Israel carried out its operation against Hezbollah on Tuesday by hiding explosive material within a new batch of Taiwanese-made pagers imported into Lebanon, according to American and other officials briefed on the operation.

The pagers, which Hezbollah had ordered from Gold Apollo in Taiwan, had been tampered with before they reached Lebanon, according to some of the officials. Most were the company’s AP924 model, though three other Gold Apollo models were also included in the shipment.

The explosive material, as little as one to two ounces, was implanted next to the battery in each pager, two of the officials said. A switch was also embedded that could be triggered remotely to detonate the explosives.

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  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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    2 days ago

    This makes more sense than them being able to remotely overload a battery to make it explode.

  • El_guapazo@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    How do we know these were actual terrorists and not just random people that bought a pager?

    They’ve classified infants as Hamas terrorists before so I’m a bit skeptical.

    • Keeponstalin@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      It’s worth noting that Hezbollah members aren’t just militant fighters. There are also social services and Parliamentary members

      Hezbollah organizes and maintains an extensive social development program and runs hospitals, news services, educational facilities, and encouragement of Nikah mut’ah. One of its established institutions, Jihad Al Binna’s Reconstruction Campaign, is responsible for numerous economic and infrastructure development projects in Lebanon. Hezbollah controls the Martyr’s Institute (Al-Shahid Social Association)

      Hezbollah holds 14 of the 128 seats in the Parliament of Lebanon and is a member of the Resistance and Development Bloc. According to Daniel L. Byman, it is “the most powerful single political movement in Lebanon.” Hezbollah, along with the Amal Movement, represents most of Lebanese Shi’a. Unlike Amal, Hezbollah has not disarmed. Hezbollah participates in the Parliament of Lebanon.

    • Agent641@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      The splodey ones all came from the same batches that were bought by Hezbolla-linked companies and distributed by them to hezbolla members. They didnt just ‘upgrade’ every pager made by gold apollo. Only batches destined for Hez.

      Of course, theres undoubtedly a lot of people who ended up with one of the booby trapped batch, who are just regular doctors, nurses, workers, etc, and theres no certainty that the person who was issued the pager was holding it at the time. Could have been their kid, or wife, or whatever, so the attack was still not very discriminate.

    • grozzle@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      One can reasonably assume they studied the communications for a few weeks to figure out who’s who, and then sent the detonate code to a certain list of pager numbers.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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        2 days ago

        Wasn’t the child killed by being near a pager? I don’t think it belonged to the child.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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            1 day ago

            In the context of:

            How do we know these were actual terrorists and not just random people that bought a pager?

            Yes, it matters. Because it suggests it wasn’t a random person that bought a pager.

            In the context of the morality of the situation, no, it doesn’t matter. It was not a moral act.

    • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
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      2 days ago

      I mean the people carrying the pagers were likely with Hezbollah, but the 2750 people injured? Yeah no.

    • Count042@lemmy.ml
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      23 hours ago

      Target large swathes of civilian populations is incredible targeting?

      Only to those that think race/religion is what determines if someone is a legitimate target.

  • SassyRamen@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Now this is some grasping at straws journalisim. I would be really interested in reading what really happened.

  • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    Why should we all not expect our next Amazon device to be just a friendly brick with an ad on it?

    Because, unless you can easily open the thing to see inside, there’s enough space in side of all new phones to blow our leg or our faces off apparently.

    Now thanks to this, phones don’t fly. So hey, you’re going to Hawaii? Better ship your phone separately on time so it gets there before you do. You want flights to be safe and not full of these dangerous bricks. Ofcourse, screw the mail man who will have to drive from the Continental United States over to Hawaii. It’s a water truck… details details…

    Should I buy a new device for my kids and or family or myself? Nope unless the thing is transparent like an iMac.

    An iMac is an old model personal computer sold by Apple, where the chassis was mostly translucent with bright colors.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      I assume they use the cell phone network these days, so any in flight probably weren’t able to receive the signal. On board but not at elevation is a pretty small window, so the number could be as small as zero.

