Pager Explosions Reveal the Truth: Israel is Guilty, Hezbollah is Innocent.
The outrageous attack by Israel and the subsequent cheering in both Israel and the West shows us once more who the real "bad guys" are in the Middle East.
On Tuesday, September 17, 2024, thousands of mobile pagers exploded across Lebanon, injuring 3000 people and killing 12, including 2 children. The next day, a similar attack targeted walkie-talkies, killing 20 and injuring about 450.
The injuries inflicted on the unsuspecting pager users and the people in their vicinity were horrendous: people were rushed to the hospital having lost hands, arms, eyes and genitals.
A non-targeted, mass casualty attack
Many in the West have claimed that the attack was “targeted” at Hezbollah operatives, who were using the pagers to prevent their cell phones being tracked and/or hacked by Israeli intelligence.
But the broad spectrum of victim profiles indicates that the targeting was minimal.
From healthcare workers to firefighters
In addition to Hezbollah operatives, many healthcare professionals, doctors, firefighters, first responders and others who are “on call’ for their work were hit. Women and children died.
In addition, there was collateral damage as people were blown up while driving a car, a bus or other public conveyance, losing control and causing further casualties through accidents.
Mohammed Awada, 52, said he and his son had been driving alongside a man whose pager exploded. “My son went crazy and started to scream when he saw the man’s hand flying away from him,” he said.
The Associated Press (AP) reported:
“While the pagers were used by Hezbollah members, there was no guarantee who was holding the device at the time it was detonated. Also, many of the casualties were not Hezbollah fighters, but members of the group’s extensive civilian operations mainly serving Lebanon’s Shiite community.”
Indeed, as the AP report cited, at least two health workers were among those killed in the initial pager attack.
“Doctors, nurses, paramedics, charity workers, teachers and office administrators work for Hezbollah-linked organizations, and an unknown number had pagers”.
Mass prevention measures implemented
In the wake of the device explosion terror campaign, Lebanon has now banned pagers and walkie-talkies from all flights.
This shows just how “non-targeted” the Israeli attack was. It was never designed just to affect Hezbollah, but rather to plunge the entire country of Lebanon into chaos and terror.
Israel spent YEARS planning the attack
As detailed in an exposé in The New York Times, Israel had taken years to set up this attack on Lebanon, going to great lengths and expense. Contrary to what was first reported, the pagers and walkie-talkies that exploded were not “tampered with” in the supply chain. Rather, Israel WAS the supply chain.
According to the Times, the Mossad set up a shell company that actually produced pagers and other electronic devices:
“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.”
Moreover, B.A.C. produced “normal” pagers for other clients, and simply waited for an order from Hezbollah to come in. The Lebanon-bound pagers were produced separately and they contained batteries laced with the explosive PETN, according to the three intelligence officers.
According to one official who spoke with The New York Times, Israel calculated that the risk of harming people not affiliated with Hezbollah was low, given the size of the explosive. But, according to the Times, the exploding pagers began shipping to Lebanon in the summer of 2022.
How many of those pagers were still in the hands of Hezbollah operatives after such a long period cannot be determined. What does appear to be true, however, is that at least 30% of the victims were non-Hezbollah. For example, of the 12 people killed by the pagers, only 8 were affiliated with Hezbollah in any way.
A violation of international law
For those ofg you who are familiar with Israel, it will come as no surprise to learn that the pager and walkie-talkie attacks perpetrated by Israel on the civilian population of Lebanon constitute war crimes under international law:
Volker Türk told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council there must be an independent and transparent investigation of the two attacks in Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday where these devices exploded, reportedly killing 37 people and injuring more than 3,400 others.
“Those who ordered and carried out these attacks must be held to account,” he said.
Several international treaties and protocols to which Israel is a signatory could render these actions by a state such as Israel illegal under international humanitarian law, according to NPR.
Applicable laws include Article 7(2) of the Amended Protocol II of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which was added to an international law focused on the use of conventional weapons in 1996. Both Israel and Lebanon have agreed to it.
That Article prohibits the use of booby traps, which Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, defines as “objects that civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use.”
Hezbollah is not a terrorist organisation
As the AP correctly observed above, Hezbollah is much more than just an armed force. Like Hamas, Hezbollah is a political party that plays a major role in the socioeconomic life of the people it also defends militarily, by operating social welfare services, hospitals, clinics and other “NGO” type services.
