Two former Israeli intelligence officials have revealed how the plot to embed Hezbollah’s walkie-talkies and pagers with explosives was 10 years in the making.
Over two days in September, Israel detonated thousands of handheld communication devices used by the terror group killing at least 42 people, including 12 civilians, and injuring at least 4,000 people.
Victims of the simultaneous explosions plot, which was carried out by Mossad and is understood to have been done on the orders of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, lost limbs, hands and the use of their eyes.
Two former Mossad agents told CBS news that Hezbollah unwittingly bought over 16,000 of the walkie-talkies ‘at a good price’ from a fake company it controlled that was named after a real Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo, more than 10 years ago following an aggressive marketing campaign at the time, while around 5,000 pagers were bought around two years ago.
Hezbollah, which has long been an enemy of Israel, used the low-grade pieces of tech to communicate with their fighters in order to stave off intelligence gathering by its foes.
One of the agents, who CBS called Gabriel, said: ‘When they are buying from us, they have zero clue that they are buying from the Mossad. We make like [the movie] Truman Show, everything is controlled by us behind the scene.’
His fellow ex-Mossad officer, who CBS called Michael, added: ‘We have an incredible array of possibilities of creating foreign companies that have no way being traced back to Israel. Shell companies over shell companies to affect the supply chain to our favour.
‘We create a pretend world. We are a global production company. We write the screenplay, we’re the directors, we’re the producers, we’re the main actors, and the world is our stage.’
One Mossad agent (pictured) said Hezbollah had no idea they were buying tampered communication devices from Israel
At least 42 people, including 12 civilians, were killed in the pager explosions in September
Gabriel claimed that each device only had enough explosive in them to hurt the users.
‘We test everything triple, double, multiple times in order to make sure there is minimum damage.’
But CBS reported that Mossad ensured the ringtone was urgent enough to compel the user to check the devices moments before they blew up.
After succeeding with its plan to embed explosives in the walkie talkies, and seeing that Hezbollah was in the market for pagers, Mossad decided to up the ante, according to the Washington Post.
The shadowy spy agency bought up masses of Taiwanese Apollo-branded pagers, piggybacking off a recognised trademark and product line with worldwide distribution and no discernible links to Israeli or Jewish interests that might’ve aroused Hezbollah’s suspicions.
The sales pitch to Hezbollah came from a marketing official trusted by the group with links to Apollo, whose name was not disclosed by the sources the Post spoke to.
She sold the terror group the AR924 model, according to an Israeli official: ‘She was the one in touch with Hezbollah, and explained to them why the bigger pager with the larger battery was better than the original model.’
One of the main selling points about the AR924 was that it was ‘possible to charge with a cable. And the batteries were longer lasting,’ the official said.
Mossad’s pagers, which weighed less than three ounces each, held a battery pack that carried a tiny amount of a powerful explosive, enough to cause severe damage.
Remnants of what is believed to be a pager carried by a Lebanese militant that detonated
Explosions rocked Lebanon to its core in mid-September
At least 40 people were killed, and thousands more injured, in Lebanon across two days in mid-September after Israel set off explosives that were embedded within communication devices
Photo taken on Sept. 18, 2024 shows a wireless communication device in the hand of a Hezbollah member, the battery of which was removed after a wireless communication device exploded during a funeral, in Beirut, Lebanon
The bomb-battery component was reportedly so carefully hidden that it evaded Hezbollah’s attempts to disassemble and analyse the devices.
Another trick up Mossad’s sleeve to ensure that as many people as possible were hurt or killed was to ensure that the signal to trigger the explosives required two hands to use.
The pagers had a special ‘encrypted messages’ function that could only be accessed if the user was holding the device with both hands, which Mossad used as cover for the instruction to detonate the explosive.
In the ensuing explosion, the users would almost certainly ‘wound both their hands,’ an official said, and thus ‘would be incapable to fight.’
But it wasn’t just Hezbollah’s fighters who were killed in the attack. Children, including eight-year-old Fatima Abdullah, were killed in the pager explosions.
The young girl was studying in her family’s kitchen in their home in the village of Saraain El Faouqa in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley when she heard a wireless pager bleep.
Her friend nine-year-old Ali Abdullah told Andalou: ‘Fatima was sitting on the sofa and was studying when the pager rang. She picked it up to give it to her father who was outside, but it exploded in her hand.’
Her aunt, also called Fatima, added: ‘Fatima had just returned from her first day of school, brimming with enthusiasm. She was a top student and loved by everyone.’
Thousands were killed and injured in the pager explosions
Scenes posted to X as scores of Hezbollah members severely injured / Israel suspected of committing pager explosions that Hezbollah use throughout southern Lebanon
The pager and walkie-talkie detonations brought Hezbollah to its knees, and last month it signed a ceasefire deal with Israel to end the bitter war.
Since then, Lebanon has begun the recovery process. Today, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister began a tour of military positions in the country’s south.
Najib Mikati on Monday was on his first visit to the southern frontlines, where Lebanese soldiers under the US-brokered deal are expected to gradually deploy, with Hezbollah militants and Israeli troops both expected to withdraw by the end of next month.
Mikati’s tour comes after the Lebanese government expressed its frustration over ongoing Israeli strikes and overflights in the country.
‘We have many tasks ahead of us, the most important being the enemy’s [Israel’s] withdrawal from all the lands it encroached on during its recent aggression,’ he said after meeting with army chief Joseph Aoun in a Lebanese military barracks in the southeastern town of Marjayoun. ‘Then the army can carry out its tasks in full.’
The Lebanese military for years has relied on financial aid to stay functional, primarily from the United States and other Western countries.
Lebanon’s cash-strapped government is hoping that the war’s end and ceasefire deal will bring about more funding to increase the military’s capacity to deploy in the south, where Hezbollah’s armed units were notably present.
Though they were not active combatants, the Lebanese military said that dozens of its soldiers were killed in Israeli strikes on their premises or patrolling convoys in the south.
The Israeli army acknowledged some of these attacks.
