September 25, 2024
Phil Johnson, Ph.D.
The new iPhone 16 was just released. And terrorist group, Hezbollah has upgraded to tin cans connected with a piece of string as their preferred method of communication.
As you have undoubtedly already heard, Israel – more specifically, Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad – enacted one of the greatest military operations against a terrorist organization ever seen. According to a senior Lebanese security source, Israel’s spy service was able to infiltrate a Taiwan-based pager manufacturer, modify the beepers by adding a small amount of explosive material and a triggering mechanism. And then they were able to get the devices into the hands of thousands of Hezbollah’s militants. Because Hezbollah purchased them. (Taiwanese government officials deny any responsibility.)
Worried that Israel had infiltrated the terrorist organization’s cell phone networks, Hezbollah resorted to the old-fashioned pagers to communicate with their militants. Until September 17th, when Israel flipped a switch and thousands of pagers simultaneously received a notification followed by a detonation. The next day Hezbollah’s Walkie-talkies also detonated across Lebanon. In total, at least 37 were killed, hundreds more were left in critical condition with more than 3000 injured. Officially, Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement. But, yeah, we know.
Since the October 7th Hamas surprise attack on Israel, which claimed more than 1200 lives, Israel has been at war not only with Hamas in Gaza, but with their northern enemy, Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist organization in Lebanon. Since October 7th, Hezbollah has continued to bomb northern Israel causing thousands of residents to flee their homes.
Two weeks ago when I was in Israel meeting with government leaders and survivors of the brutal Hamas attacks, I had the opportunity to visit with Yossi Shain. Shain is a former Knesset Member, current Professor of Political Science at Tel Aviv University and author of the influential book, “The Israeli Century.”
On the balcony of his 12th floor apartment in Tel Aviv I could see the Mediterranean Sea from one direction and the West Bank from the other, reminding me of how tiny the nation of Israel is. So disproportionately tiny for the stumbling block it is for the world.
“This is a very important moment of reckoning in Jewish history, which we don’t know how it will go. Geopolitically, it impacts Israel’s relations with America, with the Europeans, with the world, within itself, because we are also in the midst of a civil war. It’s about the struggle of Israel and our values. What do we do with our power? How do we use our values? The earth is shaking. Where will that go? No one knows.”
“October 7th punctured the legacy of security and power, allowed this puncturing to continue and reverberate, while at the same time, undermined any claim to legitimacy (for Israel) because this claim has been drained already.” Shain was explaining to me that Israel could no longer claim the role of victim in this world, that everything was now turned against them.
“We are in the midst of a storm that we don’t know how and when it will end, how many people will die during the storm. Will it exist, this city, or the City on the Hill, or will it become completely destroyed? We don’t know.”
What we do know is that Israel’s war with her neighbors is escalating. Israel has been carrying out strikes across southern Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah’s rocket launchers, command posts and successfully killing many of Hezbollah’s top commanders. Hezbollah’s top leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has almost no one left to direct. Or to page.
As the conflict continues to escalate, fears of Iran’s more direct involvement grow, and with it concerns that the U.S. will be pulled into a wider regional war. As it stands now, and as usual, too many lives have already been lost and most certainly, this is Israel’s most existential moment since it’s 1948 War of Independence.
The Global Nexter 