    • theyoyomaster@lemmy.world
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      Depending on what airports they tried to go through they likely would have been caught. Even garbage security theater like the TSA catches concealed explosives fairly well.

        • theyoyomaster@lemmy.world
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          I feel like it would be pretty quickly determined that you are the “victim” in that scenario. I have actually carried explosives through a TSA checkpoint before though; it was the BEST LAYOVER EVER. They came to the lounge I was in asking for volunteers to train the dogs and then handed me a backpack with semtex in it and put me in line. The dog found me, I told him he was a GOOD BOY and got to throw his kong for him and rub his belly. 45/10, would layover again.

          • FarFarAway@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            That happen to a person in our group in Australia, but with cocaine. We were waiting to collect our baggage before customs. The officers told them to put it in thier waistline and see if the dog would sniff it out. Pups was sucessful and got some pets. He didn’t have a Kong tho.

  • BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one
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    2 days ago

    This was such a cool way to kill bad guys. I hope to read more about how they did this like their Stuxnet virus blew up Iranian centrifuges

        • Count042@lemmy.ml
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          23 hours ago

          Hezbollah is a government. Which has a large number of civilian members, including doctors that treat people.

          Are the garbage collectors bad guys?

    • NoIWontPickAName@kbin.earth
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      Until you account for all the innocent people it hurt.

      Involving civilians is bad no matter whose side is doing it.

      • Madison420@lemmy.world
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        You misunderstand, they’re being sarcastic.

        Ed: to be specific they reference the most famous result of unexpected consequences.

        The US government created a virus managed stucnet that infested and threw off industrial controllers of a specific brand they knew were used with Iranian centrifuges that enrich nuclear material. Their plan worked and the centrifuges were destroyed.

        Later on they found out stuxnet accidently infected a bunch of other controllers, ones that were in hospitals, power plants ect. It ended up being one of the most widespread viruses ever.

        Essentially they’re saying planting bombs in pagers could never have unexpected consequences. /S

    • tuckerm@supermeter.social
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      2 days ago

      The way that they pulled off this attack is interesting from a cybersecurity standpoint, but we can’t ignore the fact that Israel had no way of knowing who was near the devices when they exploded. They very nature of this attack made it impossible for Israel to know how closely they were targeting the bad guys or how many civilians were nearby.

    • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      I agree, but they probably could’ve worded it better. The pagers were meant for Hezbollah but that doesn’t mean they exclusively went to Hezbollah.

      • nonailsleft@lemm.ee
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        6 hours ago

        So true. Could you imagine being in Hezbollah and not giving your personal Hezbollah-issued one-way pager away to someone else?

        • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          It depends a lot on how the pagers are distributed. Is it a batch that was carefully delivered to only Hezbollah members? Is that where all the pagers from that batch went?

          It’s not like the pagers are stamped with “for Hezbollah only”. I’m concerned how they were all distributed.

    • nonailsleft@lemm.ee
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      7 hours ago

      More like everyone’s suddenly gangsta a ‘health worker’ when their pager explodes

    • sandbox@lemmy.world
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      People are speaking out more against genocide conducted by a fascist ethnostate because the level of violence and crimes against humanity is a couple of levels of magnitude.

      Your point is like saying “people are complaining about how I am a serial killer and murdered 200 people, and yet no one is talking about how one of those people I killed was a rapist”

    • riodoro1@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      pointing out other peoples comment history from a 17d old account.

      Maybe fuck off with your remarks.

  • iAvicenna@lemmy.world
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    two kids died in these explosions with much many more wounded.

    well guess what we call groups that kill civilians with bombs?

  • Sundial@lemm.ee
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    This is Israel’s version of de-escalating an escalating conflict. Disgusting animals.

    • ironhydroxide@sh.itjust.works
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      Israel has a lot of computer knowledge. Maybe they think that it’s like a value in computer memory. Keep adding to it and eventually it’ll be zero again. (Or go negative)

    • Bennettiquette@lemmy.world
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      i just can’t wait for all of irans proxies to start investing resources into replicating such a successful strategy. i have the utmost respect for judaism but israel is a serious problem and they are no where near ready to stop swinging their dicks around.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      2 days ago

      Both?

