RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/09/more-on-operation-grim-beeper.php

Major hat tip to Michael Doran of the Hudson Institute for coming up with “Operation Grim Beeper” for Hezbollah’s exploding devices, while pointing out that this is a modern version of a very old story:

This is one of the most astonishing intelligence operations in history. It is a reworking of the story of the Trojan Horse for the digital age, and it deserves to become nearly as legendary as its iconic predecessor.

It’s going to be a while—maybe years, if ever—before we learn the complete story. The Telegraph offers some thoughts on how it went down that may turn out to be correct, and this part in particular stands out:

“Everything starts with identifying an opportunity,” says one former officer in Unit 81, the secret Israeli weapons division.

“Here, that was Hezbollah’s request to purchase pagers because they wanted to avoid using cellular mobiles because they can all be hacked and traced. But the pager is a device that we can easily control – basically you know how to get into the network and transmit whatever you want to transmit. So when we saw the order for the pagers, they said: ‘OK, we now have an opportunity to put something that we want inside those pagers.’

“Operation-wise you need to think about how to control the whole process. And we know that those pagers came out of a factory in Hungary, but it might be that those pagers left the factory in their original condition. But then maybe the customs diverted it, a delay for a couple of days because of customs issues, and then the [operations team] took care of [inserting the boobytrapped devices]. It might be that the European company is an innocent company. . .

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20947/hamas-confident-in-winning

O]ne of the key fronts in this war is not in the Middle East. It’s in the United States.

[T]he political battle over the war in Gaza has been going pretty much the way the terrorists wanted it to. That’s reflected in Mashaal’s confidence, as well as Hamas’s negotiating tactics and its strategy in Gaza. After Oct. 7, the terrorists have been doing nothing but playing for time. And they expected that the time they needed to outlast the Israeli offensive would be provided to them by Israel’s closest ally.

President Joe Biden’s initial response to the Oct. 7 massacre was to join Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in saying that the only proper response to this atrocious crime was for Hamas to be “eliminated.” But almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth, Biden began to slowly back away from that position.

Over the next several months, as Israel’s counter-offensive into Gaza began, the United States played a double game. On the one hand, Washington continued to supply Jerusalem with munitions badly needed by the IDF. Eventually, however, it was reported that the Pentagon slow-walked its delivery to maintain leverage over the Israelis.

While the public pressure on Israel was bad, even worse was the duress the administration was employing against Netanyahu behind the scenes as it sought to delay every Israeli effort at finishing off the terrorists.

Administration officials were soon parroting the defeatist line about Hamas being an “idea” that could not be defeated, rather than a terrorist force that could be eliminated. Plenty of “ideas” have been militarily defeated, such as Nazism, which didn’t survive the defeat of Adolf Hitler’s genocidal regime. But to Americans and Israeli liberals, Hamas is regarded as an eternal force. By adopting this position, the opportunity to convince Palestinians to give up their fantasies about Israel’s elimination was thrown away and their century-long war on Zionism prolonged.

As Mashaal told the Times, Hamas viewed all of this as encouragement for its plan to simply… hold out until U.S. and international pressure — heightened by the anti-Israel bias of the mainstream media — forced Israel to stand down and allow the Islamists to emerge as the victor in the war.

The families of the remaining hostages and Netanyahu’s political opposition now seek to pressure him to give up the war and sign a ceasefire agreement, even if it means essentially handing Gaza back to Hamas and ensuring a repeat of the horrors of Oct. 7…. Hamas is counting on that sentiment.

But above all, Hamas views American pressure on Israel as its ace in the hole. As Mashaal pointed out, the way that the hostage negotiations have been handled by Washington has amounted to American “recognition” of Hamas as a diplomatic partner as opposed to a despised and outlawed terrorist organization. He is right about that.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/09/18/this-wasnt-a-war-crime-it-was-an-audacious-assault-on-anti-semites/

Getting your balls blown off by a primed pager has got to be the most ‘f**k around, find out’ thing that has ever happened. It took place in Lebanon yesterday. To the approval of both supporters of Israel and meme-makers everywhere, thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah operatives suddenly exploded. The footage coming out of Lebanon is extraordinary. A man’s trouser pocket erupting in a supermarket, a man writhing in agony in the middle of the road after his trusted comms device turned on him. The battle of the pagers will surely be recorded as one of the most unusual and audacious acts in the entire history of human warfare.

All eyes are on Israel, naturally. Experts suspect Mossad intercepted a massive stash of pagers destined for Hezbollah militants and planted explosive material in the batteries. Then they sent a signal, from hundreds of miles away, that caused the batteries to overheat and eventually to blow up. The planning required for such a spectacular op blows the mind – no pun intended. I know Israelophobia is the default position of the influential classes, but surely even they will admit this was an ingenious way for the Jewish State to take out the adherents to a self-styled ‘army of god’ that has sworn itself to excising the ‘cancerous growth’ of Zionism from the Middle East. (They mean Jews.)

