Let’s not forget who was on the other side of those pagers.
This morning, while perambulating the canines, I listened to this
segment on NPR’s Morning Edition, where I am an occasional guest.
Leila Fadel interviewed an eye surgeon who has been doing gruesome
work in the wake of Israel’s “Paging Hezbollah” attack.Here’s the first 20 seconds or so. (I transcribed it from the audio
myself. It doesn’t appear on the NPR website, which they referred us
back to when we pointed this out.) But by all means, listen to the
whole thing:Overnight Israel launched a wave of fresh airstrikes against Southern
Lebanon. This after the leader of the militant and political group
Hezbollah said the rigging of pagers and handheld radios into tiny
bombs that exploded across the country in the hands and pockets of
people shopping and going about their daily lives amounted to a
declaration of war from Israel.A reasonable person who only listened to this interview, in its
entirety, would reasonably assume that Israel somehow detonated pagers
in Lebanon almost at random and for no stated reason. The only
thing—again, according to this report—that linked the victims was that
they were in Lebanon and they possessed these pagers. They were just
going on about their “daily lives” when Israel managed to make them
explode.If that were the sum of the story, the Iranian Foreign Ministry would
be right to proclaim this was “an example of mass murder.” It would
mean that Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of what NPR calls “a militant
and political group” would be right to declare Israel’s actions an act
of war. Hell, I’ll go further, and just concede that it was an act of
war. (We’ll come back to that.)But there are some things left out from this segment.
Hezbollah’s cold-blooded aspirations.
Let’s start with the word “terrorist.”
Calling Hezbollah a terrorist group is not pro-Israel editorializing.
The United States, United Kingdom, Arab League, Switzerland, Bahrain,
the Gulf Cooperation Council, Germany, the Netherlands, and numerous
organizations have designated it a terrorist organization. Other
entities have merely labeled its “military wing” a terrorist group.
These include the European Union, France, and Kosovo.The primary reason Hezbollah, founded in 1982, has been designated a
terrorist organization is that it is a terrorist organization. In
April 1983, it blew up the American embassy in Beirut, killing 49
staffers. In October of that year, it blew up the American and French
Marine barracks, killing 299 people. The next year it blew up a
restaurant in Spain near an American airbase, killing 18 American
servicemen. It used a car bomb on the American embassy annex, killing
11 people and injuring 58. Then it hijacked a Kuwaiti plane, killing
four. In 1996 it used a truck bomb at the Khobar Towers in Saudi
Arabia, killing 19 U.S. Air Force personnel and injuring another 372.
In 2005, it assassinated Rafic Hariri, the former prime minister of
Lebanon.I could go on, but it would take too long. In the years since its
founding as a terrorist proxy of Iran, Hezbollah has killed Saudis,
Americans, and most of all Jews. And not just in the Middle East or
Israel itself. Perhaps most infamously, in 1994 it blew up a Jewish
community center in Argentina, killing 85 people. It has targeted—and
killed—Jews around the globe. All of the hair-splitting in the West
about “Zionists,” not Jews, being the enemy is a nonsensical
distinction for Hezbollah.But let’s get more up-to-date. Hezbollah’s official position is that
Israel must be destroyed. Unlike Hamas—which also says Israel must be
destroyed—Hezbollah isn’t resisting an “occupation.” Israel makes no
claims on Lebanese territory and is not occupying any (and, contrary
to a lot of ignorami, the Lebanese aren’t Palestinians). Even the U.N.
agrees that Israel withdrew from Lebanese territory in 2000. In short,
Hezbollah doesn’t want “peace in the region.” It doesn’t want Israelis
and Palestinians to live side-by-side with recognized borders, etc. It
wants to see Israelis expelled or extinguished.And, it acts on these aspirations.
Just one day after Hamas launched its terrorist assault on October 7,
2023, Hezbollah started launching—even more—rockets into northern
Israel in solidarity with Hamas. It has continued to do so for nearly
a year, causing roughly 100,000 Israelis to leave their homes.Which brings me back to this “act of war” nonsense. When you are in a
war, lots of your actions are “acts of war.” When Ukraine launches
missiles at Russian forces, inside Ukraine or Russia, it is an act of
war. And Ukraine is entirely right and justified for its acts of war.
Likewise, when Hezbollah launches rockets at Israelis—civilians or
military assets—that is an act of war. And when Israel bombs launch
sites or otherwise strikes back, that too is an act of war. And,
Israel is entirely justified in doing so. Acts of war during a war are
like acts of eating during a meal.In a brilliant operation, it managed to boobytrap pagers that belonged
to Hezbollah militants and commanders, aka terrorists. It detonated
them and killed or wounded some 3,000 people, the overwhelming
majority of them members of Hezbollah. There are reports, though not
entirely confirmed, that the toll was far worse for Hezbollah than
initial reports (including many from the terrorist organization
itself) suggest. According to alleged internal Hezbollah documents
leaked by Saudi intelligence, 879 of its members were killed in the
communication equipment explosions, including 131 Iranians and 79
Yemenis. Among the dead are 291 senior Hezbollah officials. A senior
Israeli military official says the entire senior leadership of the
elite (terrorist) Radwan force was later eliminated by an airstrike,
according to Axios’ Barak Ravid.This is what some military strategists would describe as “awesome.”
