The ability of the Israeli secret services to kill their enemies via cell phones is not new. In 1996, this is how Yahya Ayyas, a “famous” bomb maker of Hamas, head of its unit in the West Bank, also known as “The Engineer”, was killed. He died when a mobile phone loaded with explosives, which had been intercepted and sent to him by the Shin Bet, the Israeli security service, exploded. In fact, the Israelis made a call to the cell phone, made sure that the voice was that of the “Engineer”, before sending the signal for the explosion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In general, the possession of mobile phones is known as a serious security risk on the battlefield, as their signal, and therefore their location, are directly detected through mobile antennas or related electronic monitoring infrastructures, so they are targeted, e.g. from airstrikes or precision artillery weapons. In other words, the cell phone itself does not even need to contain explosives, as long as its location is identified, in order to “demolish” or “excavate” the surrounding area. Although this danger has been known for decades, the dependence on the use of mobile phones remains so strong that even today we see its destructiveness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Typically in 2022, in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, careless Russian military personnel activated their mobile phones, so their location became apparent to the Ukrainian Armed Forces who “saw” on their mobile networks exactly where “foreign” connection numbers appeared. So they could monitor Russian movements, but also target where they saw a large concentration of troops. Gradually, of course, this “practice” decreased when both sides saw the results\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n
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2. Looking for the opponent’s “security gaps”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While it is not yet clear exactly how the Israelis managed to intercept Hezbollah’s pagers and other electronic devices, it is clear that there was a great deal of preparation involved. Where Israeli intelligence was monitoring Hezbollah’s efforts to “get rid” of the use of cell phones that were vulnerable to hacking and information leakage. In fact, its head, Hassan Nasrallah, this year publicly condemned them and demanded that the executives “throw them away, lock them up and bury them”. So Israel seems to have already been networked through virtual companies, possibly device and battery manufacturing infrastructure, in the field of pagers, wireless, possibly smartwatches, security cameras, networked intercoms and similar devices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, we see that the Israeli method was to be present in whatever Hezbollah (Hamas, the Iranians, etc.) might request to be supplied as an alternative to telecommunications. So when Hezbollah made the very serious mistake of procuring large quantities of such devices themselves (rather than buying them sporadically and privately from various international manufacturers), Israel was able to\u2026 serve special local demand, with bootleg\/hacked machines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3.<\/strong> Foreign Dependence as a Permanent Risk<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In the digital\/electronic attack against Hezbollah, the more general issue of lack of “your” materials also emerges. Which will be manufactured locally, controlled, with strict specifications specific to domestic needs, in infrastructures with full protection measures and with software and components thoroughly checked and with multiple safety valves. This rarely happens in most countries, as the supplies of such materials, networks, telecommunications, wireless, are to a small extent local.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n 4.<\/strong> Existence of Special Units of Digital-Electronic Warfare<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Unknown in the essence of their action, but already “famous” are the various secret electronic warfare units of the Israelis, such as 8200, which undertake to conduct a multi-level intelligence search war through telecommunications, and then to carry out purely offensive operations, such as the one against Hezbollah or with the assassination of the head of Hamas, Ismail Haniya, inside Iran (!) since apparently there had been a months-long effort to locate him by electronic means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What do we know about these units? A few things. But it’s enough to get an idea. They are mainly manned by “tiny” conscripts, talents in the field of computers, hacking, electronic information gathering, encryption and all related skills. They serve their almost three-year mandatory term there, but may also continue as permanent officers. They develop within these services in terms of their talents and are trained accordingly, while they have the right upon dismissal, to continue working in the same professional field, in dozens of start-ups as well as older Israeli companies, but all of which (obligatory) maintain a relationship and contact with the state and the “mother” intelligence services! In fact, from this military pool of experience, various surveillance software such as Predator, Pegasus, and the like have come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thus, these talents, with their youthful dynamism and their contact with the “today” of technology, treat their term in the Army as a great apprenticeship, as a preparation for their future, of course joining the general Israeli social philosophy of “lifelong conscription”. It is not something at all simple, nor can one imitate it, because it comes as a concept from the establishment of Israel and its survival through constant wars and armed confrontations, in a state of permanent threat. But it is an example of how a country takes advantage of its human resources to “ensure its security”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Are they infallible? Of course not, and the inability of all these agencies and units to see and understand Hamas’s preparation for the October 7 attacks inside Israel is their great mark. And somehow the attack yesterday against Hezbollah, resulting in thousands of wounded and its disorganization, is an attempt to “wash away” this stigma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nevertheless, the methodical organization of these services, their operation in a way that aims at results and not at the observance of some tight military bureaucracy and formality, their abundant funding, their security culture, but also their flexibility, their manning based on talent regardless of experience, the unit climate and the motivating concept of challenge-confrontation with a known enemy, pay off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Israeli “pager attack” has decisively turned a page in the manual of war, of any form. Either asymmetric operations, or tactics, or electronic warfare, or psychological, or espionage, or sabotage, or strategies. Because he managed with a single blow, for a few days, to neutralize a large part of Hezbollah, the strongest and most militarized Islamic organization in the world. Even revealing who its executives were, since not all of them were known in Israel, but they had been indirectly targeted by receiving the pagers that Hezbollah distributed to its members. With images of maimed, blinded, with serious wounds in the abdomen dominating, further sharpening the hatred in the Middle East, but also creating serious operational confusion for all similar organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And also, to spread panic throughout Lebanon, where ordinary citizens, and with no connection to Hezbollah, are now changing mobile phones, pagers, tablets and any other device, because they do not know if they belong to some trapped lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So this cosmogenic proof of a new type of war, which “kills” with an everyday device (or uses it as a surveillance tool), on an increasingly networked planet, is a lesson in high strategy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Israel’s surprisingly “deep” and premeditated move to blow up thousands of pagers, and then radios, but also other electronic devices, that were in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,834],"tags":[2497,1843,1110,153,5963],"class_list":["post-20559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitical","category-middle-east-geopolitical","tag-espionage","tag-explosion","tag-hezbollah","tag-israel","tag-pagers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20559"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20565,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20559\/revisions\/20565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/image-195.png\")
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