Rigging thousands of pagers worn and used by Hezbollah terrorists and operatives in Lebanon, Syria, and other northern locations surrounding Israel to explode simultaneously, signifies only a sliver of insight into Israel’s offensive capabilities. With over 4000 terrorists injured simultaneously, many critically, the devastating psychological effect of the cyber-attack attributed to Israel on Hezbollah is only a pre-emptive stage in the expected war on the murderous terror organization in Lebanon.

With the threat from Hamas largely destroyed, despite its still-lethal ability to plant explosives and carry out guerilla attacks, and mopping up operations being executed by a relatively small IDF force in the Gaza Strip, the focus of Israel has shifted to the north. Hezbollah, the terror organization, and the Republic of Iran, a terror state have been put on notice.

On October 7th of last year, Hamas invaded Israeli communities and army camps in the Gaza Strip envelope. Hamas terrorists savagely tortured, raped, and murdered 1200 men, women, children and infants in what is called the Black Shabbat by Israelis. Oct 7 also signified the beginning of a well-planned traumatizing psychological warfare focused on the Israeli public.

Hamas, one of the most experienced terrorist organizations in the area of propaganda and psychological warfare, sought to combine terror warfare with a psychological campaign that would lower the morale of Israelis, create divisions within the nations’ solidarity, question the need to fight and sacrifice, diminish confidence in the political and military leadership, and lastly weaken personal and community resilience.

Hamas planned its psychological operations from day one; from the cameras used to videotape the massacre and stream it online, to the use of living as well as murdered hostages as bargaining chips to keep the IDF at bay. Most of the people of the State of Israel, and the Israel Defense Forces have shown their ability to move ahead, showing Hamas that not only have they lost the ground war and their control over the Gaza Strip, but that their psychological war against the Israeli public has failed as well.

As thousands of injured Hezbollah terrorists and operatives flooded hospitals throughout Lebanon yesterday, the simultaneous explosion of wireless pagers delivered a substantial morale blow to the terror organizations’ membership and leadership sowing chaos, operational confusion, and bringing the terror organization to a standstill. The simultaneous detonation of thousands of pagers has demonstrated to Hezbollah just how penetrable the organization is digitally, unable to defend against Israel’s offensive capabilities, and has also shown the dismal efficacy of intelligence capabilities of Hezbollah and her Iranian patron.

It signals that Israel has had enough after a year of tit-for-tat exchanges forcing the relocation of tens of thousands of residents out of harm’s way, and that the people of Israel and her leadership are not unhinged by the psychological warfare of Hamas. They are ready and willing to do what must be done to repel Hezbollah from Israel’s northern border, and deter the organization for the years to come.

The TikTok, Instagram, and WhatsApp generation might be asking themselves; what’s a beeper? What are the “beepers” or “pagers” that were used by Hezbollah terrorists? The beeper, which predates mobile phones, allows users to receive messages in remote areas lacking reception needed by cellphones.

Mobile phones can be tracked and their conversations listened to. Hezbollah, deterred and unable to defend against Israel’s digital supremacy in cellphone technology, adopted the wide spread use of beepers to coordinate and time the launches of missiles and drones into Israel, as well as to alert Hezbollah terrorists about expected IDF air force strikes.

Finally, Israel’s use of pagers to execute a mass cyber-attack wounding over 4000 Hezbollah terrorists and operatives, has exposed the vulnerable low-tech capabilities of Hezbollah and her Iranian patron. Iran’s strategic posture has continued to deteriorate over the past year, with Hamas largely destroyed, and Hezbollah’s proxy status proving itself to be a ‘paper tiger’ rather than an effective deterrence against Israel.

The impact of Israel’s pager attack, beyond the injured and killed, is the psychological warfare that will penetrate the consciousness of Iranian leaders. Iran’s proxy strategy is under increasing pressure and by now has failed in the Gaza Strip, in Judea and Samaria (aka West Bank), in Lebanon, in Syria, and in Yemen.

Iran’s use of psychological warfare aimed to hype their achievements via Hamas and Hezbollah has run its course and proven to be a failure. What Iran’s leaders fail to grasp is that psychological warfare may be effective against weak and failing states such its cohorts, but it is largely ineffective and can backfire when used against a militarily powerful and regional superpower such as Israel.

In contrast, Israel’s successful use of psychological warfare in the pager attack may very well prove to be the most effective strategy to weaken Iran’s goal of becoming a nuclear state, and weaken her goal of expanding Islamic ideology beyond her borders.

Ron Jager grew up in the South Bronx of New York City, making Aliyah in 1980. Served for 25 years in the IDF as a Mental Health Field Officer in operational units. Prior to retiring was Commander of the Central Psychiatric Clinic for Reserve Solders at Tel-Hashomer. Since retiring has been involved in strategic consultancy to NGO’s and communities in the Gaza Envelope on resiliency projects to assist first responders and communities. Ron has written numerous articles for outlets in Israel and abroad focusing on Israel and the Jewish world. To contact: medconf@gmail.com, Website: www.ronjager.com.

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