Yes, it’s true. Some of these Hezbollah officials were shopping and
going on with their daily life. But if you had a pager that you didn’t
get from the Hezbollah supply depot, your pager didn’t explode—and
won’t explode. You wouldn’t know this from that NPR report (though in
fairness, other reporting has been clear about this fact). You
certainly wouldn’t know this from anti-Israel Twitter. “Just an fyi,
Israel blew up a bunch of doctors, medical workers, teachers and
children in Lebanon today,” Remzi Kenazi a Palestinian resistance poet
posted. “They targeted a brand of pager that wasn’t exclusively held
by Hezbollah, and indiscriminately attacked civilians in the process.
Israel will do anything to push regional war.”This is a lie.
Israel dares to defend itself.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is appalled by this operation. “Israel’s
pager attack in Lebanon detonated thousands of handheld devices across
a slew of public spaces, seriously injuring and killing innocent
civilians,” she announced on Twitter. “This attack clearly and
unequivocally violates international humanitarian law and undermines
US efforts to prevent a wider conflict. Congress needs a full
accounting of the attack, including an answer from the State
Department as to whether any US assistance went into the development
or deployment of this technology.” Lame duck (heh) Rep. Jamal Bowman
agrees. “Israel’s pager attacks in Lebanon have injured thousands and
led to the death of innocent civilians, including multiple children.
This attack not only falls in clear violation of international law but
also further escalates a brewing regional conflict.”This is not a violation of international law. It’s a violation of the
unwritten law that says Israel can’t—or shouldn’t—defend itself.
Ocasio-Cortez didn’t condemn Hezbollah when it dropped a bomb on a
bunch of Druze kids playing soccer. But a targeted strike on members
of a terrorist group, a terrorist group with gallons of American blood
on its hands, arouses rage and indignation from her. Are bombs dropped
indiscriminately on Israelis not violations of international law? Are
they not efforts to kill innocent people just going about their daily
life? Do the Druze celebrating the “Paging Hezbollah” operation not
understand the situation on the ground?Consider the counterfactual. If Israel really took the gloves off and
chose to drop bombs on Hezbollah positions in Beirut, it would be
justified in doing so. That course of action would be justified even
if it killed a great many civilians, as regrettable as that would be.
It should be said that such a retaliation wouldn’t be as ugly as
similar actions in Gaza because Hezbollah positions in southern
Lebanon aren’t as densely populated or as intermingled with civilian
institutions—schools, hospitals, etc.—as Hamas is. It would certainly
lead to a lot of carnage.But you can be sure if Israel simply bombed the crap out of Hezbollah
a lot more innocent civilians would have been killed. And you can be
even more sure that Cortez, Bowman, et al would be decrying Israel’s
“indiscriminate” and “excessive” response to, again, the constant
barrage of rockets and missiles aimed at Israel. One can even imagine
them saying, “Why can’t Israel be more precise?” or “Israel doesn’t
care about collateral damage.”But when Israel pulls off a maneuver that is unprecedentedly precise
and surgical in its minimization of collateral damage, they’re still
the bad guys. According to the laws of war and common sense, Israel
would be entirely justified to send commandos or bombs after every
Hezbollah senior official it could identify. Instead, it blew up their
pagers. A few tragic innocents, including a little girl who apparently
grabbed her father’s pager, were killed. That’s horrible.You know what would have prevented her death? If Hezbollah wasn’t—in
solidarity with Hamas murderers and rapists—committing acts of war
daily in its effort to destroy Israel. If her father hadn’t joined a
terrorist organization, he would have dramatically reduced the chances
that his daughter would have tragically died.The reason so many people are deceitfully claiming this was a wanton
and indiscriminate act of aggression is that they need it to be. If
you concede that this is a retaliation against a terrorist
organization for its acts of war, you’re conceding that Israel is in
the right. Every time Israel responds to acts of war and terror
against Israel, the clock starts over and Israel’s response is deemed
“provocative” or “unjustified.” If I punch you in the face, and you
punch back, you didn’t start the fight. And if I swing at you
repeatedly, but you use your “Iron Dome Technique” kung fu to block
the punches, you’re still justified in throwing a punch. If the
Ukrainians figured out a way to make the pagers of senior Russian
military commanders in Ukraine explode, would you be similarly
appalled? If the answer is yes, okay. If not, why not?I think the real objection to Israel’s Beeper King gambit is that it
succeeded. It illustrates, in miniature, the animus toward Israel that
suffuses debates about Israel. That it’s successful, democratic,
prosperous, competent, and determined to defend itself is considered
unfair and embarrassing to people who, at some level, would just like
to see Israel’s enemies win.
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