7 ms·

Israel Built a Modern-Day Trojan Horse: Exploding Pagers

40 points by palidanx 2y ago

sea-gold 2y ago
https://archive.ph/HPwTt https://archive.ph/HPwTt
pbiggar 2y ago
Shocking to me that a terrorist attack by Israel is being lauded in the New York Times (and indeed on HN).
- russfink 2y ago
  Maybe not so much lauded as put forth for its audacity.
- DowsingSpoon 2y ago
  This was not a terrorist attack. This was a precisely targeted strike against the personnel of a hostile military.
  - JoeyBananas 2y ago
    This was a retaliation for an attack on unit 8200 headquarters, which was a retaliation for the assassination of a Hesbollah commander (https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/which-hezbollah-hamas-leaders-have-been-assassinated-2024-09-18/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/which-hezbollah-ha...) which was... you can see where this is going. What do know for a fact is that Israel bombs Palestine constantly, targets infrastructure, won't let them build a port, denies access to food and water, targets aid workers, shot children in the legs with live ammunition en mass who did not pose an imminent threat (See: South Africa's ICC case) There is no city in Israel that looks like Gaza. There are no west bank settlements into Israel. The Palestinians do not have checkpoints in Israel, or occupy Israel. The widespread starvation in Gaza is well documented, and Israel could prevent it easily if they would just let them get food, but Israel is deliberately not letting food in. Think about that. They're using starvation as a weapon, but it's OK because they're starving people in self-defence?
    - weatherlite 2y ago
      [flagged]
  - bloqs 2y ago
    4 of the initial 12 casualties were doctors
    - meowster 2y ago
      [flagged]
- Qem 2y ago
  This terrorist attack even came in the anniversary of another high profile Zionism terror attack: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folke_Bernadotte https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folke_Bernadotte
  - weatherlite 2y ago
    [flagged]
DoreenMichele 2y ago
It's extremely hard to say anything meaningful about anything and try to be PC without sounding like you are "lauding" something when you are merely reporting it. Furthermore, journalism isn't what it used to be. Newspapers are dying and can't afford staff writers like they once did and a lot of so-called "journalism" these days is written by some underpaid freelancer who doesn't actually have any particular expertise for that kind of writing and may not even be particularly good at writing diplomatically for an extremely diverse global audience which is quite challenging to do. The Internet fundamentally changed a lot of things and we still haven't sorted out all the bugs it caused in a system that was never perfect but worked better when your audience was more limited, among other things. Just stating clearly you see this as terrorism while indicating your sources say Israel is behind it but you can't prove it is a potential legal minefield for the publication, so the writer likely was explicitly told they absolutely could not make both assertions in the same piece. I took too long to write this and I can no longer post it as a reply to the now flagged dead comment which inspired it. Edit: it's also a dupe and this headline looks more hn neutral: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41580205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41580205
- nradov 2y ago
  You seem to be confused about the legal issues. For a newspaper to state that they "see" something as terrorism (regardless of whether it really is terrorism) is absolutely a protected opinion under the 1st Amendment, and libel and slander statutes. This is settled law with zero ambiguity. The NY Times gets sued frequently and the editors don't self censor over imaginary concerns about frivolous lawsuits.
k310 2y ago
Here's the "how" --- shell companies He (Nasrallah) 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. 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.
hedora 2y ago
According to the BBC, of the 12 killed by pages, four were doctors, so it looks like Israel targeted hospitals as part of this attack. They also must have known that many of these bombs would detonate in public places where they would injure many civilians. I suspect the be breakdown of the thousands injured will disproportionately be innocent bystanders. Claiming this was a targeted military attack is ludicrous.
- golemiprague 2y ago
  [dead]
- jollofricepeas 2y ago
  Agreed. A targeted strike against enemy combatants (with minimal civilian deaths) is LEGAL WAR. Indiscriminate booby traps into a civilian population (regardless of the original buyer) is definitely TERRORISM. At this point, Israel’s detractors will say morally it’s no different than Hamas. The dropping of bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima was TERRORISM as well as well as the fire bombing of London and Dresden.
  - weatherlite 2y ago
    [flagged]
- sir0010010 2y ago
  Why would doctors have Hezbollah pagers or otherwise be involved with Hezbollah? Also, what other means of attack would have a better combatant/civilian casualty ratio than this? Do you think that dropping bombs or sending in ground forces with M16s would have hit a lower percentage of civilians?
  - imtringued 2y ago
    There is no such thing as a Hezbollah pager. They are gold Apollo pagers. It is completely normal for doctors to have pagers.
bubaumba 2y ago
if israelis can do it it's most likely not limited to hezbollah. will this be investigated or it will be like nord stream?
- qula 2y ago
  [flagged]
myth_drannon 2y ago
The point was not to kill them, but to maim and blind them. The thousands of blind, neutered and armless terrorists will for generations remind everyone in the Middle East that you don't f*ck with Israel. The same applies to Gaza which is now unsuitable for living.
- weatherlite 2y ago
  They also thought about not harming uninvolved people, and also there's so much explosives you can fit inside a pager anyway.
underlogic 2y ago
This attack vector applies to all modern electronics and privacy conscious consumers will take note. Not only are electronics almost certainly willingly backdoored for the government but now tomorrow if the need is great enough your phone becomes a remote IED. With configure-to-order now standard, all those on a watchlist get a little something extra in their stocking. Why stop there? How about a little cyanide for their prescription? This is a rather terrible precedent for the economy. That said, it was fair game. Also this recent thread is worth revisiting I think; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41551564 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41551564