Unlike Hamas, which originally began as a social services organisation providing aid to displaced Palestinian refugees, Hezbollah got its start as a militia during the Lebanese Civil War. From its inception in the early 1980’s until the end of the war in 1990, Hezbollah fought to defend Lebanon’s Shia Muslims and especially the Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon against the pogroms and massacres of the Israeli backed fascists in the Christian Phalange militia.
[NOTE: Lebanon is 55% Muslim, 40% Christian, and 5% Druze]
The sectarian struggle is best remembered for the 1982 Shatila and Sabra Massacres, in which the Israeli-backed fascist Christian Phalange killed up to 3,500 Palestinian refugees and Lebanese civilians in two days.
It was against this violent backdrop of the Israeli invasion and the Phalangist massacres that a group of Shi’ite clerics formed Hezbollah (“Party of God”) as a homegrown defence force.
A permanent “resistance force” against Israeli occupation
At the end of the Lebanese Civil War, the warring factions signed the Taif Accords, which stipulated that all militia groups in Lebanon were to be disbanded — except for Hezbollah. Everyone agreed that it was necessary to keep Hezbollah active to fight the Israeli Occupation in Southern Lebanon.
This they did, eventually forcing Israel out of Lebanon in 2000, when the Zionist state decided to finally comply with United Nations Security Council Resolution 425, which had ordered Israel to withdraw from Lebanon in 1978 (!). Better late than never?
A period of terrorist attacks
During those years of the bloody civil war in the 1980's, Hezbollah became infamous for its suicide bombings and kidnapping of Western hostages, primarily journalists.
It was during this time that Hezbollah could have been described as a “terrorist organisation”. Certainly they used terrorist tactics to try to achieve their aims during the war against the Israel and its Christian Phalangist allies, who were being armed and funded by the United States and NATO.
The biggest Hezbollah suicide attack was the bombing of the US Marines barracks in Beirut in 1983. The attack killed 241 marines. The bombings — and several smaller deadly attacks on U.S. troops — took place after the Reagan administration deployed U.S. troops to Lebanon in 1982 after Israeli forces invaded Lebanon.
Still, it must be said, that Hezbollah achieved its goal: in the wake of the attacks, then-president Ronald Reagan withdrew all US troops from the country.
Political evolution
With the ending of the Civil War in 1990, Hezbollah ceased its terrorist activities and instead turned to politics, capturing its first seats in the Lebanese Parliament in 1992.
While Hezbollah’s military wing, The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon (IRL) battled Israel for territory in Southern Lebanon, the group’s political party, the “Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc” battled for votes and seats in the Lebanese government.
The group has steadily become more involved in politics, to where it is now the second most powerful political faction in the Lebanese government.
In fact, Michel Aoun, the last serving President of Lebanon, was allied with Hezbollah under a formal agreement (Mar Mikhael Agreement). Although he was himself a Christian, Aoun strongly defended Hezbollah as a necessary force to defend against Israel.
In 2015 he explained to Press TV why a united Lebanon needed Hezbollah:
“[The Lebanese] economy cannot support a strong army like Israel. Israel is helped by the United States, by all the Jewish Diaspora and so they can have — and helped by the United States especially — have the highest technology and weapons and so they can have a very destructive power so that we cannot afford.”
To counter the US-backed Israeli military might, Aoun said Lebanon needed to use the “guerrilla” tactics of the Hezbollah:
“So we need a kind of fighting, we need the guerrillas against the classic armies. So they are stronger than us, they are more rich than us, so the only way to defend Lebanon, that is the guerrilla warfare.”
Ideological evolution
In 1998, Hezbollah issued a declaration that “modernised” its view on Islam. According to the American Wilson Center, the organisation said:
“We do not seek the application of Islam by force or violence, but by peaceful political action, which gives the majority in any society the opportunity to adopt or reject it. If Islam becomes the choice of the majority, then we will apply it. If not, we will continue to coexist and discuss with others until we reach a common ground based upon correct beliefs.”
Indeed, over time, Hezbollah has sought a more “holistic approach” to achieving its goals, according to Marco Nilsson. a Professor of Global Studies at Jönköping University in Sweden:
“Hezbollah is a holistic network whose social, political, military and cultural dimensions are all parts of a discourse of resistance.”
