Editorials & Other Articles

As it turned out, the actual production of the devices was outsourced and the marketing official had no knowledge of the operation and was unaware that the pagers were physically assembled in Israel under Mossad oversight, officials said. Mossad’s pagers, each weighing less than three ounces, included a unique feature: a battery pack that concealed a tiny amount of a powerful explosive, according to the officials familiar with the plot.
In a feat of engineering, the bomb component was so carefully hidden as to be virtually undetectable, even if the device was taken apart, the officials said. Israeli officials believe that Hezbollah did disassemble some of the pagers and may have even X-rayed them.
Also invisible was Mossad’s remote access to the devices. An electronic signal from the intelligence service could trigger the explosion of thousands of the devices at once. But, to ensure maximum damage, the blast could also be triggered by a special two-step procedure required for viewing secure messages that had been encrypted.
“You had to push two buttons to read the message,” an official said. In practice, that meant using both hands


https://archive.is/2024.10.05-233452/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/05/israel-mossad-hezbollah-pagers-nasrallah/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNzI4MTAwODAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNzI5NDgzMTk5LCJpYXQiOjE3MjgxMDA4MDAsImp0aSI6ImIxYzQ1YjZlLWYzMmItNGRiYy05YjkzLWFjN2UwODNkNWNkMSIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS93b3JsZC8yMDI0LzEwLzA1L2lzcmFlbC1tb3NzYWQtaGV6Ym9sbGFoLXBhZ2Vycy1uYXNyYWxsYWgvIn0.W7Fqcro3Gkry8Hq4ESS06CD70aK2STZDHQ4YHO4Q7BM