      I mean I’m no fan of Israel, but Hezbollah ain’t exactly the Red Cross.

      • iAvicenna@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        with Israel clearly having the greater outreach, destructive power and perhaps even less self regulation than Hezbollah as it seems.

      • xor@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 day ago

        And, frankly, this is one of the least morally concerning things Israel has (presumably) done. The pagers were targeted specifically because they were used almost exclusively by Hezbollah.

        • Count042@lemmy.ml
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          23 hours ago

          They were not exclusively used by Hezbollah.

          Also, you’re equating a government with it’s militant wing.

          Is it proper to call an Israeli Doctor a member of IDF? That is what you are doing.

          Hospital administrators (A government position for non insane countries) are Hezbollah.

          • xor@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            13 hours ago

            Yeah that’s a fair point wrt non-militant roles, my assumption was that they were primarily used in the military since their purpose was to avoid the issues with mobile networks being used to track them.

            But we don’t know exactly how the devices were distributed, so you’re right that there were potentially a large number of non-military Hezbollah staff.

            • Count042@lemmy.ml
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              They’ve been doing the same for Hamas. Hospital administrator? Hamas. And so Israel bombs out their apartment killing them and their entire family. You know, back when there were apartments.

              Same for police.

              That one is what gives away Israels genocidal intent. Getting rid of police gets rid of the first line of defense against civil disorder, and the people most likely to do stuff like distribute food and supplies.

              Police very rarely end up fighting as militantsin occupied countries, too. Unless you fire them en masse, which occupying countries shouldn’t do, if they’re smart.

              Edit: We do know multiple EMT teams and doctors were hit by the beepers.

        • WanderingVentra@lemm.ee
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          Dude they injured thousands of people and killed children and health care workers. This is 100% terrorism. I guess it’s a better than the active genocide they’re doing though, so it’s a low bar.

        • iAvicenna@lemmy.world
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          probably more civilians than the targeted number of Hezbollah militant members died, orders of magnitude more wounded, crippled etc. success?

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Pagers. Can’t imagine who the foremost users of pagers would be in 2024.

    *cough doctors *cough

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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      I have not seen a doctor with a pager in a long time and I have spent a ton of time in hospitals over the past year. They all have smartwatches now.

      • IndustryStandard@lemmy.world
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        Is this universal around all of Lebanon or only the hospital you were at? There were reports claiming medical personnel were hit with the pagers.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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          Did OP mean in Lebanon when they said that doctors in 2024 were the foremost use of pagers?

          Since they asked which country I was talking about, I think they just meant it in general.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        I have not seen a doctor with a pager in a long time

        My friend’s a pulminologist and his hospital still uses pagers. They just never bothered to upgrade their 20 year old system to use SMS. And he says he’s partial to it, because he’s not forced to check his phone every time it rings when 99% of the messages are spam texts anyway.

      • IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Back when cell phones were just starting to get “smart” I knew a few folks that carried both a pager & phone. They lived in rural areas where pager coverage was decent but phone coverage was spotty at best, and non-existent in places.

      • Shiftless@infosec.pub
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        Doctors still have pagers. The pager will just have a phone number the doctor needs to call as to not violate patient privacy. Instead of calling the doctor directly, they use a pager to request a call because of the bad service that is common within hospitals. At least that’s what I know

      • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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        Oh god. Does your country not have HIPAA laws? Thats a Dystopian Nightmare in the works.

              • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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                For using deviced capable of recording audio and transmitting photos of the environment at all times. Every patient that comes through has all of their vulnerabilities exposed.

                I hope hospitals that promote such behavior get sued into the ground.

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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            That’s not true. Pagers are still in regular use for two reasons:

            • Hospitals hate upgrading their tech infrastructure, so they’ll sit on a 20 year old system until it falls to pieces

            • Pagers don’t get spam texts at the same volume as cell phones, so you can be confident that when your pager rings its serious and not automated solicitations.