Dahr Jamail, a prominent Lebanese American journalist, also wrote about “Hezbollah’s Transformation” in 2006:
“In Lebanon, the group had first hoped to transform the whole country into a fundamentalist Shi’ite state. But it has now abandoned that objective for a more inclusive platform.”
Jamail also describes how Hezbollah went from being a religiously based Shi‘ite sect to a mainstream social movement:
“Hezbollah won the support of Shi’ite Muslims by providing social services, health care and welfare when the Lebanese government failed. Hezbollah runs hospitals, news services and educational facilities for its followers in Lebanon. It is behind a large number of economic and infrastructure projects in the country.”
Pragmatism and liquor stores
Iver Gabrielsen, of King’s College London, may have summed it up best in his 2013 analysis:
“Hezbollah’s motion between Islamic militancy and political pragmatism in pursuit of its strategic aims from the early 1990s has left both scholars and policy-makers perplexed. Hezbollah offered the Lebanese people the following deal: ‘Support our resistance against Israel, and we will stop talking about an Islamic republic and stop telling you how to live your lives’”.
Moreover, Hezbollah’s tolerance and multicultural appeal is demonstrated, he says, by the fact of “arguably the best liquor store [in Lebanon] being located in the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahiya.”
In addition, Gabrielson notes that Hezbollah’s social service programs have become very large, and by 2000, there were 400,000 people who received healthcare services from Hezbollah.
Israel‘s war against Hezbollah
Although Hezbollah gave up their terrorist tactics at the end of the civil war, their fight with Israel did not end. Israel simply refuses to give up its campaign of territorial conquest, and continues to manufacture pretences for attacking and invading Lebanon.
Just as in Gaza, Lebanon has been subjected to a series of so-called “operations” by the IDF, aimed at attriting Hezbollah, destroying Lebanese infrastructure, and sewing terror and chaos among the Lebanese population — just as they do to the Palestinians.
1993: “Operation Accountability”
In July 1993, Israel attacked Lebanon in what it called Operation Accountability, known as the “Seven-Day War” in Lebanon. The war started when Israeli helicopters attacked a refugee camp near Tyre on 25 June 1993, and two days later they also attacked one of the Shia villages in their self-proclaimed “security zone”.
The following day Hezbollah responded by firing rockets into northern Israel. Israel then used those rocket attacks as a pretence to invade.
Human Rights Watch described Operation Accountability as follows:
“Operation Accountability illustrates how the conflict on the Israel-Lebanon border can escalate and lead to great suffering among civilians. During that one short week, after a long period of relative calm, some 120 Lebanese civilians were killed and close to 500 injured by a ferocious Israeli assault on population centers in southern Lebanon, an assault which also temporarily displaced some 300,000 Lebanese villagers and Palestinian refugees.”
1996: “Operation Grapes of Wrath” and the Qana Massacre
on April 11, 1996, Israel launched another 17-day offensive intended to force Hezbollah beyond the Litani River and out of striking range of Israeli targets.
Operation Grapes of Wrath was called the “April Aggression” by the Lebanese. There were significant military and civilian casualties on both sides and Lebanon’s infrastructure was badly damaged.
“Qana Massacre”: On April 18, as part of their Operation, Israel shelled a United Nations compound near the village of Qana in occupied southern Lebanon — some 800 displaced civilians were sheltering there. The attack killed 106 civilians, including at least 37 children, and injured about 116.
2006: The July War
On 12 July 2006, Hezbollah crossed the border and attacked an Israeli patrol, killing three Israeli soldiers and taking two soldiers back to Lebanon as hostages. Hezbollah demanded the release of Lebanese prisoners in exchange for the Israeli soldiers.
Israel refused, and responded instead with airstrikes and artillery fire on both Hezbollah military targets and Lebanese civilian infrastructure, including Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport. The IDF launched a ground invasion of Southern Lebanon. Israel also imposed an air-and-naval blockade.
Israel also lost 5 more soldiers in a failed rescue attempt.
According to Wikipedia, he conflict is believed to have killed 1,300 Lebanese people and 165 Israelis. It severely damaged Lebanese civil infrastructure, and displaced approximately one million Lebanese civilians.
On 1 October 2006, Israeli troops withdrew from Lebanon. Although both sides claimed victory, most independent observers judge that Hezbollah handed Israel a significant defeat:
“Hezbollah battered the Israelis to the point of abject humiliation. It was the first ever military defeat of the much and hugely-vaunted Israeli military by an Arab army, and its impact has done much to inform the morale of both ever since.”
