News about the IDF attack on Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon Tuesday resulting in at least nine deaths and significant injuries to thousands of other fighters has slowly been leaking out. The slow pace is understandable, as Israel clearly doesn't want to let all of their cats out of the bag at once, but more details continue to come to light. These include general descriptions of not only how the explosives operated, but also how they were triggered. First of all, the message that all of the fighters received was disguised to appear as if it was coming from senior Hezbollah leadership. Further, the pagers were rigged in such a way that a coded message would cause the batteries inside the pager to overheat, triggering the explosives that were hidden inside. This is turning out to be one of the most effective mass attacks in the history of counterterrorism, not to mention being unintentionally hilarious in some ways.
From the NY Post:
The exploding pagers that wounded thousands of Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon Tuesday were reportedly detonated by a message impersonating the leaders of the recognized terrorist group.Hezbollah militants all across Lebanon and parts of Syria received a message that appeared to be sent by the group’s leadership to their new pagers at 3:30 p.m. But in reality, the fake message was the trigger that set off explosives hidden in the devices, officials told the New York Times.The message triggered the batteries inside the pagers to overheat and ignite the explosives, sources told Sky News Arabia.
As mentioned above, Israel is in no hurry to release all of the specific details as to how they managed to pull this off, but it was devastatingly successful. Killing nine fighters (technically eight fighters and one child, unfortunately) wouldn't make that big of an impact, but the thousands of other fighters who were injured won't be taking to the battlefield anytime soon. Local outlets describe fighters having their hands blown off or suffering grievous wounds to their faces, thighs, and groins. (Ouch.) The injuries impacted all of the places where one might typically carry a pager. That's going to make it challenging to carry around weapons or bombs to use against civilian targets.
The triggering message that the pagers received was also rather brilliant. Rather than a paging signal from some random caller, the incoming message looked like it came from the senior leaders in the terror group. That's not the sort of call that you simply let go to voicemail. The fighters all suddenly began hearing an urgent tone suggesting that orders were coming in from the top, so they were all simultaneously grabbing for their pagers when they began exploding.
The strategy was almost cartoonish in its simplicity. It's somewhat reminiscent of an old-time Tom & Jerry comic where the mouse delivers a bomb to the cat with a picture of a fresh fish taped to the front of it. What's this? A fish for me? Awesome! (Boom!) That's another reason that Israel wouldn't want the details to be made public too quickly. If these jabronis were dumb enough to fall for this, who knows what sort of bait they might bite on next time? In any event, it was a genius plan.
Not everyone is quite as excited about this stroke of genius on the part of Israel. The WaPo warns of "grave implications" of the pager attack. The "ominous implications" they are warning of seem to focus on the fact that Hezbollah will feel forced to respond with further attacks of their own. But does that make any sense to anyone who has been watching all of this unfold? Are we to believe that Hezbollah wasn't already planning its next attack against Israel? That's all they ever do. It's the reason they exist. If there are "ominous implications" for anyone here, it would seem to be for Hezbollah's fighters. It's considerably harder to pull off an attack when you have gaping holes in your leg or groin and it's difficult to wield a firearm with no hands.
Hezbollah lost the functional use of thousands of its fighters in a single afternoon. Janes Defense analysts estimate that Hezbollah has approximately 20,000 fighters in various states of readiness. They just lost a massive percentage of that force in a single day. This is a time to celebrate, not mope around. The fight is far from over, but for now we can chalk one up for the good guys.