40 points by palidanx 2y ago

sea-gold 2y ago

https://archive.ph/HPwTt https://archive.ph/HPwTt

pbiggar 2y ago

Shocking to me that a terrorist attack by Israel is being lauded in the New York Times (and indeed on HN).

russfink 2y ago
Maybe not so much lauded as put forth for its audacity.
DowsingSpoon 2y ago
This was not a terrorist attack. This was a precisely targeted strike against the personnel of a hostile military.
- JoeyBananas 2y ago
  This was a retaliation for an attack on unit 8200 headquarters, which was a retaliation for the assassination of a Hesbollah commander (https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/which-hezbollah-hamas-leaders-have-been-assassinated-2024-09-18/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/which-hezbollah-ha...) which was... you can see where this is going. What do know for a fact is that Israel bombs Palestine constantly, targets infrastructure, won't let them build a port, denies access to food and water, targets aid workers, shot children in the legs with live ammunition en mass who did not pose an imminent threat (See: South Africa's ICC case) There is no city in Israel that looks like Gaza. There are no west bank settlements into Israel. The Palestinians do not have checkpoints in Israel, or occupy Israel. The widespread starvation in Gaza is well documented, and Israel could prevent it easily if they would just let them get food, but Israel is deliberately not letting food in. Think about that. They're using starvation as a weapon, but it's OK because they're starving people in self-defence?
  - weatherlite 2y ago
    [flagged]
- bloqs 2y ago
  4 of the initial 12 casualties were doctors
  - meowster 2y ago
    [flagged]
Qem 2y ago
This terrorist attack even came in the anniversary of another high profile Zionism terror attack: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folke_Bernadotte https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folke_Bernadotte
- weatherlite 2y ago
  [flagged]

DoreenMichele 2y ago

It's extremely hard to say anything meaningful about anything and try to be PC without sounding like you are "lauding" something when you are merely reporting it. Furthermore, journalism isn't what it used to be. Newspapers are dying and can't afford staff writers like they once did and a lot of so-called "journalism" these days is written by some underpaid freelancer who doesn't actually have any particular expertise for that kind of writing and may not even be particularly good at writing diplomatically for an extremely diverse global audience which is quite challenging to do. The Internet fundamentally changed a lot of things and we still haven't sorted out all the bugs it caused in a system that was never perfect but worked better when your audience was more limited, among other things. Just stating clearly you see this as terrorism while indicating your sources say Israel is behind it but you can't prove it is a potential legal minefield for the publication, so the writer likely was explicitly told they absolutely could not make both assertions in the same piece. I took too long to write this and I can no longer post it as a reply to the now flagged dead comment which inspired it. Edit: it's also a dupe and this headline looks more hn neutral: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41580205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41580205

nradov 2y ago
You seem to be confused about the legal issues. For a newspaper to state that they "see" something as terrorism (regardless of whether it really is terrorism) is absolutely a protected opinion under the 1st Amendment, and libel and slander statutes. This is settled law with zero ambiguity. The NY Times gets sued frequently and the editors don't self censor over imaginary concerns about frivolous lawsuits.

k310 2y ago

Here's the "how" --- shell companies He (Nasrallah) 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. 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.

hedora 2y ago

According to the BBC, of the 12 killed by pages, four were doctors, so it looks like Israel targeted hospitals as part of this attack. They also must have known that many of these bombs would detonate in public places where they would injure many civilians. I suspect the be breakdown of the thousands injured will disproportionately be innocent bystanders. Claiming this was a targeted military attack is ludicrous.

golemiprague 2y ago
[dead]
jollofricepeas 2y ago
Agreed. A targeted strike against enemy combatants (with minimal civilian deaths) is LEGAL WAR. Indiscriminate booby traps into a civilian population (regardless of the original buyer) is definitely TERRORISM. At this point, Israel’s detractors will say morally it’s no different than Hamas. The dropping of bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima was TERRORISM as well as well as the fire bombing of London and Dresden.
- weatherlite 2y ago
  [flagged]
sir0010010 2y ago
Why would doctors have Hezbollah pagers or otherwise be involved with Hezbollah? Also, what other means of attack would have a better combatant/civilian casualty ratio than this? Do you think that dropping bombs or sending in ground forces with M16s would have hit a lower percentage of civilians?
- imtringued 2y ago
  There is no such thing as a Hezbollah pager. They are gold Apollo pagers. It is completely normal for doctors to have pagers.

bubaumba 2y ago

if israelis can do it it's most likely not limited to hezbollah. will this be investigated or it will be like nord stream?

qula 2y ago
[flagged]

myth_drannon 2y ago

The point was not to kill them, but to maim and blind them. The thousands of blind, neutered and armless terrorists will for generations remind everyone in the Middle East that you don't f*ck with Israel. The same applies to Gaza which is now unsuitable for living.

weatherlite 2y ago
They also thought about not harming uninvolved people, and also there's so much explosives you can fit inside a pager anyway.

underlogic 2y ago

This attack vector applies to all modern electronics and privacy conscious consumers will take note. Not only are electronics almost certainly willingly backdoored for the government but now tomorrow if the need is great enough your phone becomes a remote IED. With configure-to-order now standard, all those on a watchlist get a little something extra in their stocking. Why stop there? How about a little cyanide for their prescription? This is a rather terrible precedent for the economy. That said, it was fair game. Also this recent thread is worth revisiting I think; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41551564 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41551564