Are Exploding Pagers an Escalation? By Howard Bloom
Tuesday the world was shocked by one of the strangest war stories of the century.
Between 2,800 and 4,000 pagers went off in the hands or pockets of Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon as the fighters went about their daily lives. Yes, pagers, old fashioned pagers, exploded.
In fact, pagers blew up from Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, and its Beqaa Valley all the way to Damascus in Syria. Killing 32 people and wounding at least 4,000. Including 19 members of Iran’s military, its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in Damascus. And injuring the Ambassador of Iran to Lebanon, who lost his eye.
Then, a day later, as a crowd of thousands was attending the funeral of four of the pager-explosion victims in Beirut, another round of detonations went off. This time the exploding devices were walkie-talkies, home solar systems, and fingertip scanners.
Again, the targets pinpointed by these explosions were members of a group committed to a war crime, committed to a genocide, a group committed to the annihilation of Israel. The target was a group that also claims the United States is the Great Satan, a group that has killed over 260 Americans. The bullseyes of the exploding gadgets were the terrorists of Hezbollah.
How did these pagers and walkie-talkies get into Hezbollah terrorists’ hands?
Five months ago, Hezbollah decided that smart phones were not safe. Israel’s intelligence services could capture smart phone signals and use them to read a Hezbollah member’s location and to listen to his phone calls.
The head of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, declared in February that, “The phone that we have in our hands…is a listening device, … the phone in your hands, in your wife’s hands, and in your children’s hands is the [Israeli intelligence] agent.” In other words, your phone is an Israeli spy. Urged Nasrallah, “Bury it, Put it in an iron box and lock it.”
But there was a better solution. Hezbollah purchased 5,000 rugged Gold Apollo A-924 pagers with an 85-day battery life made in Hungary. However, there was a hitch.
The Hungarian company manufacturing the pagers and sending them to Hezbollah, BAC Consulting, was an Israeli front.
Meanwhile, two top officials of the United Nations, which has a despicable bias against Israel, claimed the exploding pagers and walkie-talkies were a war crime.
Many others said that they were an escalation of the war in the Middle East.
But were the exploding pagers really an escalation?
In reality, the exploding pagers, walkie-talkies, home solar power systems, and Hezbollah fingertip scanners were a de-escalation of the Middle East war. Yes, a de-escalation. Why?
Because half of the story is missing from the mainstream media’s coverage of the Middle East. The most important missing piece is the war that Hezbollah has been waging against Israel every day since the Hamas atrocities of October 7th.
Remember, Hamas is to Israel’s south. Hezbollah is to Israel’s north. Hamas and Hezbollah are the jaws of a vice with Israel locked in between them.
In the months since Hamas started the Middle East war with the rape, torture, and slaughter of Israelis, Hezbollah has fired 8,500 rockets and drones at Northern Israel. Yes, you heard that right: 8,500 rockets and drones. And Hezbollah has frequently launched as many as 100 rockets and drones in a single day.
As you know, Israel has an extraordinary air defense system, the Iron Dome. But despite the Iron Dome, many of these Hezbollah rockets and drones have gotten through. Their warheads have destroyed houses, burned the crops in farm fields, and killed civilians.
More important, Hezbollah rockets and drones have driven 80,000 Israelis from their homes. They’ve turned 80,000 Israelis into displaced persons, into internal refugees. So anything Israel can do to stop Hezbollah’s attacks is deeply needed.
For the last two months, an Israeli invasion of Lebanon has seemed inevitable. But a full-scale invasion of Lebanon is an escalation that even Israel does not want.
Instead, it blew up pagers in the pockets of Hezbollah terrorists.
Which is the real escalation, exploding pagers or Hezbollah’s barrage of 8,500 rockets?
References:
Saudi Arabia:
Iran:
Israel:
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-820644
The United States:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/world/middleeast/israel-exploding-pagers-hezbollah.html
https://www.wired.com/story/walkie-talkie-explosions-hezbollah/
https://www.wired.com/story/pager-explosion-hezbollah/
https://apnews.com/live/lebanon-syria-pagers-hezbollah-updates?os=vb
https://gizmodo.com/everything-we-know-about-lebanons-exploding-pagers-2000500259
Alex Selsky, Israel Sends a Message of Strength and Deterrence: The Precise Strike On Thousands of Hezbollah Pagers Shows Israel’s Capability to Strike Anywhere, Middle East Forum, September 17, 2024, https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-forum-observer/israel-sends-a-message-of-strength-and-deterrence
Is Hezbollah less dangerous to the United States?
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https://hezbollah.org/resources/party-god-and-its-greatest-satan
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Howard Bloom of the Howard Bloom Institute has been called the Einstein, Newton, Darwin, and Freud of the 21st century by Britain’s Channel 4 TV. One of his eight books–Global Brain—was the subject of a symposium thrown by the Office of the Secretary of Defense including representatives from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT. Bloom’s work has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Psychology Today, and the Scientific American. He has appeared on Saudi and Iranian TV over forty times. Bloom does news commentary at 1:06 am Eastern Time every Wednesday night on 545 radio stations on the highest-rated overnight syndicated talk radio show in North America, Coast to Coast AM. For more, see http://howardbloom.net.
