure exactly what detailed input to type anymore in continual appalled repulsion to such bottomless depravity, so I suppose I'll just keep the summary brief: hexagramic Nazism is a cancer to humanity.
Your 100th article? Congrats on your publication's traction and success, my friend; at the same time, I'm sorry to hear that your hundredth article was painfully spent covering a brutal terrorist attack which (one would at least *hope*) humanity should've never allowed to happen. I'm sure I can't truly relate to/feel the horrified extent of what you endure everyday; may it be that you find as much peace and comfort as possible. One day, the Nazi Occupation Government WILL be eternally destroyed for good.
insidious i can stand anymore just when its clear they have reached the pits bottom they dig deeper into hell. They replace the Nazis ea day by another depravity. i must go back and read all i had to speak after the pager video the idea is anathema in any “civilized “ place like razors in apples ? (a scare tale for children on halloween) we truly are in a mentally ill world.