Netanyahu’s office confirms Israel was behind devastating pager attacks on Hezbollah
Spokesman says PM personally approved operation; Netanyahu reportedly told cabinet he okayed attack despite ‘opposition’ from senior defense officials
A spokesperson for Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu’s office confirmed to media outlets on Monday for the first time that Israel was behind a string of devastating attacks on Hezbollah communications devices in September.
During a cabinet meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu reportedly boasted that Israel was behind the attacks, but while the Jewish state was widely believed to have been responsible, there had been no official confirmation from the government or military until spokesman Omer Dostri’s statement on Monday.
On September 17, thousands of pagers simultaneously exploded in the southern suburbs of Beirut and other Hezbollah strongholds across Lebanon.
The coordinated attack dealt a deadly blow to the Iran-backed Lebanese terror group, and kicked off an escalation that continued with the assassination of almost all of Hezbollah’s leadership, including Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, and a limited Israeli ground invasion of southern Lebanon.
A Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity, had said the incident was the “biggest security breach” for the group in nearly a year of conflict with Israel.
Among the victims rushed to hospital, many had eye injuries, missing fingers or gaping holes in their abdomens, Reuters witnesses saw, indicating their proximity to the devices at the time of detonation. In total, the pager attack, and a second on the following day that activated weaponized walkie-talkies, killed 39 people and wounded more than 3,400.
The tolls did not differentiate between civilians and members of the terror group, and among the wounded was Tehran’s ambassador to Lebanon Mojtaba Amani. A Hezbollah official told Reuters a week later that the attacks put 1,500 of the group’s fighters out of commission due to their injuries, with many having been blinded or had their hands blown off.
In the aftermath, various media outlets reported that the attack was a highly sophisticated Israeli intelligence operation years in the making in which Hezbollah was fooled into purchasing the compromised devices.
The pager explosions occurred after almost a year of incessant rocket and drone attacks on Israel by the Hezbollah terror group, which began a day after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre and led to the evacuation of some 60,000 residents from northern Israel towns on the border with Lebanon.
The attacks on northern Israel since October 2023 have caused the deaths of 40 civilians. In addition, 61 IDF soldiers and reservists have died in cross-border skirmishes and in the ground operation launched in southern Lebanon in late September.
Netanyahu reportedly claimed to cabinet ministers on Sunday that senior defense officials and political figures were opposed to the detonation of the pagers but that he went ahead with the operation.
“The pager operation and the elimination of [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah were carried out despite the opposition of senior officials in the defense establishment and those responsible for them in the political echelon,” he reportedly said, in a clear dig at recently fired defense minister Yoav Gallant.
Netanyahu and Gallant have clashed repeatedly over the course of their time in government together. In March 2023, Netanyahu fired Gallant a day after the then-defense minister called for pausing the legislation process of the government’s contentious judicial overhaul plans, which he said caused divisions that posed a threat to national security.
He was reinstated less than a month later, however, and was at the helm of the Defense Ministry when Hamas committed its deadly terror assault in southern Israel on October 7 last year. Gallant remained in his post throughout the subsequent war in the Gaza Strip, the fighting on the northern border, and the ground operation in southern Lebanon, until he was fired by Netanyahu last week.
Gallant said in a press conference Tuesday he was ultimately fired due to his positions on the need to draft Haredi men to the IDF, the imperative to bring back the hostages from Gaza, and the need for a state commission of inquiry in the October 7 Hamas terror onslaught and ensuing war.