Much remains unclear about the operation. Israel has not claimed responsibility. It is reported that 12 people were killed. Tragically, two of them were children. The others included Hezbollah fighters. Around 3,000 were injured, including Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani. Of course, the West’s leftists are too busy slamming evil Israel to ask why an Iranian official was in such close proximity to a Hezbollah pager. But then, we all know why. Yet for all the questions that still hang over this techno-assault on medieval militants, some observers seem unshakeably certain about one thing: it was terrorism. It was a war crime. It was yet more proof of what a uniquely nasty nation Israel is.

Invective is flying and tears are flowing across social media. The demonic state strikes again, radicals wail.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/09/israels-critics-will-only-be-satisfied-if-it-loses/

Once again, the nation is held to impossible standards of moral perfection, even when launching a daring preemptive strike that ultimately saves civilian lives in the long run.

In June of this year, when Israel rescued four hostages alive and unharmed from Hamas captivity, I well recall the perversity of the mainstream-media coverage of the event. Instead of celebrating the audacity and bravery of an impossibly complicated mission that freed innocent civilians from the clutches of murderous terrorists, the media narrative instead became about the “collateral damage” the bloodthirsty Israelis had caused.

Fake casualty numbers were immediately announced by Hamas, to be instantly and unquestioningly spread by journalists whose credulity verged on complicity. Israel was castigated for such things as the cruel and senseless murder of Palestine Chronicle journalist Abdallah Aljamal, who happened to be holding three of the Israeli hostages in his own home when the IDF found him. It was then that I concluded that the game was rigged, and that in terms of narrative framing, Israel would forever only be able to do wrong in the eyes of the media. And I am reminded of that sobering conclusion by the emergent reaction to Israel’s latest intelligence coup, which — though more muted — tracks closely along those same lines, with the same complaints levied by precisely the same suspects.

To catch up all those folks who have been out of the loop and away from their communications devices over the past day and a half, let me start by saying: If yours didn’t explode, then congratulations! You are likely not a member of Hezbollah! Because pretty much all of theirs just did: Yesterday, the encrypted pagers of Hezbollah personnel across Lebanon simultaneously exploded, and just a few hours ago, their entire supply of walkie-talkies went up in an even larger series of remote detonations. Several people died outright, and many others have been brutally maimed in an area particularly sensitive to the pride of military-aged jihadists. These explosions were remotely triggered by Israel, of course, which has been fighting an all but declared war with Iran against its proxies Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, on Israel’s northern border, ever since the October 7 massacre.

https://nypost.com/2024/09/18/opinion/israel-turns-the-pager-on-terror-with-ruthless-psychological-masterstroke-against-hezbollah/

Nobody likes to see humans writhing in agony, but Israel’s daring operation to simultaneously explode pagers in the pockets of Hezbollah terrorists and their associates this week was a ruthless tactical masterstroke. 

In bloody scenes captured on video on social media, men could be seen shopping or sitting on a motorbike one minute and on the ground moaning and covered in blood the next.

At least 12 people were killed and nearly 3,000 people were injured in Lebanon Tuesday, and a similar detonation of Hezbollah walkie-talkies the next day killed another 20 people and injured 450. 

In Hezbollah’s macho culture, the psychological blow of their warriors and officials getting their genitalia blown up is acute, and so is the signal sent to Iran, that no communications devices are safe after Israel managed to kill Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh under the noses of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Tehran by tracking his whereabouts via his cellphone.

Hence the terrorists’ migration to more primitive devices like pagers.  The ingenious “Paging Hezbollah” operation was about as surgical a strike on terrorists as you could get, although Lebanese authorities claimed two innocent children were killed in Tuesday’s attack, more tragic victims of a pointless war that Hamas started on Oct. 7 last year.

Dem sympathizers 

Of course, the Hamas sympathizers in the Democratic Party like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez immediately condemned Israel with a passion that seems to evade them when Israeli civilians are raped and murdered.

There are no circumstances in which Israel is allowed to defend itself.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/israeli-intelligence-is-amazing/

Despite much saber-rattling, Iran has not yet retaliated (as it has promised) for the breathtaking operation that neutralized Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh with a bomb planted in a diplomatic safe house in Tehran. Iran’s reluctance may be at least partly inspired by the regime’s well-founded belief that acting in haste might lead to an explosive device going off uncomfortably close to one’s nether regions.

That is what happened this morning to over 1,000 Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon and Syria. “Pagers carried by hundreds of Hezbollah operatives unexpectedly exploded at about the same time Tuesday afternoon,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “The affected pagers were from a new shipment that the group received in recent days,” the dispatch continued. “A Hezbollah official said hundreds of fighters had such devices, speculating that malware may have caused the devices to explode.”

Ironically enough, Hezbollah reportedly came to rely on pagers rather than more modern communications technologies because they were thought to be safe from “Israel’s electronic eavesdropping,” which is “regarded as among the world’s most sophisticated.” Hezbollah adapted, but so, too, did the Israelis.

