Mossad's exploding pager op began 10 yrs ago with explosives in walkie-talkies. Hezbollah bought 16,000+ of these, but Mossad didn't detonate them until this yr. In 2022 Mossad began booby-trapping pagers too. Unlike walkie-talkies, which only got worn in battle, Hezbollah wore pagers all the time cbsnews.com/news/israeli-m…
To embed explosives, Mossad created pagers identical to model Hezbollah was using, but slightly larger to hold explosive. A Mossad agent claims they ran tests to determine how much explosive would injure the person carrying the pager without harming anyone next to them.
"If you push the button the only one that will get injured is the terrorist himself. Even if his wife or his daughter will be just next to him he's the only one that's going to be harmed. We test everything...multiple times in order to make sure there's minimum damage" - former Mossad agent
The pagers could not be used to track movement of Hezbollah. "This is a very stupid device by nature.... There's almost no way how to tap it. It's only receiving messages." Mossad tested ringtones to find one that would sound urgent to compel Hezbollah user to look at pager
They also tested how long it took someone to look at a pager once ringtone went off - 7 seconds on average. To convince Hezbollah to switch to the bulkier pagers, they created fake YouTube ads touting the devices as more robust than other pagers, dustproof, waterproof, long battery life
Mossad hired a Gold Apollo saleswoman who worked with Hezbollah; she offered Hezbollah the new pagers as a free upgrade to their existing ones. By Sept this year Hezbollah had 5,000 booby-trapped pagers. But there were signs Hezbollah was getting suspicious so Mossad order the devices detonated
The message users received to pagers said: "You have an encrypted message" and directed them to push two buttons to read msg. But even if user didn't push buttons, the pager exploded. The day after Mossad activated the pagers, they activated the booby-trapped walkie-talkies.
About 30 ppl died, including 2 children. About 3,000 were injured. "Those people without hands and eyes are living proof, walking in Lebanon, of 'Don't mess with us,'" former Mossad agent told 60 Minutes. "They are walking proof of our superiority all around the Middle East"
Regarding Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Mossad agent says: "If you look at his eyes [after the attack] he was defeated. He already lose the war. And his soldiers look at him...and they saw a broken leader. And this was a tipping point of the war." Nasrallah was killed days later in airstrike
60 Minutes asks Mossad agent: "So you restore your sense of superiority but what about your moral reputation? Don't you think Israel has to worry about its reputation?" Reply: "Definitely. But there is a prioritization. First you have to defend your people...and then the reputation"
After pager attack people in Lebanon were afraid to turn on air conditioners because they feared they would explode. "We want them to feel vulnerable," former Mossad agent says. "We've already moved on to the next thing. And they'll have to keep trying to guess what the next thing is"
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