A recent announcement by the Taiwanese company initially thought to have manufactured the pagers adds a new dimension to the ongoing thriller regarding who made the devices that turned into bombs against Hezbollah fighters.
According to Gold Apollo, the thousands of pagers that exploded almost simultaneously on Tuesday afternoon, resulting in 9 deaths and over 2,750 injuries, were manufactured by a company based in Hungary.
The announcement states that the AR-924 pagers were produced by BAC Consulting KFT, headquartered in Budapest, to which the Taiwanese company had granted permission to use its brand.
“According to the agreement, we had given BAC permission to use the brand for selling products in certain regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products were entirely the responsibility of BAC,” Gold Apollo’s announcement reads.
In his statements, Gold Apollo’s president, Hsu Ching-Kuan, mentioned that the agreement with the Hungarian BAC has been in place for the past three years.
“This company has collaborated with us and sells many of our products. They wanted to manufacture pagers, so they requested permission to use our company’s name,” Hsu said.
However, as noted by the Associated Press, when reporters present asked for more details about the agreement and the Hungarian company, Hsu not only failed to present any documents but left without providing further answers.
Hezbollah vows revenge
In the aftermath of the chaos, with blood-stained streets, thousands of people with severed limbs and fingers, and wounds from the body to the eyes, Lebanon has been gripped by fear. The country’s organization, Hezbollah, in a move of panic, once again banned its members from using their mobile phones, thus cutting off any communication among its members following the massive explosions in pagers that killed 9 and injured another 2,800.
With Hezbollah vowing revenge, more and more – American – sources are pointing to Israel as responsible for the attack that shattered morale and disrupted the organization. Although Israel has not officially admitted this, there are indications: On Monday evening, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant met with the American envoy to the region, Amos Hochstein, and made it clear that the time for diplomacy with Hezbollah had passed and that the military would take action. A few hours later, on Tuesday afternoon, the organization’s communication infrastructure was hit in an unprecedented manner on a global scale.
Possibly not coincidentally, as revealed by American officials, on the day of the attack, Gallant had two phone conversations with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Although the exact times and subjects of the conversations were not disclosed, and despite the fact that the two men are in “open communication,” diplomatic sources emphasize that it is “extremely rare” to schedule two phone calls in a single day, indicating the seriousness with which the U.S. views the situation.
The last time the two ministers spoke twice in one day was April 13, when Iran launched a massive attack with ballistic missiles and drones against Israel.
The attack with the bomb explosions came after the Israeli Security Cabinet’s vote (on Monday) to add another military target in the ongoing conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah: Ensuring the safe return of residents from communities along the border with Lebanon to their homes. After nearly a year of cross-border exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel, tens of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes in southern Lebanon and northern Israel. While the return of residents of northern Israel has long been understood as a political necessity for the Netanyahu government, this is the first time it has been made an official military objective.
Satellite company of Mossad?
All information so far points to Mossad, in collaboration with Israeli Army services, managing to infiltrate the network transporting the pagers Hezbollah purchased – a few months ago – from the Taiwanese company Gold Apollo. Most of the pagers that exploded were the new AR924 model, which, in shipments to Hezbollah members (likely) contained small amounts (from 5 to 50 grams) of explosives. The pagers were also fitted with detonators for remote triggering, and the explosives triggered an explosion of the lithium-ion battery carried by the devices, causing a larger and more intense explosion.
What remains to be clarified now is whether Israel indeed carried out this hybrid attack—something that will be confirmed if there is an official claim of responsibility, and in what manner. One question, for example, is whether the Hungarian company is a satellite company of Mossad, which was working until it received orders to strike, or whether members of the Israeli secret services managed to infiltrate the company or some point in the distribution chain to the final recipient, sabotaging the pagers. In other words, whether the pagers were manufactured as lethal devices or were sabotaged after production.
The most important question, perhaps, is what will follow in the Middle East. Hezbollah, after all, is pro-Iranian (armed by Iran) and an ally of Hamas, with which Israel is at war. Hezbollah accused Israel of being “entirely responsible” for the simultaneous explosion of the pagers and assured that it would “receive fair punishment” after “this criminal attack.” Among the victims are two fighters of the pro-Iranian movement and a 16-year-old girl. Two security sources reported that one of the dead fighters was the son of a Hezbollah MP. The Prime Minister of Lebanon, Najib Mikati, accused Israel of the series of explosions in the country, which he described as “criminal.” Hamas, which expressed its solidarity with Hezbollah, also accused Israel of being behind the attack.
If this is confirmed, then we will know with certainty that Israel has sent Hezbollah (and its allies) a very harsh message: “We can locate each of your members anywhere and strike at a time, place, and in a way no one can imagine. Each one individually and all together at the same time.”
Hezbollah: “Bury your mobile phones”
The tragic irony for Hezbollah is that the organization has long turned to more “primitive” forms of communication—such as pagers—emphasizing secrecy as the cornerstone of its military strategy. For this reason, it uses alternatives to mobile phones, tablets, and other high-tech devices, whose use it has stopped to avoid infiltration by Israeli and American espionage software. It seems Israel used this very choice to deal a devastating blow to the organization.
Pagers—decades outdated for most people in Lebanon—were supposed to facilitate communication between Hezbollah members. Instead, they became deadly devices.
Notably, in a televised address just six months ago, Hezbollah’s Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah, urged the organization’s members and their families in southern Lebanon, where fighting has been raging with Israeli forces on the other side of the border for nearly a year, to abandon their mobile phones.
“Turn it off, bury it, put it in an iron chest, and lock it,” he said in a speech in February. “Do it for security and to protect the blood and dignity of the people. The collaborator (with the Israelis) is the mobile phone in your hand and in the hands of your wife and children. This mobile phone is the collaborator and the killer.”
Unlike other non-state actors in the Middle East, Hezbollah units are believed to communicate through an internal communications network. This is considered one of the key structural elements of the powerful group, which has long been accused of operating as a state within a state in Lebanon, a country deeply affected by a severe economic crisis.
