Victims of Israel’s attack via exploding pagers arrive at a hospital in Beirut, Lebanon, September 17, 2024 (Mohamed Azakir/Reuters)
UPDATE, SEPT 24:
In the past 24 hours, Israeli airstrikes killed almost 500 people in Lebanon.
Before that further escalation of violence and destruction, I spoke with The Naked Scientists podcast about Israel’s tactics to disrupt and degrade Hezbollah with exploding pagers and walkie-talkies — causing hundreds of casualties among Hezbollah members and civilians.
UPDATE, SEPT 19:
On Wednesday, Israel followed up its “exploding pager” attacks in Lebanon with detonations of walkie-talkies used by Hezollah. At least 30 people were killed and 450 injured.
As the news broke, I spoke with BBC West Midlands about the latest attacks and their effect on civilians as well as Hezbollah members.
Listen from 2:39.28
Whatever you think about the confrontation between the Israeli military and Hezbollah, in the operations over the past two days the large majority of casualties are civilians — civilians who do not want any part of this fight.
This isn’t just a question of Israel killing Hezbollah fighters. It is Israel telling the Lebanese population, “There is never safe space for any of you.
ORIGINAL ENTRY, SEPT 18: I joined Dublin NewsTalk’s Pat Kenny Show on Wednesday morning to analyze Israel’s “exploding pagers” attack targeting members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah organization, killing at least 11 people and wounding almost 3,000.
I review what we know so far about the operation, Israel’s motives, and the consequences amid Israeli mass killings in Gaza, tensions with Iran, and other regional issues.
What strikes me is the juxtaposition of this “James Bond” image of a daring attack with the real day-to-day of these pagers being detonated as people went about their business in shops and in open public spaces.
Israel will frame this as part of “our war against Hezbollah”, but these are civilian areas. This could have happened in any big city in the world, because the technology is there to inflict casualties on a mass scale.
How Israel Built a Modern-Day Trojan Horse: Exploding Pagers: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/world/middleeast/israel-exploding-pagers-hezbollah.html
“The Israeli government did not tamper with the Hezbollah phones that exploded, defense and intelligence officials say. It manufactured them as part of an elaborate ruse……..By all appearances, B.A.C. Consulting was a Hungary-based company that was under contract to produce the devices on behalf of a Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo. In fact, it was part of an Israeli front, according to three intelligence officers briefed on the operation. They said at least two other shell companies were created as well to mask the real identities of the people creating the pagers: Israeli intelligence officers.”
BAC Consulting merely served as a trading front company to handle the order from Hezbollah. The Israelis built the pagers and delivered them to Lebanon (probablly through Cyprus). Hezbollah would have thought they were receiving pagers made in Hungary of Taiwanese design. The Israelis didn’t just rig the batteries with explosives but also wrote the embedded software that would have allowed the devices to go off when they did.
COMQue barbaridad en Medio Oriente las autoeliminaciones por Ala no llega llevarán a nada en futuro medio!MENT