When I was a child, my father used to sing me a Spanish song, ‘Viva La Quince Brigada’ about a war that he had fought in a long time before.’ My father left New York in 1937 and travelled through Mexico to Spain, there to fight against Franco’s fascist armies (allies of Hitler). He joined a division of the Spanish Republican Army called the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (known in Spanish as ‘Brigada Abraham Lincoln’), a pro-Soviet mixed brigade of English-speaking volunteers, whose leader was Robert Hale Merriman, a former student at UC Berkeley. Merriman was killed on April 2, 1938, in a clash with fascist forces outside of Gandesa. His personal example and zeal strongly influenced a young Chicago-born journalist reporting on the war. That newspaperman’s name was Ernest Hemingway, and his celebrated novel about that time is ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls,’
Hemingway borrowed his book’s title from a devotional book written in 1624 during England’s Jacobean Era, by poet John Donne. The name of the book is ‘Devotions upon Emergent Occasions’ and is found in Meditation XVII of that work. Simon and Garfunkel turned Donne’s words backward in their classic hit ‘I am a Rock.’
- Original words: “No man is an Island, intire of it selfe . . . any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”
- Modern words: “No man is an island, entire of itself . . . Each man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls – It tolls for thee.”
For whom the beeper tolls
On Tuesday, September 17, 2024, at 3:30 pm, over 4,000 Motorola beepers (Gold Apollo Rugged Pagers – model AR924) simultaneously exploded across Lebanon in the hands and pant pockets of Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps terrorists. According to a security source in Lebanon, the pagers were carried only by members of Hezbollah. Up to 4,000 Hezbollah operatives were wounded by these explosions, including 18 high-ranking commanders; over 500 were blinded; approximately 400 are in critical condition, and at least 11 terrorists were killed. The explosions were primarily focused around Hezbollah’s center of operations and planning in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahieh, in the Beqaa region of eastern Lebanon (a terrorist Mecca), and inside a Hezbollah vehicle in Damascus, on the road between Kafr Sousa and the Mouwasat Tunnel, as well as in the Sayyida Zaynab neighborhood, where there were at least 19 Iranian casualties and over 150 injuries. The Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon Mojtaba Amani, lost one eye and was severely damaged in the other, when his beeper exploded. He was flown back to Tehran for surgery.
Both Motorola and their licensee Gold Apollo (a Taiwanese company) are pointing the finger in the direction of a Hungarian sub-licensee BAC Consulting KFT, as the company which last handled the pagers before they were sent to their Hezbollah clients in Lebanon in April 2024. It seems that very small amounts (approximately 20 grams) of the powerful explosive PETN (pentaerythritol tetranitrate) were inserted into the pagers’ batteries, for remote detonation via a call or page from afar. Sky News Arabia quoted unnamed Lebanese security sources who said that the Israeli spy agency “Mossad managed to intercept Hezbollah’s communication devices before they were delivered to the [Hezbollah terror] group.” Israel has not taken credit for this operation to date, though of course Israel traditionally does not comment on security operations outside the country. As former CIA analyst Mike Di Mino of the US-based Defense Priorities think tank comments: “Given that this was a clandestine operation, don’t expect to see Israel claim responsibility for this in the press or in any government statements. That’s sort of the whole point . . . This was a classic sabotage operation.” He added that such an operation takes “months if not years” to orchestrate.
The explosions came only a few hours after Israel’s SHABAK (General Security Service) announced it had foiled an attempt by Hezbollah to kill a former senior Israeli security official – former Chief of Staff and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon – using a planted explosive device that could be remotely detonated.
Ducking the inevitable
Hezbollah’s recent move away from trackable cellphones to Motorola beepers was based on a decision to avoid encroaching Israeli intelligence surveillance. AP News says: “The pagers that exploded had been newly acquired by Hezbollah after the group’s leader ordered members to stop using cellphones, warning they could be tracked by Israeli intelligence. A Hezbollah official told The Associated Press the pagers were a new brand the group had not used before.”
