AG Report 9.26.2024
Israel’s Anti-terror Coup
Israel just pulled off the most successful anti-terror operations in history and many people are mad about it. As I’ve previously pointed out, those who complain when Israel targets terrorists with limited collateral damage as much as they complain about extensive civilian casualties have made it clear that their real outrage is over Israel defending itself at all. Luckily, Israel has ignored those people and instead pursued an anti-terror strategy in Lebanon that’s so brilliant it seems too farfetched even for Hollywood.
Hezbollah is a terrorist group that’s taken over large parts of Lebanon and oppresses the local population. Their persecution of Christians is well documented. Hezbollah has also helped murder and starve Syrians on behalf of Bashar al-Assad and the Islamic Republic, in addition to killing hundreds of Americans in various terrorist attacks. The CIA has certainly not forgotten that Hezbollah kidnapped, brutally tortured for 15 months, and killed their Beirut station chief.
Since Hezbollah is essentially a proxy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, they prioritize the interests of Tehran over Beirut. All this has led to great resentment among the Lebanese population. Hezbollah has many enemies among the locals, many of whom are willing to help Israel. That’s a huge contrast from Gaza, where locals view Hamas much more favorably and are mostly unwilling to aid Israel against them.
Hezbollah effectively joined the war against Israel on October 8, 2023, and has been indiscriminately firing rockets into Israel ever since, forcing Israel to evacuate much of the north. Because they’ve been focused on Gaza, Israel has only responded to Hezbollah with limited direct strikes. The people who left their homes and have been displaced for a year have grown increasingly frustrated with the government for not doing more to make it safe for them to return. Israeli leadership realized they needed a more forceful response to Hezbollah.
It’s important to note that Israel previously had to invade Lebanon for the same reason. After Hezbollah started launching rockets indiscriminately in 2006 and did a cross-border raid to kill and kidnap Israeli soldiers, Israel was forced to invade Lebanon. However, Israel agreed to withdraw when the UN and Lebanon committed to disarming Hezbollah under UN resolution 1701. They never followed through on that pledge, which is why the current situation exists.
It’s in that context that Israel implemented their unprecedented strategy:
Step 1: Israel targeted several key Hezbollah leaders with precision strikes. The most prominent example was Fuad Shukr, head of Hezbollah’s military operations, who was eliminated in July. Shukr was wanted by the US for his role in the murder of hundreds of American military personnel in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings. Israel’s ability to track and hit senior leaders caused panic among the organization. As a result, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah publicly advocated for his fighters to ditch their cell phones and switch to a closed comms system using pagers.
Step 2: Israel, knowing the continuous threat of Hezbollah, had been planning an operation for years to take over Hezbollah’s communications supply chain. According to The New York Times, Israel established a shell company in Europe and started selling pagers and other communication devices. They then got Hezbollah to start using that company exclusively. This could not have been achieved without help. They outfitted the batteries of pagers with PETN explosives which could be triggered to go off once overheated.
One of the reasons this is so brilliant is that it used Hezbollah’s strategy against them. Hezbollah had become paranoid about phones, so they wanted a low-tech solution. That meant they would distribute these pagers only to people they trusted, who were almost exclusively senior members of the organization. Then last week, upon seeing intelligence of a coming escalation from Hezbollah as retaliation for the Shukr assassination, Israel detonated the devices. In one swoop, Israel managed to injure or kill thousands of Hezbollah terrorists with very limited collateral damage. Targeting that many terrorists within a civilian population would usually take an extensive bombing campaign with thousands of innocents killed. This also created additional panic in Hezbollah, as even senior members of their leadership were hit and killed.
Step 3: Hezbollah quickly reacted by throwing out their pagers and switching to their backup closed communication system…walkies. Only it turned out that Israel had also managed to outfit several shipments of those devices with explosives and set them off the next day. This led to further paranoia and a complete breakdown within Hezbollah. Meanwhile, Israel used their intelligence assets on the ground to track senior Hezbollah members leaving the hospital.
Step 4: The man who replaced Shukr as senior commander and head of the Radwan unit was Ibrahim Aqil. He was also wanted by the US and had a large bounty on his head for his role in past terrorist attacks against Americans. Not trusting any of their communication after recent events, Aqil called a face-to-face meeting with the senior leadership of Radwan unit. Turns out, Israel had been tracking Aqil since the beeper explosions. They then executed a targeted strike at the bunker where the meeting was taking place and took him and several other senior leaders out.
In just a week, Israel completely decimated the senior leadership of one of the world’s largest terror groups and completely undermined their entire ability to communicate. The group is now humiliated. More importantly, the Islamic Republic spent decades building up Hamas and Hezbollah as primary proxies in the region. Both groups are now severely damaged.
Those who view appeasement as the needed strategy are upset and see this operation as an escalation, but that is mostly a result of not understanding the region or these terror groups. The alternative was a full-scale war in Lebanon. No one knows what will happen next, but disabling this terror group and bringing senior terrorists to justice should be celebrated.
Media Misrepresentation: