NYT: Israel Spent Years Creating Shell Company Which Produced the Exploding Pagers and Sold Them to Hezbollah

(VINnews) — The New York Times has published a long article, revealing stunning new details about Israel’s “modern day Trojan Horse” — aka exploding pagers. One major revelation the article describes about Israel’s strategy, not previously reported, is that Israel did not intercept the pagers before they were delivered, as some have reported. Rather they did something far more ingenious.

The Times quoted 12 defense and intelligence officials who were briefed on the attack who described the operation as complex and long in the making.

According to the article, Hezbollah leadership had been distraught for years, due to Israel locating and targeting terrorists using advanced technology. That led to the need for pagers.

Hezbollah paid for the pagers that were used against them.

AGAIN: An Israeli Intelligence-run Shell Company SOLD the pagers to Hezbollah.

HAHAHAHA. https://t.co/khfSwQj012

— Yossi Gestetner (@YossiGestetner) September 19, 2024

The Times wrote:

In Lebanon, as Israel picked off senior Hezbollah commandos with targeted assassinations, their leader came to a conclusion: If Israel was going high-tech, Hezbollah would go low. It was clear, a distressed Hezbollah chief, Hassan Nasrallah, said, that Israel was using cellphone networks to pinpoint the locations of his operatives.

“You ask me where is the agent,” Mr. Nasrallah told his followers in a publicly televised address in February. “I tell you that the phone in your hands, in your wife’s hands, and in your children’s hands is the agent.”

Then he issued a plea.

“Bury it,” Mr. Nasrallah said. “Put it in an iron box and lock it.”

He had been pushing for years for Hezbollah to invest instead in pagers, which for all their limited capabilities could receive data without giving away a user’s location or other compromising information, according to American intelligence assessments.

The Times then described Israel’s brilliant strategy to create a shell company manufacturing pagers.

Even before Mr. Nasrallah decided to expand pager usage, Israel had put into motion a plan to establish a shell company that would pose as an international pager producer.

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.

B.A.C. did take on ordinary clients, for which it produced a range of ordinary pagers. But the only client that really mattered was Hezbollah, and its pagers were far from ordinary. Produced separately, they contained batteries laced with the explosive PETN, according to the three intelligence officers.

The pagers began shipping to Lebanon in the summer of 2022 in small numbers, but production was quickly ramped up after Mr. Nasrallah denounced cellphones.

Some of Mr. Nasrallah’s fears were spurred by reports from allies that Israel had acquired new means to hack into phones, activating microphones and cameras remotely to spy on their owners. According to three intelligence officials, Israel had invested millions in developing the technology, and word spread among Hezbollah and its allies that no cellphone communication — even encrypted messaging apps — was safe anymore.

Not only did Mr. Nasrallah ban cellphones from meetings of Hezbollah operatives, he ordered that the details of Hezbollah movements and plans never be communicated over cellphones, said three intelligence officials. Hezbollah officers, he ordered, had to carry pagers at all times, and in the event of war, pagers would be used to tell fighters where to go.

Over the summer, shipments of the pagers to Lebanon increased, with thousands arriving in the country and being distributed among Hezbollah officers and their allies, according to two American intelligence officials.

To Hezbollah, they were a defensive measure, but in Israel, intelligence officers referred to the pagers as “buttons” that could be pushed when the time seemed ripe.

That moment, it appears, came this week….

…Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would do whatever was necessary to enable more than 70,000 Israelis driven away by the fighting with Hezbollah to return home, according to reports in Israeli news outlets. Those residents, he said, could not return without “a fundamental change in the security situation in the north,” according to a statement from the prime minister’s office.

On Tuesday, the order was given to activate the pagers.

The article added:

Powered by just a few ounces of an explosive compound concealed within the devices, the blasts sent grown men flying off motorcycles and slamming into walls, according to witnesses and video footage. People out shopping fell to the ground, writhing in agony, smoke snaking from their pockets.

Mohammed Awada, 52, and his son were driving by one man whose pager exploded, he said. “My son went crazy and started to scream when he saw the man’s hand flying away from him,” he said.

By the end of the day, at least a dozen people were dead and more than 2,700 were wounded, many of them maimed. And the following day, 20 more people were killed and hundreds wounded when walkie-talkies in Lebanon also began mysteriously exploding

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