https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/09/25/paging-hezbollah-movie-inside-israels-exploding-pager-operation-that-shattered-a-terror-network/
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/433793
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-910025
Pager plot: Israel’s secret moves to keep Hezbollah in the dark
Ahead of the US release of a new documentary, details are being allowed for publication from behind the scenes of the pager operation in September 2024.
The documentary "Paging Hezbollah," directed by Justin Falk and set for release in the US on October 30, reveals new details about the secret Israeli operation that detonated thousands of Hezbollah pagers in September 2024 - including dramatic last-minute efforts to prevent the operation from being exposed.
The film reveals previously undisclosed information about how Israel acted behind the scenes when fears grew that Hezbollah was close to uncovering the operation.
According to the newly released details, Israeli officials became seriously concerned in the weeks before the operation that the plan had been compromised. In early August 2024, Israel’s security establishment discovered that a Hezbollah operative had begun to suspect the pagers distributed to members of the organization’s leadership and was preparing to examine them.
Israel responded by eliminating the operative in a targeted killing. To avoid arousing suspicion, however, the operation was deliberately carried out in a way that made it appear that another individual nearby was the intended target.
A second potential breakthrough for Hezbollah was also thwarted. Israel learned that Iran had sent an unusual shipment of advanced mirror machines to Lebanon designed to test the reliability and authenticity of the pagers.
The Israeli Air Force struck the shipment and destroyed the testing equipment. Once again, Israel concealed the true purpose of the operation, presenting the strike as part of routine intelligence activity aimed at thwarting Hezbollah.
The documentary features interviews with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Mossad chief David Barnea, former Northern Command chief Maj. Gen. Uri Gordin, and other key figures.
The filmmakers reveal how Israel managed to penetrate Hezbollah’s encrypted communications network through sophisticated engineering and deep infiltration of the terrorist organization’s international supply chain.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/433793
Fmr. defense minister Gallant confirms additional details of Mossad's Hezbollah pager operation
Gallant, who was defense minister at the time of the operation, discussed how the timing of the operation arose out of necessity. “In the first week of August [2024], we discovered that there was someone who suspected the pagers,” Gallant told Channel 12.
"In the middle of the operation, it turned out that somewhere, the pagers were being inspected. The result is that you find yourself in a position where you either have to act or risk being exposed, and that could happen very quickly. There's only one question on the table: if you play around with it somehow, maybe you'll end up carrying out the full operation, starting with the radios and so on," Gallant said.
Mossad officials and an Israel Air Force colonel discussed how a Hezbollah operative was getting too close to figuring out that the beepers were booby-trapped and requested the air force kill him to save the operation.
New film 'Paging Hezbollah' includes interviews with Netanyahu, Mossad's Barnea, IDF general
Additionally, the new film, directed by Justin Polk and titled Paging Hezbollah, highlights details about the operation, and includes interviews with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then-Mossad chief David Barnea, and then IDF Northern Command chief Maj.-Gen. Ori Gordin.
According to the film, Iran sent a special X-ray machine to check whether there were explosives in the pagers.
“In the third week of September, we learned that Hezbollah had sent three pagers to Iran for scanning,” Netanyahu revealed.
"We bombed such a scanner that they were about to bring; we got rid of it and also of the person operating it.”
Hezbollah had asked Iran to carry out its own checks on the beepers.
‘Paging Hezbollah’ The Movie: Inside Israel’s Exploding Pager Operation That Shattered a Terror Network
A new documentary is taking viewers inside Israel’s years-long operation to infiltrate Hezbollah’s communications network and turn thousands of the Iran-backed terrorist group’s own pagers against its operatives.
Paging Hezbollah, from director Justin Folk, tells the inside story of the extraordinary September 2024 operation through firsthand accounts from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior Israeli and American intelligence figures.
The film’s first teaser was released Thursday, offering a glimpse into the elaborate planning, engineering, deception, and supply chain infiltration that ultimately placed compromised communications devices in the hands of Hezbollah operatives across Lebanon.
“A handful of TNT changed the world,” Netanyahu says in the trailer.
Former CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus, who also appears in the film, describes the operation as a “modern-day Trojan horse.”
The documentary features interviews with Mossad Director David Barnea, former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, former Israeli National Security Council chief Yaakov Nagel, former U.S. intelligence official and Hezbollah expert Matthew Levitt, and former Israeli intelligence official Sarit Zehavi.
The teaser arrived the same day Netanyahu invoked the operation before world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
“Remember the pagers?” Netanyahu said from the podium Thursday as he held one up before the chamber. “Hezbollah sure does.”
The operation erupted into public view on September 17, 2024, when thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah members began exploding nearly simultaneously across Lebanon and parts of Syria.
A second wave followed the next day, when hundreds of handheld radios used by members of the terrorist organization exploded.
Hezbollah had increasingly turned to pagers and other low-tech communications after its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah warned that cellphones could expose members to Israeli surveillance and targeting.
The security precaution instead became an extraordinary vulnerability.
The attack was the product of a sophisticated intelligence and supply chain operation years in the making, with Israel working to engineer compromised devices and maneuver them into Hezbollah’s communications network while convincing the terrorist organization that the technology was secure.
The filmmakers say Paging Hezbollah goes behind the explosions themselves to examine how the devices were “engineered, marketed, and smuggled in before anyone knew what it was,” tracing the operation from its origins through the decision to activate it.
“Many people heard about the pager operation and wondered how it was even possible,” Folk said. “We wanted to tell the actual inside story — years of patience, engineering, deception, and tradecraft that seem more like fiction than fact.”
“We aimed to make the film of record for the operation, so we went right to the source,” he added. “The deeper we went, the more incredible the real story became.”
The pager attack proved to be an opening blow in a devastating campaign against Hezbollah’s leadership and military infrastructure.
Ten days after the pager explosions, Israel killed Nasrallah in an airstrike on Hezbollah’s underground headquarters in Beirut, along with other senior commanders. Israel subsequently launched a ground operation in southern Lebanon as it sought to push the terrorist organization away from its northern border and allow tens of thousands of displaced Israelis to return home.
The documentary also places the operation within the wider conflict that followed the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. Alongside the intelligence officials and policymakers, the 93-minute film includes testimony from October 7 survivors and the sister of a victim of Hezbollah’s deadly July 2024 rocket attack on the Druze town of Majdal Shams.
Near the end of the film, Netanyahu casts Israel’s fight against Hezbollah and other Iran-backed forces as part of a broader struggle.
“The test of Western civilization is now, in Israel,” Netanyahu says. “Because Israel is fighting the forces that will destroy Western civilization and Western freedom.”
Paging Hezbollah opens in theaters nationwide October 30.
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