Israel carried out its operation against Hezbollah on Tuesday by hiding explosive material within a new batch of Taiwanese-made pagers imported into Lebanon, according to American and other officials briefed on the operation.

The pagers, which Hezbollah had ordered from Gold Apollo in Taiwan, had been tampered with before they reached Lebanon, according to some of the officials. Most were the company’s AP924 model, though three other Gold Apollo models were also included in the shipment.

The explosive material, as little as one to two ounces, was implanted next to the battery in each pager, two of the officials said. A switch was also embedded that could be triggered remotely to detonate the explosives.

MBFC
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    • nonailsleft@lemm.ee
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      7 hours ago

      More like everyone’s suddenly gangsta a ‘health worker’ when their pager explodes

    • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      I agree, but they probably could’ve worded it better. The pagers were meant for Hezbollah but that doesn’t mean they exclusively went to Hezbollah.

      • nonailsleft@lemm.ee
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        5 hours ago

        So true. Could you imagine being in Hezbollah and not giving your personal Hezbollah-issued one-way pager away to someone else?

        • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          It depends a lot on how the pagers are distributed. Is it a batch that was carefully delivered to only Hezbollah members? Is that where all the pagers from that batch went?

          It’s not like the pagers are stamped with “for Hezbollah only”. I’m concerned how they were all distributed.

  • TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    You could tell Israel did it by the wanton disregard of civilian casualties and the lack of a global governmental backlash against the act.

    What I’m surprised is that were able to get them to believe the propaganda that pagers would be a much more secure communication medium.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      The articles keep repeating “Hezbollah”, but the target of the attack appears to have been the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon.

      Much like the US bombing of an Iraqi airfield to kill the Iranian diplomatic delegation to Baghdad, this appears to be an entirely illegal and recklessly deployed assassination plot aimed at one guy. The thousands of injuries and the eight dead (at least two being children under the age of 11) are just collateral damage the IDF has once again blanket-tagged as “Evil Muslim Militants”.

      • TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee
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        15 hours ago

        That article doesn’t really indicate that one person was the target, nor does making 3000 pagers or whatever they were into bombs. I find it more likely that the Iranian delegation representative was just meeting with Hezbollah at the time or received one of their pagers to stay in communication. Nothing in the articles you link suggests this was done just to target them, just that they were affected.

      • capital@lemmy.world
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        19 hours ago

        They might be in regards to emanation.

        It’s funny how confident comments like these are without really thinking it though.

        • TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org
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          9 hours ago

          Go ahead, explain yourself then, since you seem to think I’m some sort of idiot. Because I have actually done this. And no vague psuedointellectual nonsense, technical details please. Frequencies, protocols, software, that sort of thing. Let’s hear your experience in the field.

          • capital@lemmy.world
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            8 hours ago

            My brother in christ, you are still missing the point.

            So you pick up a message that reads “867-5309” and the receiver picks up their landline and calls.

            So you have a phone number now. One that you probably already had given the organization we’re talking about. If the call is staying landline and within the boundaries of their country, you aren’t picking up shit with your SDR. You need to have a physical tap somewhere.

            They swapped cell phones which send and receive for pagers that receive only. Think for 2 seconds what that means for tracking. To say nothing of also losing the fucking microphone and camera…

            There’s a reason pagers are allowed into SCIFs where phones and other devices which send are not.

            There’s more to security than your experience picking up unencrypted shit with an SDR.

            • TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org
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              3 hours ago

              I appreciate your explanation. Thank you. The point was, I’d have liked to see a comment like that from the start instead of the snarkiness. I tend to get irritated when people just insult each other going “nuh-uh” without any substance. Nobody learns shit that way. If somebody is wrong, just correct them.

              • Bennettiquette@lemmy.world
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                2 hours ago

                with all respect, i think if you reread the original comment you might find it reads in a less vindictive tone than you originally read it in. text can be notoriously bad at conveying the difference between a generalized chuckle and a targeted insult, especially when the reader has experience or passion in the topic.

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Pagers. Can’t imagine who the foremost users of pagers would be in 2024.

    *cough doctors *cough

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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      2 days ago

      I have not seen a doctor with a pager in a long time and I have spent a ton of time in hospitals over the past year. They all have smartwatches now.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I have not seen a doctor with a pager in a long time

        My friend’s a pulminologist and his hospital still uses pagers. They just never bothered to upgrade their 20 year old system to use SMS. And he says he’s partial to it, because he’s not forced to check his phone every time it rings when 99% of the messages are spam texts anyway.

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            That’s not true. Pagers are still in regular use for two reasons:

            • Hospitals hate upgrading their tech infrastructure, so they’ll sit on a 20 year old system until it falls to pieces

            • Pagers don’t get spam texts at the same volume as cell phones, so you can be confident that when your pager rings its serious and not automated solicitations.

              • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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                1 day ago

                For using deviced capable of recording audio and transmitting photos of the environment at all times. Every patient that comes through has all of their vulnerabilities exposed.

                I hope hospitals that promote such behavior get sued into the ground.

  • usedtoaster@lemy.lol
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    2 days ago

    All you kids in here crying and slobbering about war crimes. Funny thing is, I look at your comment history and you have nothing to say for Hez, Hamas, and any others.

    Go buy a pager please.

      • xor@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 day ago

        And, frankly, this is one of the least morally concerning things Israel has (presumably) done. The pagers were targeted specifically because they were used almost exclusively by Hezbollah.