There is, as yet, zero confirmation of Israeli involvement in what one Hezbollah official deemed the “biggest security breach” the terror group has experienced since the October 7 massacre. But there have been a lot of security breaches of late.

In July, Israel claimed credit for the successful targeting of one top Hezbollah operative, Fuad Shukr, in a Beirut suburb. Deemed the “right-hand man” to the terror group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, Shukr was also one of the primary perpetrators of the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in which 241 U.S. service personnel were killed. According to the Journal’s reporting, Shukr received a phone call, likely from a figure in Hezbollah’s orbit turned by Israeli intelligence or directly tied to Israeli security services, instructing him to head to the seventh floor of the building he occupied, where he was taken out in a pinprick strike.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-uns-desire-to-get-rid-of-the-state-of-israel/

The UN has a three-point program to turn Israel into an international pariah and eventually make it disappear.

When I was a kid, my mother would tell me never to put money into a UNICEF collection box. She said that they don’t give anything to Israel. At the time, I was around six years old, so I did not understand much beyond cookies and baseball cards. But years later, I learned that this “aid” organization, as well as others such as Oxfam and Doctors Without Borders, actively discriminates against Israel in their activities.

The United Nations represents the pinnacle in the failed effort to create transnational governance. The UN is generally associated with scandal, failed missions, bloated budgets, and despicable countries like Iran, Cuba, and Syria sitting on human rights or women’s rights committees. The UN has taken a keen interest in Israel, with more resolutions directed against this country than pretty much all others combined. The UN has a three-point program to get rid of Israel as a nation-state:

1. Inflate the number of Palestinian refugees to overwhelm the number of Jews living in Israel.

2. Provide all forms of support to Palestinian terror groups to help them inflict destruction on Israelis.

3. Rally the countries of the world against the Jewish state.

As I have written previously, the UN, through its criminal UNRWA organization, has performed an extraordinary demographic sleight of hand. Of the millions of refugees who have had to leave their homelands in the past century, only those who actually left were classified as refugees. My grandparents and parents were refugees from Nazi Germany, and the former received some level of restitution from the post-war Federal Republic of Germany. I am not a refugee, and however hard I might try, nobody would accept my trying to be called or treated as one. Not so with the Palestinians. Of the 720,000 Palestinian Arabs who left their homes either due to the encouragement of the approaching Arab armies or under threat from the winning Israelis, there may be 10,000 left alive today. But not according to UNRWA. They count all descendants of those refugees as refugees themselves. So, a Palestinian grandchild born in Beverly Hills is considered a refugee, though he has never physically been to “Palestine” and has no interest in moving there.

https://worldisraelnews.com/4000-hezbollah-terrorists-injured-nine-killed-by-exploding-pagers/

A Reuters journalist saw 10 terrorists bleeding from injuries in Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiya, a main stronghold of Hezbollah.

More than 4,000 Hezbollah terrorists were wounded and at least eleven were killed across Lebanon on Tuesday when their communication devices exploded, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad confirmed.

Approximately 200 Hezbollah terrorists were in critical condition in 100 different hospitals, Beirut’s health minister announced about three hours after the explosions were first reported at 3.30 p.m. local time.

A Reuters journalist saw 10 terrorists bleeding from injuries in Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiya, which is the main stronghold of Hezbollah. A security source told Qatar’s Al Jazeera that explosions occurred across Lebanon—not only in Beirut but also in the Beqaa Valley and the south.

Senior Hezbollah officials were said to have been wounded in the blasts. Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was also wounded in one of the explosions, Tehran’s semi-official Mehr outlet reported.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20943/biden-israel-hezbollah

“In its boldest move, Hezbollah sent four drones toward the Karish platform several weeks ago, all of which were intercepted by the Israel Defense Forces,” reported The Times of Israel on July 31, 2022.

This was exactly what surrendering part of the gas field to Hezbollah was supposed to prevent.

“The proposal for this point involves recognizing it as part of Lebanon, with UN forces deployed there as a neutral party for both sides.” — The Jerusalem Post, September 8, 2024.

United Nations forces are absolutely useless and pull back whenever there’s any conflict. (Nor is the UN remotely neutral.)

Hezbollah will claim any territory it gets and attack anyway because that is what Islamic terrorists do. Hezbollah is backed by Iran. It’s going to attack when Tehran tells it to. As an Islamic terror group, attacking non-Muslims and dominating them is a fundamental religious obligation. So making deals with it won’t work.

Just like making deals with Hamas doesn’t work.

The appeasement lobby only has one big idea when it comes to Islamic terrorists and any other enemies:

Give them land.
When the terrorists attack anyway, explain that it’s because they didn’t get enough land last time.
Give them more land.
When the terrorists attack anyway, explain that it’s because they didn’t get enough land last time.

Israel has been living through this particular “peace process” nightmare for a generation.