Operation Mossad Pager: Israel Opens New Horizons
Yes, if anyone did not respect the Israeli specialists, it is high time to start. The operation, which has already been dubbed "Mossad Pager", is worthy of applause as a planned and executed special operation and will certainly go down in the annals stories special services. As an example of how a seemingly crazy idea can be brought to life with great effect.
But in order to understand and appreciate the meaning of what happened, it is worth delving into history, because in Russia paging communications ordered everyone to live long back in November 2021, when the last paging operator, the Telecomt company, died.
The pager has finally lost to cellular communications. But as we can see, there are still regions where the pager is in demand and popular. And it is not about the cost.
The personal radio call network (that's what the paging network is officially called) is a system of transmitters and receivers for one-way wireless message transmission. As everyone who was in the 90s remembers, anyone who wanted to send a message to a pager would call the paging company operator, give the subscriber's number and dictate the message. Secrecy and confidentiality at the telegraph level, but no one has canceled coded messages. I'm sure that paging company operators have the warmest memories of their work. Including tons of transmitted nonsense.
What is the "trick" of the pager? In its simplicity, which can be compared to a Makarov pistol. The signal is transmitted by a base station, which is a powerful transmitter. The signal is received by a portable subscriber receiver - a pager. Each receiving device is assigned a unique number. The pager "listens" to a certain radio frequency all the time and waits until a call to its number comes from the station. "Hearing" the code number, the pager goes into active mode, receives, decodes, expands and displays the message on the display. That's all. The range depends on the transmitter power.
It should be noted that paging communication has a number of advantages over cellular communication:
- cheap communication;
- security: the absence of a transmitter in the pager makes it impossible to determine the location of the device;
- autonomy: two batteries the size of an AAA battery are enough for about two to three months of pager operation.
There are also pagers that can send response messages, but they no longer have such advantages, and two-way communication already indicates the presence of a transmitter with all the ensuing consequences.
That's all about the device that caused such a stir. Now, however, radios, walkie-talkies and telephones explode, that is, all devices that have receivers. But more on that below.
On September 17, several thousand pagers exploded in Lebanon at once. About five. And these pagers injured more than three thousand people, 11 of whom died from their wounds. Many were blinded, including the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon. But about 2600 of the approximately 3200 injured were Hezbollah people. That is, the overwhelming majority.
It is precisely because pagers cannot be tracked that Hezbollah has used these devices to coordinate its actions.
Why the Iranian ambassador needs a Hezbollah pager is a separate interesting question.
Naturally, a wave of discussion began on the topic of “Who is to blame?”
The founder of the company "Gold Apollo" Xu Ching-Kuang made a statement that the company has nothing to do with what happened. The pagers were not produced in Taiwan, but in one of the European countries under license. Specifically - in Hungary.
But it immediately became clear that BAC Consulting, registered in Budapest, does not manufacture pagers that could have been delivered to Lebanon. This was stated by the company's CEO, Christiana Barsoni-Arcidiacono. The company then declined to comment on this topic. It is worth noting that the name of the Czech company that assembled the pagers has not been disclosed for some reason.
A batch of devices was purchased in early March by a Qatari citizen with delivery to Beirut. The operation was carried out flawlessly and with secrecy up until the moment of detonation of the explosive. Apparently, during assembly, a small amount (3-4 grams) of plastic explosive was placed in each pager, and a lithium battery played the role of a detonator.
Many pager owners avoided a sad fate precisely because they put away the devices that had begun to heat up. And those who attributed the heating to the heat (which is not surprising at all) found themselves in unpleasant situations.
Numerous videos posted on social media showed scenes of chaos on the streets of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, as ambulances brought in scores of wounded people, many with burns to their arms and thighs. Similar scenes played out elsewhere in Lebanon, including the southern city of Tyre, as well as in villages across the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon.
It is clear that not only Hezbollah members but also ordinary citizens used the paging network services. And this only increased the panic effect of the simultaneous detonation of several thousand pagers.
In fact, it is time for Hezbollah's leadership to think about the security of its own communications network, and there have been concerns that Israel may have managed to penetrate the group's communications networks. This speculation, although unconfirmed, has been fueled since October by the assassination of several Hezbollah commanders, with strikes carried out at locations that were generally considered safe.