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, had declared in February 2024: “Shut it off, bury it, put it in an iron chest and lock it up. The collaborator [with the Israelis] is the cell phone in your hands, and those of your wife and your children. This cell phone is the collaborator and the killer.” Hezbollah moved to a low-tech solution, turning to pagers, according to Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official and Middle East analyst: “Hezbollah regressed back to these devices thinking [they] would be safer for its combatants to use instead of phones which could be GPS targeted. These very low-tech devices were used against them and very possibly deepening the stress and embarrassment on its leaders.”
Dubai-based security and military analyst Riad Kahwaji said that Israel had taken advantage of Hezbollah’s move away from smartphones to pagers. Israel intelligence had conducted a “most professional operation,” he said.
I’ve gotta get a message to you
- Nations talk to each other not only through diplomats at the United Nations. Right now, Israel has been having a bracing chat with both Lebanese Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guards of Iran.
The Jewish state’s message is multi-pronged:
- Israel has sowed chaos within Hezbollah, neutralizing thousands of their fighters, creating deep disarray in their communications networks. Each Hezbollah operative can now envision that Israeli intelligence knows his exact whereabouts, and needs to fear a science-fiction-like attack on his own life. This is a classic psyop, weakening confidence in the organization’s leadership and competence
- Israel has demonstrated fearsome capabilities, requiring high-quality intelligence, deep penetration, mastery of advanced communications systems (the synchronized and timed detonation of thousands of pagers), the targeting of high-ranking individuals in Hezbollah and Iranian command structures. This was obviously not an operation thrown together at the last moment
- The injury of Iran’s Ambassador to Lebanon shows deep complicity, for the Ambassador would not have been injured had he not been carrying a Hezbollah pager
- Israel is telling its enemies that they can run but they cannot hide. No enemy of Israel is immune here – not even Iran’s equipment and networks: As CNN puts it: “We can reach you anywhere, anytime, at the day and moment of our choosing and we can do it at the press of a button.” As Stephen Stills once remarked, “Paranoia strikes deep – into your heart it will creep!”
The famous Syrian Druze journalist, Fitzal al Kasim (who MC’s a show on al Jazeera), comments on this recent Beirut ‘Beeper Attack”:
- “What happened today to Hezbollah can be classified as the biggest pre-emptive strike in modern history. It can be compared to Israel’s pre-emptive strike on the Egyptian Air Force before the Six Day War. Today, Hezbollah has thousands of paraplegics from among the elite and active. If Hezbollah enters the war now, its wounded will not find even one free bed in the hospitals in Lebanon because the hospitals are now bursting with wounded. Even worse – Hezbollah lost the most important security and military means of communication. Checkmate.”
Everybody look what’s going down
This latest ‘Operation Beeper’ is one more straw in an explosive volcano of events transpiring over the past two months. There have been major security blows landing on the heads of both Hezbollah and Hamas.
On July 30, 2024, senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr was taken out be an Israeli airstrike, demonstrating that the IAF had precise information about his whereabouts. On July 31, the politburo leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, met his end in a high-security Tehran residence. Israel has not confirmed any involvement there.
- This last pager-bombing might signal an opportune time to weaken and expel Hezbollah from its talon-like grip on southern Lebanon.
French defense expert Pierre Servent opines that Israel’s latest action against Hezbollah (though not acknowledged) would restore the flagging reputation of Israel’s intelligence services, which were badly weakened by Hamas’ October 7, 2024: “The series of operations conducted over the past few months marks their big comeback, with a desire for deterrence and a message: ‘We messed up but we’re not dead.’”
How should we then pray?
- Pray for the God of Jacob to grant revelatory strategies to Israel’s leadership, as did Elisha in his day (2 Kings 6:8-13)
- Pray for the blocking and frustration of Hezbollah and Iranian jihad plans against Israel, the apple of God’s eye (Zechariah 2:8)
- Pray for the physical rescue of the approximately 44 to 50 living Israeli hostages (including babies) kidnapped by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and PFLP/PLO. At this moment some of these hostages are being tortured, raped and starved (this based on testimonies of recently released hostages). Sadly, over 100 of all Israeli hostages are dead; Hamas is holding on to their corpses as cold storage bargaining chips
- Pray for the raising up of Ezekiel’s prophetic Jewish army throughout the earth
Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.
In Messiah Yeshua,
Avner Boskey
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