        • Count042@lemmy.ml
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          23 hours ago

          They were not exclusively used by Hezbollah.

          Also, you’re equating a government with it’s militant wing.

          Is it proper to call an Israeli Doctor a member of IDF? That is what you are doing.

          Hospital administrators (A government position for non insane countries) are Hezbollah.

          • xor@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            12 hours ago

            Yeah that’s a fair point wrt non-militant roles, my assumption was that they were primarily used in the military since their purpose was to avoid the issues with mobile networks being used to track them.

            But we don’t know exactly how the devices were distributed, so you’re right that there were potentially a large number of non-military Hezbollah staff.

            • Count042@lemmy.ml
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              11 hours ago

              They’ve been doing the same for Hamas. Hospital administrator? Hamas. And so Israel bombs out their apartment killing them and their entire family. You know, back when there were apartments.

              Same for police.

              That one is what gives away Israels genocidal intent. Getting rid of police gets rid of the first line of defense against civil disorder, and the people most likely to do stuff like distribute food and supplies.

              Police very rarely end up fighting as militantsin occupied countries, too. Unless you fire them en masse, which occupying countries shouldn’t do, if they’re smart.

              Edit: We do know multiple EMT teams and doctors were hit by the beepers.

  • El_guapazo@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    How do we know these were actual terrorists and not just random people that bought a pager?

    They’ve classified infants as Hamas terrorists before so I’m a bit skeptical.

    • grozzle@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      One can reasonably assume they studied the communications for a few weeks to figure out who’s who, and then sent the detonate code to a certain list of pager numbers.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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            1 day ago

            In the context of:

            How do we know these were actual terrorists and not just random people that bought a pager?

            Yes, it matters. Because it suggests it wasn’t a random person that bought a pager.

            In the context of the morality of the situation, no, it doesn’t matter. It was not a moral act.

    • Agent641@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      The splodey ones all came from the same batches that were bought by Hezbolla-linked companies and distributed by them to hezbolla members. They didnt just ‘upgrade’ every pager made by gold apollo. Only batches destined for Hez.

      Of course, theres undoubtedly a lot of people who ended up with one of the booby trapped batch, who are just regular doctors, nurses, workers, etc, and theres no certainty that the person who was issued the pager was holding it at the time. Could have been their kid, or wife, or whatever, so the attack was still not very discriminate.

  • BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one
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    2 days ago

    This was such a cool way to kill bad guys. I hope to read more about how they did this like their Stuxnet virus blew up Iranian centrifuges

    • tuckerm@supermeter.social
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      2 days ago

      The way that they pulled off this attack is interesting from a cybersecurity standpoint, but we can’t ignore the fact that Israel had no way of knowing who was near the devices when they exploded. They very nature of this attack made it impossible for Israel to know how closely they were targeting the bad guys or how many civilians were nearby.

  • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    Thar makes a lot more sense than the headlines claiming that the pagers were “hacked” by some remote exploit.

  • Icalasari@fedia.io
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    2 days ago

    What is Israel trying to do, beat Canada’s record for war crimes added to the Geneva Convention?

    Or are they trying to piss off the Middle East enough to get them all to bomb them all at once so they can demand the US send in troops to protect them, dragging the world ever closer to WWIII because their sociopathic leader wants to genocide a people to get real estate?

      • Icalasari@fedia.io
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        2 days ago

        Canada in WWII basically invented a bunch of entirely new warcrimes

        There’s a reason Nazi Germany was terrified of Canadians and convinced they were demons sent from hell itself

  • Sundial@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    This is Israel’s version of de-escalating an escalating conflict. Disgusting animals.

    • ironhydroxide@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      Israel has a lot of computer knowledge. Maybe they think that it’s like a value in computer memory. Keep adding to it and eventually it’ll be zero again. (Or go negative)

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    So…

    They’re just casually admitting to another war crime?

    Against someone I don’t even think they’re officially at war against?

    • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      I’m as critical of Israel as any reasonable person but that’s like the one thing they did recently that was actually a (at least somewhat) targeted attack against their enemies.

      Calling that a war crime unnecessarily and dangerously dilutes the term. Leveling cities and starving the fleeing population is a war crime and a crime against humanity. Intentionally shooting civilians, children, aid workers, and journalists is a war crime. How about we focus on those, it’s not like there’s a shortage of israeli war crimes to report on.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Why would you think only valid military targets were next to these?

        Why are you still believing the IDFs first reports when the vast majority of the time they’re lying?

        • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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          1 day ago

          Why would you think only valid military targets were next to these?

          That’s… not a war crime is. I don’t want to be the guy who justifies the death of civilians, because each one is a tragedy, but unfortunately in war there is such a thing as greater evils.

          Why are you still believing the IDFs first reports when the vast majority of the time they’re lying?

          Now that’s fair. And of course we can as well point out that their whole war is self-inflicted to start with so there’s not much legitimacy to any of their acts of war, even the less illegal ones.

    • Icalasari@fedia.io
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      2 days ago

      I swear it’s got to be to drag the middle east into a massive war to maybe trigger some sort of clause that forces the US to go to war for Israel or end up with massive penalties. It’s the only thing that makes sense that isn’t just, “For the Evilulz”

      And I swear to fuck if the US was actually stupid enough to enter a deal that forces them to go to war and send troops if the entire Middle East turns on Israel…

    • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      When there are zero consequences for war crimes, the “rules based” law and order we virtue signal is completely meaningless.