Two recently retired Israeli intelligence agents have shared new details about a deadly clandestine operation that was years in the making and that targeted militants in Lebanon and Syria, three months ago, an espionage move that surprised the world and was the prelude to a new war, added land invasion.
Hezbollah began attacking Israel almost immediately after the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, which Tel Aviv responded with an offensive that continues to this day and has already claimed more than 44,000 lives in the Gaza Strip.
Mossad agents have spoken to the North American CBS program in a segment aired Sunday night. They wore masks and spoke in altered voices to hide their identities.
An agent said the operation began 10 years ago, using walkie-talkies loaded with hidden explosives, that the Lebanese party-militia did not realize that it was purchasing material from Israel, its enemy. The walkie-talkies They were not detonated until September, a day after the trap beepers were activated. “We created a fictitious world,” said the officer, who identified himself as Michael.
The second phase of the plan, using the honeypot pagers, began in 2022 after Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency discovered that Hezbollah had been purchasing pagers from a Taiwan-based company, the second official said.
The pagers had to be made slightly larger to accommodate the explosives hidden inside. They were tested on dummies several times to find the right amount of explosive that would only hurt the Hezbollah fighter and not anyone else in the vicinity.
The Mossad also tested numerous ringtones to find one that sounded urgent enough to make someone take the pager out of their pocket.
The second agent, who identified himself as Gabrielsaid it took two weeks to convince Hezbollah to switch to the heavier pager, in part using fake ads on YouTube promoting the devices as dust-proof, waterproof, having long battery life and more.
He described using shell companies, including one based in Hungary, to trick the Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo, into unknowingly partnering with Mossad.
The pro-Syrian group was also unaware that it was working with Israel.
Gabriel compared the hoax to a 1998 psychological film about a man who has no idea he is living in a fake world and his family and friends are actors paid to maintain the illusion.
“When they buy from us, they have no idea they are buying from Mossad,” he said. Gabriel. “We do as in The Truman Showeverything is controlled by us behind the scenes. In his experience, everything is normal. Everything was 100% kosher including entrepreneurs, marketing, engineers, showroom, everything.”
By September, Hezbollah terrorists had 5,000 pagers in their pockets. Israel triggered the attack on the 17th of that month, when pagers across Lebanon began ringing. The devices would explode even if the person did not press the buttons to read an incoming encrypted message.
The next day, with the world shocked by what happened, the Mossad activated the walkie-talkiessome of which exploded at funerals for some of the approximately 30 people who died in the pager attacks.
Gabriel He said the goal was more to send a message than to actually kill Hezbollah fighters. “If he’s just dead, then he’s dead. But if he is injured, you have to take him to the hospital, take care of him. You need to invest money and efforts,” he said. “And those people without hands and eyes are living proof, walking in Lebanon, of ‘don’t mess with us.’ They are living proof of our superiority throughout the Middle East.”
“If he’s dead, then he’s dead. But if he is injured, you have to take him to the hospital, take care of him. You need to invest money and efforts. “Those people without hands and eyes are living proof, walking in Lebanon, of ‘don’t mess with us’.”
In the days after the attack, Israel’s air force struck targets across Lebanon. Hezbollah’s leader, , was eliminated when Israel dropped bombs on his bunker.
By November, the war between Israel and the Lebanese, a byproduct of the deadly attack by Hamas terrorists in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, ended with a 60-day ceasefire, which ends in January and is violated almost daily.
The agent who used the name Michael He said that, the day after the pager explosions, people in Lebanon were afraid to even turn on their air conditioners for fear that they would also explode. “There is real fear,” he said.
When asked if that was intentional, he replied: “We want them to feel vulnerable, which they are. We can’t use the pagers again because we already did. We’ve already moved on to the next thing. And they will have to keep trying to guess what the next thing is.”
