It isn't Islamophobia when they really ARE trying to kill you
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Has Israel now single-handedly rewritten the rules of modern counter-terrorism warfare with its magnificent coordinated cyber attack on Hezbollah terrorists
Israel’s operation embarrassed Hezbollah, traumatized Lebanon, and signaled a whole new level of cyber warfare against terrorists.
NewLinesMagazineOn Tuesday and Wednesday, pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon and Syria exploded in an attack the group laid blame for on Israel. The explosions killed 37 people and wounded at least 3,000. Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s leader, said in a speech on Thursday that the attacks had crossed a red line.
The exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, which appear to have been sneaked into Hezbollah’s supply chain in a coup for Israel’s intelligence services, have triggered great horror and suffering — to the Hezbollah cadres who were its primary victims and lost lives, appendages and eyes and the citizenry at large, among whom rumors run amok of exploding iPhones triggered by Bluetooth signals in this novel form of warfare.
In the hours after the attacks, memes proliferated. Among them was a soldier sporting a balaclava and military fatigues cradling half a dozen messenger pigeons. Another featured two plastic cups connected with a wire with the caption: “If anyone wants to call me, this is my new number.” There were jokes about exploding toilets, as well as a photoshopped photo of Nasrallah, face blackened from an explosion, stating, “There is no need to be scared,” reminiscent of the famous meme of a comic dog drinking coffee at a table as the house burns around him, declaring that “this is fine.”
The pager bombings have undoubtedly dealt a major blow to Hezbollah, irrespective of whether the operation had a specific aim as a deterrence signal, is the opening salvo of a war or amounts to no change in strategy at all. The reality is that Israel infiltrated the party’s supply networks, blew up thousands of its operatives and damaged its ability to communicate internally. The incidents will likely spur a hunt for agents and collaborators within the organization.
It is unclear how deeply Israel’s infiltration goes, but its ability to target so many operatives simultaneously without the need to track them using sophisticated digital technology is both unsettling to and embarrassing for Hezbollah.
There are already countless anecdotes of Lebanese citizens disconnecting appliances and electronic devices for fear that they could be turned into weapons. Yes, explosives were almost certainly planted inside the pagers. But tech journalists have reported that even normal mobile phones could technically have their batteries triggered to overheat remotely. Now imagine that writ large, incorporating electronic devices on planes and public transport, schools, hospitals, cinemas — everything, everywhere, all at once.
It is generally impossible to predict how an individual, let alone a society at large, will react to events that trigger a sense of mass terror, a feeling that danger lurks around the corner or, as with Lebanon in the recent spate of exploding Hezbollah pagers, in the pocket of the man standing just ahead of you at the grocery store checkout counter.
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