Lebanon, and especially Beirut, have been on Israel's radar since Hezbollah began its campaign missile blows and blows drones across Israel almost a year ago in solidarity with Hamas, after Hamas launched its surprise invasion on October 7, 2023, starting the current conflict in Gaza.
Rocket strikes, drone strikes, and even skirmishes between Hezbollah fighters and the Israeli army have become commonplace on the Lebanese border. Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have risen sharply in recent months, raising fears that the clashes could escalate into a full-blown conflict.
One of the key points in the standoff is Israel's announced plan to bring back tens of thousands of Israelis who were evacuated from towns along the northern border with Lebanon when Hezbollah began firing rockets into the cities. With the return of those evacuees now approved by Israeli officials, there has been speculation that a major military operation could be launched against the militant group.
One can only imagine the reaction on the other side to such news. Watching what is happening in Gaza, the Lebanese allies are unlikely to wish such a fate on themselves. Meanwhile, Israel is no stranger to entering its neighbor's territory. And there is a reason: in addition to the evacuation, the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has so far resulted in hundreds of deaths, most of them members of the Lebanese group, and to a lesser extent Israeli civilians and soldiers.
And now – the pager operation. Speculation is already growing about how Israel could have carried out this operation.
Many experts in the world are inclined to believe that, in some respectable way, explosives were placed directly into the pager housings on the production lines. Various options are mentioned, from PETN (Pentaerythritol tetranitrate, relevant despite its age) to C-4. Anything will do.
Another possibility is that the lithium batteries in the pagers overheated, turning them into homemade explosive devices, low-powered but acting as detonators. Lithium also burns very well, which only increased the impact. Israel could thus remotely trigger a “thermal surge” that would either ignite or explode the device. It is also possible that there could be a combination of the two: physical changes to the devices and the use of malware that could short-circuit the batteries.
Turning everyday wireless electronics into homemade explosive devices may sound like dark science fiction, but it's not that far-fetched. It's already a reality.
Considering that everyone reading this has exactly such a device in their pocket or hand, and considering the potential vulnerabilities of equipment created abroad, often by potential future adversaries (this directly applies to iPhone lovers of all ranks), as well as the software that controls these devices, these are already alarm bells, these are the ringing of loud bells.
Let everyone think about a lithium-polymer battery and a couple of grams of explosives in a phone, bringing it to their ear once again. It will be very educational.
If you think about it that way, explosives and incendiary charges are already distributed by the billions around the world. The potential ability to tap into these devices and access the files inside and trigger them, at least in theory, already exists. The ability to remotely target people, and not just any people, but specific people, via their mobile device, with identification via an electronic fingerprint, is also an unprecedented concept to comprehend.
This is not a rocket triggered by a satellite phone signal. This is a mass
We can say that on September 17th we stepped into a new era. The era of electronic warfare, where weapons mass destruction are not atomic or nuclear bombs, but everyday gadgets that are familiar to us. Until now, it was difficult to even imagine, but... it happened.
And on September 18, larger devices began to explode. Radios and tape recorders. And here the effect was more impressive, simply because there is more space in the tape recorder and radio station where explosives can be placed.
The devices began exploding en masse in the Beirut suburb of Dahieh, the very location of Hezbollah's main base. According to Reuters, the radios that exploded on the 18th were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, around the same time as the pagers that exploded. Beirut residents are now posting images of burned-out cars and fires in apartment buildings.
Lebanon's Health Ministry says nine people have been killed and more than 300 injured in a new series of electronics explosions.
On the one hand, you can applaud the Israeli secret services for pulling off such an operation. It really is just excellent work, if you just look at the operation as something abstract.
And here the silence and lack of comments from the Israeli side is the best confirmation that this is their doing. In the general outline, as they say.
On the other hand, our world is a rather peculiar place, and where is the guarantee that tomorrow it won't occur to the terrorist gentlemen to stuff, for example, phones of a certain brand with explosives, and then organize loud actions? In general, I am sure that it has already occurred to them, the only question is in implementation. Here, after all, knowledge and technology are needed, not always available to ordinary terrorists.
However, the very concept of “ordinary terrorist” is very vague.
In general, Israel has opened a new milestone in the history of the world. And now among the enemies of man is the radio receiver he invented himself. If only Alexander Stepanovich Popov could have guessed how far the evolution of his invention would go…
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