The Thousands of Tiny Blasts to Prevent an All-out War

September 18, 2024

by: Ilse Strauss

Wednesday, 18 September 2024 | It is a feat that will no doubt go down in military history for its sheer innovation and brilliance. Nearly 4,000 enemy combatants hit in little more than an hour, with almost no civilian casualties and minimal structural damage—executed with an arsenal of outdated communication devices that sparked thousands of tiny blasts to prevent an all-out war.

The first boom sounded at 3:30 p.m. local time in Lebanon as the first wireless pager exploded. It was nothing big, mind you. The explosion targeted only the person wearing the pager or those closest to him. Over the course of the next hour, the blasts continued, as thousands of rigged wireless pagers exploded in the hands, pockets and bags of thousands of Hezbollah terrorists from Beirut to Damascus, with eyewitnesses telling Reuters that the last bangs sounded around 4:30 p.m. local time.

Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad told the media during a press conference last night that nine people were killed. Among the dead is the son of a Hezbollah lawmaker and the 10-year-old daughter of a Hezbollah member who was standing next to her father when the device exploded. Nearly 2,800 have been injured, the majority Hezbollah terrorists, with 200 in critical condition. Iran’s Mehr news agency confirmed that Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon Mojtaba Amani is among those injured. Images on social media show fleets of ambulances ferrying wounded terrorists to already overflowing hospitals. Health services is reportedly overwhelmed.

“After reviewing the facts, we hold the Israeli enemy responsible for the attack,” Hezbollah said in a statement last night. Israel, for its part, said nothing.

The scenes of bloodshed and Israel’s implied responsibility raise a pertinent question, especially among Christians. What would prompt Jerusalem to launch an attack to kill and injure? The answer is simple. Yesterday’s strike was yet another attempt to prevent—or at least postpone—a full-blown regional war with Hezbollah.

The Lebanese terror organization Hezbollah, or the Party of Allah in Arabic, is often described as a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC, thus a virtual extension of Tehran on Israel’s northern border. The Iranian terrorist proxy announced on October 8, the day after the October 7 massacre by fellow Iranian terrorist proxy Hamas, that it would join the fight against Israel. Hezbollah has since launched more than 7,500 missiles, rockets and suicide drones at the Jewish state, deliberately targeting civilian areas.

On July 27, 2024, an Iranian-made Falaq-1 rocket fired by Hezbollah slammed into a soccer field in Majdal Shams in northern Israel, killing 12 children and injuring 30 more. Apart from the children in Majdal Sham, nearly 25 civilians and 18 soldiers and reservists were killed. More than 300 square kilometers [115 square mi.] of land have been burned or destroyed. As a result of the incessant attacks, some 60,000 Israelis were evacuated and displaced across more than 500 locations in Israel. Overnight, thriving communities and cities turned into ghost towns. Businesses, family homes and schools were reduced to rubble. Livelihoods were destroyed and lives put on hold.

Let that sink in for a moment. If you were one of the 60,000 evacuated Israelis, forced to flee your home, your work, your life, wouldn’t you want your government to act to stop the rocket rain so that you could go home?

That brings us to Israel’s options to secure its citizens’ safety. Diplomacy has so far proven unsuccessful. According to UN Security Council Resolution 1701—which marked the end of the 2006 Second Lebanon War between Israel and Hezbollah—the terror group is forbidden from maintaining a military presence south of the Litani River, creating a buffer zone between Hezbollah and Israel. Yet the Iranian proxy blatantly violates that resolution and regularly launches attacks on Israel from near the border. US-led mediation to coax Hezbollah away from Israel’s border has proven fruitless. Last week, Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant informed the US that the time for mediation was running out. Some 60,000 displaced Israelis had been waiting for nearly a year to return home. And if diplomacy failed to put an end to the Hezbollah bombardment, Israel would be forced to stop Hezbollah themselves.

In fact, at 2:36 a.m. yesterday, Israel time, fourteen hours before the first pager exploded in Lebanon, the Prime Minister’s Office sent out a statement saying the security cabinet updated the objectives of the current war to include “returning the residents of the North securely to their homes.”

The brief statement concluded: “Israel will continue to act to implement this objective.”

Several commentators asked whether this meant a fully-fledged war erupting on Israel’s northern border. Yet war is always the last option for Israel. Keep in mind that war between Israel and Hezbollah would be much more brutal, much more destructive and much more costly for both parties than the fighting in Gaza. Perhaps most importantly, the civilian death toll on the Lebanese side would be catastrophic—not because Israel wills it but because Hezbollah does. The terror group has shown repeatedly that it is willing to sacrifice its civilians in the fight against Israel.

For example, in August, the Lebanese terror organization plotted to unleash a substantial volley of attacks on northern Israel. In preparation for the strike, Hezbollah embedded thousands of their rocket launchers within villages and towns across southern Lebanon, nestling them next to civilian sites like mosques, schools, gas stations and UN compounds.

The strike came on August 25, and included 230 rocket launches and 20 UAVs. Out of the 230 rockets and 20 UAVs that crossed into Israeli territory, 90% of the launches were from the heart of a civilian area, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said. The army backed up their claim by releasing infographics showing sites of rocket launchers in southern Lebanon located a mere 150 meters [93.2 mi.] from a school, 160 meters [99 mi.] from a mosque and 160 meters from a UN building. Dozens more were placed nearby.

Hezbollah’s placement was no accident. In fact, the terror group chose their locations with care, ensuring that if Israel retaliated to the attack, the casualties would be civilians, sparking condemnation and outrage against the Jewish state.

The IDF estimates that Hezbollah has more than 150,000 precision missiles and rockets pointed at Israel at any given time. Since the terror organization is willing to use its people as pawns by embedding its own arsenal in a civilian area, can you imagine the devastation and civilian death toll when a full-scale war erupts?

That’s where yesterday’s strike comes in. Hezbollah has long since abandoned the use of mobile phones to avoid Israel tracing their locations. Instead, the terror group has transitioned to pagers, a wireless telecommunications device that receives and displays text messages but cannot make telephone calls. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah ordered 5,000 pagers made by Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, which reportedly arrived in Lebanon earlier this year. According to the source, “The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code. It’s very hard to detect it through any means. Even with any device or scanner.”

And then, 3,000 of the pagers reportedly exploded when a coded message was sent to them, simultaneously activating the explosives.

Hours later, veteran Syrian–British journalist Faisal al-Qassim argued on social media, “What happened to Hezbollah can be classified as the greatest preemptive strike in modern history. It will be compared to Israel’s preemptive strike on the Egyptian Air Force before the Six-Day War.”

“Today, Hezbollah has thousands of paraplegics from among its elite ranks. And if Hezbollah has to go to war now, it’s wounded will not find even one free hospital bed because the hospitals are now bursting with casualties. Even worse, Hezbollah has lost its secure means of communication. Checkmate.”

It all sounds rather gruesome. And make no mistake, it is. But what must be understood is this: Israel does not rejoice over death, maiming, bloodshed or the lives of innocents lost. At the same time, Jerusalem will not sit idly by while Hezbollah rockets rain down on its cities, 60,000 Israelis remain displaced and a terror organization gears up to use its own civilians as cannon fodder to wage yet another war of public opinion.

Israel will continue to pursue the diplomatic path to avoid war. Perhaps that is the hope behind yesterday’s beeper attack: that Hezbollah will be deterred, that the terror organization will take a step back and that war will be pushed back, even if just for the time being.

Posted on September 18, 2024

Source: (Bridges for Peace, September 18, 2024)

Photo Credit: hades2k/flickr.com

Photo License: Flickr