Amidst the surprise and the audacity, the sheer Don’t-Mess-With-The-Zohan vibe of it all, the usual questions remain: Why? Why now? What does this mean? Despite the predictable but bizarre efforts to portray the people walking around with pagers issued them by Hezbollah as innocent victims, the “why” should be obvious. Hezbollah is an Iranian terrorist proxy committed to Israel’s destruction, part of a spider’s web of organizations that include Hamas and the Houthis. After Hamas launched its war on Israel on October 7, Hezbollah, despite not (it seems) being given warning of Hamas’s decision to invade, decided to support the invasion by firing rockets at Israel’s northern border, internally displacing around 60,000 Israelis. It has been insistent that it will continue like this until the war in Gaza ends, emboldening Sinwar’s dreams of a regional war, and paradoxically reducing Hamas’s incentive to accept a deal. The answer to “why?” then, is that the “people” with the pagers were active members of an organization that launched a war against Israel and is committed to its destruction. Nobody who devotes their lives to such a goal should think that they can’t get touched. At the very least, they should be paranoid and fearful for their lives.
The “why now?” is more complex. An operation like this would have worked better as 2024’s version of the opening act of the Six-Day War, in which Israel destroyed the air forces of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria before they could leave the ground. In this case, while Israel struck more than 100 loaded Hezbollah launchers overnight, it has since removed movement restrictions on Israeli civilians who remain in the north, and although it has diverted the 98th Division from Gaza to the northern border, we are still yet to see signs of preparation for a full-scale invasion. The most likely scenario – although unconfirmed – is that Hezbollah were beginning to suspect their pagers and walkie-talkies were boobie trapped, thus presenting Israel with a “use it or lose it” dilemma.
If the pager sabotage wasn’t the opening act of a larger war against Hezbollah, the usual questions need to be asked about its strategic impact. Indeed, this has been an ongoing theme of much of Israel’s efforts against Hezbollah, and against its enemies more broadly. There have been assassinations and skirmishes and now the bleeper attack, but nothing has fundamentally altered the situation. Tens of thousands of Israelis remain evacuees, and Hezbollah remain ensconced south of the Litani. It is legitimate to ask what Israel’s plan is to change the strategic situation – I ask myself this almost every day! - but often this question is used as a euphemism to reject Israel taking any action at all. This is where I depart from the critics. Even if the timing of the pager attack was not ideal, the opportunity to cause such damage to Hezbollah had to be grasped, and while it’s true that, yes, they can recover and will now presumably find another way to communicate, the harm to Hezbollah’s fighters and the disruption and paranoia it will engender makes this operation worthwhile, even if nothing else comes from it.
Since October 7, Israel has been on a reactive footing. The war in Gaza was a reaction to Hamas’s invasion; the war of attrition in the north has been a reaction to Hezbollah’s rockets-for-Hamas. As Sun Tzu wrote: “Attack is the secret of defense; defense is the planning of an attack.” It is always preferable to be on the front foot. Rather than accepting Hezbollah’s blackmail, the equation should be to extract a price from Nasrallah for his decision. Indeed, perhaps Hezbollah’s leader has hoisted himself on his own petard (or pager). It’s reasonable to think that Hezbollah weren’t pleased with the timing of Hamas’s invasion and might have preferred to act in coordination further down the line. The demands of imperial Islamist solidarity, though, required Nasrallah to act, even if this has generally been calibrated to avoid a Third Lebanon War. Israel, meanwhile, has registered significant tactical victories against Hezbollah, not least by killing nearly 500 of its fighters.
This, however, has not changed the fundamental strategic situation whereby Hezbollah continues to threaten Israel from the north with tens of thousands of rockets and the potential to make October 7 look like child’s play. Those who call on Israel to unilaterally end the war in Gaza and allow Hamas to win, though, fail to note that this would not change the strategic situation in the north either. This is because Hezbollah’s stated goal is Israel’s destruction. If Nasrallah were to say that he would join a peace deal with Israel in exchange for a solution to the Palestinian question, perhaps the situation would be different, but this looks about as likely as Yahya Sinwar converting to Judaism. In other words, Hezbollah’s existence is predicated on destroying Israel, and it must be treated accordingly.
This isn’t to say Israel shouldn’t pursue a deal to end the war. In this regard, the news of an offer to end the fighting if all hostages are freed at once and the Hamas leadership leaves Gaza should be welcomed, even if sounds fanciful. To echo Ben-Gurion, Israel should pursue a deal to the end the war as if Hezbollah doesn’t exist and confront Hezbollah as if there is no possibility of a deal in Gaza. It must absolutely reject Hezbollah’s attempts at linkage, remind the world that it withdrew from nearly all South Lebanon, and that the ongoing dispute over the Shebaa Farms in no way justifies the existence of a terrorist organization devoted to Israel’s destruction in Lebanon, just as the dispute over Bukit Jeli wouldn’t justify the presence of a non-state terror organization in Thailand or Malaysia. And if the opportunity arises to harm Hezbollah, whether through pagers, walkie-talkies, or more traditional methods, it must always be taken.
Thanks Alex. I really appreciate hearing your well-thought out and thoughtful perspective. Shabbat shalom and much love, Danny Newman
I do see a logic behind Israel’s actions. The IDF has signaled that its active campaign in Gaza is nearing its end. Israeli public opinion is demanding that the situation in the North be attended to. And what Israel has been doing of late is escalating its attacks in such a calibrated manner as to not justify any full-on Hezbollah response. This allows Israel to systematically target Hezbollah commanders and, it now seems, rocket launchers - on the theory that without a way to launch, your missile stockpile is useless. According to reports, today’s killing of the Radwan chieftain and some key staff was the result of his being tracked after leaving the hospital where he was treated for wounds from an exploding pager. Whether this report is correct or not, the fallout from the pager operation can only expand to Hezbollah’s detriment.
Another effect is the ongoing humiliation of both Hezbollah and its sponsor Iran throughout much of the Arab world (and probably internally in Iran too). They are being revealed as paper tigers and, in an honor-shame society, losing face is among the worst outcomes possible. Yet, the leadership - unlike its cannon fodder ground troops - is not suicidal, and the decision they face is between restoring their honor and risk destruction or trying to convince a disillusioned populace that they can restore their honor but, like Godot, are waiting for the arrival of the right time to do so. Everyone laughed at Baghdad Bob during the Iraq war. I don’t imagine Nasrallah wants to be remembered as a Beirut Bob or Ayatollah Khameini as a Teheran Ted.
Neither can now be certain where Israel’s red line may be and that makes their decision making that much more difficult. Communicating their decisions down the chain of command is now suddenly an issue as well. And since they live in societies where conspiracy is a way of thinking, who knows what else may be going through their febrile minds.
If I’m correct in my armchair analysis, Israel is degrading Hezbollah’s command structure and its missile firing capability while instilling uncertainty throughout their ranks - all at no current cost to the IDF. It is a drip-drip approach in which, to mix metaphors, it will never be clear which straw will have broken the Hezbollah camel’s back. Neither the Lebanese nor Iranian people want to see their countries destroyed for Palestine. Neither Hezbollah nor the Ayatollahs want to risk their regimes with a hot war with Israel, especially one that might bring forward the Sunni Arab coalition that assisted in blunting Iran’s embarrassingly ineffective April missile attack. Step-by-step, it turns out that it is Israel that has flipped the script and put Hezbollah and Iran on the horns of a strategic dilemma from which not even the most corrupted minds of the UN and certain Western chancelleries can extricate them.