2006: Israel introduces “The Dahiya Doctrine”
During the 2006 Lebanon War, IDF Northern Commander Gadi Eisenkot, now the deputy chief of general staff, recommended and had approved the application of a military strategy that would target and destroy an entire civilian area rather than fight to overtake fortified positions one by one.
The logic, according to Wikipedia, “is to harm the civilian population so much that they will then turn against the militants, forcing the enemy to sue for peace.”
However such an act is generally considered to be a war crime.
The doctrine is named after the Dahiya neighborhood of Beirut, where Hezbollah had its headquarters. Eisenkot’s new “doctrine” rejected any effort to distinguish between military and civilian people, and instead used an overwhelming display of force through airstrikes to destroy the entire Dahiya quarter.
The result was that the IDF killed nearly 1,000 civilians, about a third of them children, and caused enormous damage to the country’s civilian infrastructure, including power plants, sewage treatment plants, bridges, and port facilities.
The Dahiya Doctrine constitutes a war crime in that it ignores the concept of proportionality. The Rome Statute and the 1978 Additional Protocol to the Geneva Convention — address war crimes and provide distinct definitions of the crime of disproportionate use of force:
“The rule of proportionality requires that the anticipated incidental loss of human life and damage to civilian objects should not be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage expected from the destruction of a military objective.”
In other words, destroying a hospital and killing hundreds of civilians in order to eliminate one Hamas militant is NOT proportionate.
Israel clearly violated international law in Lebanon, and they are now applying the Dahiya Doctrine on a massive (and massively illegal) scale in Gaza.
2006 to present
Since the July War, and up until October 7, 2023, Israel and Hezbollah have had a low-intensity conflict characterised by “tit-for-tat” attacks on each other. Since the attack by Israel on Gaza, however, Hezbollah has carried out a more sustained campaign of rocket and missile fire, targeted at various Israeli military facilities.
The Israelis have responded, however, in the usual massively disproportionate way.
2024: “Operation Arrows of the North”
On 23 September 2024, Israel fired hundreds of airstrikes targeting Hezbollah positions in Lebanon, in an operation codenamed Operation Arrows of the North. At least 492 people were killed and over 1,645 others were injured in Lebanon during the aerial bombardment.
The above described “pager attack” could have been a precursor to this campaign. As of this writing, a full-scale invasion of Lebanon by Israel may be in the offing.
Certainly Israel is already making the case that Hezbollah, like Hamas, “hides weapons in civilian homes” and uses civilians as “human shields”. They claim to use “precision strikes” against such homes. Of course, these charges are untrue in both cases.
Conclusions: Lebanon and Palestine
In Lebanon, as in Palestine, we see a pattern: Israel tales land, occupies territory, and when the people who live on that land dare to fight back, Israel labels them terrorists. This is the same with Hamas and Hezbollah.
We also see that those groups that do dare to oppose the Israeli occupiers militarily achieve success politically: the people come to trust them as their true defenders, whose legitimacy is earned through the righteousness, sacrifice and valour of their struggle.
While both Hamas and Hezbollah are Muslim organisations, they have evolved into larger political and societal forces that represent the entire populations for which they fight, including Christians.
And although in both cases that fight is targeted specifically and solely against Israel, the Israelis desperately seek to portray both Hamas and Hezbollah as “international terrorists” like ISIS or Al Qaeda. The truth is that Hezbollah fought AGAINST Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria to defend the Assad government from those Israeli-backed terrorist “rebels”.
The story is, unfortunately, always the same: Israel, in its quest to establish “Greater Israel” (Eretz-Yisrael), is seeking to assert dominance over the entire region, at the expense of the indigent peoples who live there. This is why there is an “Axis of Resistance”. This is why Hezbollah supports Hamas and the Palestinians. This is why Palestine and Lebanon are united against Israel.
We must guard against the insidious Zionist hasbara narratives that seek to portray these brave resistance fighters as terrorists.
#End
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Its a shame that some people lack the mental capacity to read and process the information, and see the strong evidence and pattern of Israel attacking civilians as a strategy rather than a repeated mistake or collateral damage (human shields rethoric or other dehumanising sentiments).
Great representation of some widely unknown facts about the evolution of Hezbollah and how itnfits in the context with the present.
Great, thanks!