"Don't Mess With Us!"

"When they are buying from us, they have zero clue that they are buying from the Mossad."

"We make like Truman Show, everything is controlled by us behind the scene."

"Those people without hands and eyes are living proof, walking in Lebanon, of 'don't mess with  us'."

Gabriel, pseudonym for former senior Israeli Intelligence agent 

60 Minutes

 

There were two retired Israeli Intelligence agents who revealed details of a clandestine operation that had taken years to fully develop. The deadly operation focused on targeting Hezbollah terrorist operatives in Lebanon and Syria to remove them from the business of violence against Israel. With the development, implantation and triggering of exploding pagers and walkie-talkies three months ago, Israel performed an undercover technical feat meant to warn off and disable its enemies.

In the immediate aftermath of the Hamas coordinated attack on southern Israel from Gaza, with other Palestinian terrorist groups that took the lives of over a thousand Israelis, from infants to the elderly, a campaign that deliberately delivered carnage to entire families, many of whom were incinerated in their homes, along with systematic rapes of girls and women who were mutilated and tortured while being gang raped, Hezbollah's leadership saw fit to attack Israel from the North, raining missiles down on Israeli towns and farms in the Golan Heights.

A low-intensity conflict ensued, one that saw tens of thousands of Israelis forced to vacate their homes and relocate to safer areas in Israel. The two retired agents were interviewed for a revelatory program with CBS 60 Minutes on Sunday night. Wearing masks, speaking with altered voices to protect their identities, the two agents were given names: 'Michael' and 'Gabriel'. "We created a pretend world", Michael revealed during the interview.

 

Lesley Stahl speaks with a former Mossad agent "Gabriel"   60 Minutes

The operation began a decade ago, to develop a technology that would allow for the use of walkie-talkies filled with hidden explosives. When Hezbollah bought the devices it did not occur to them that they were acquiring these devices from their enemy, Israel. In 2022 once Israel's Mossad intelligence agency discovered that Hezbollah had been buying pagers from a Taiwan-based company, phase two of the plan was initiated.

The pagers, slightly larger than the norm, to accommodate hidden explosives, were tested on dummies to find the just-right amount of explosives that would harm only the Hezbollah individual carrying the device, and not anyone else in close proximity. Numerous ringtones were also tested to select one that sounded sufficiently urgent to compel the user to pull the pager out of a pocket.

According to 'Gabriel' patience was required to convince Hezbollah to switch its choice to the heftier pager. Misleading ads were used on YouTube to promote the devices as dustproof, waterproof, the use of a long battery life and other user-tempting promises. Shell companies, one based in Hungary, were used to dupe the Taiwanese company to partner with the Mossad.

Hezbollah operatives ended up with 5,000 of these explosive pagers in their pockets by September. The attack went operational on September 17, when pagers all over Lebanon began to beep. Even if the person failed to push the buttons to read an incoming message, the devices would still explode. The day following the devices being triggered, the activated walkie-talkies began exploding at funerals taking place for some of the 30 people who were killed in the earlier pager attacks.

The goal of the operation was really meant to send a message, rather than actually killing Hezbollah operatives. "Don't mess with us!"

"We want them to feel vulnerable, which they are."

"We can't use the pagers again because we already did that. We've already moved on to the next thing."

"And they'll have to keep on trying to guess what the next thing is." 

Michael to CBS

People react around a car after a reported explosion occurred during the funeral of those killed when hundreds of paging devices exploded across Lebanon the previous day, in Beirut's southern suburbs on September 18.    Fadel Itani/AFP/Getty Images