[IsraelTimes] Spokesman says PM personally approved operation; Netanyahu reportedly told cabinet he okayed attack despite ‘opposition’ from senior defense officials
A spokesperson for Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu’s office confirmed to media outlets on Monday for the first time that Israel was behind a string of devastating attacks on Hezbollah communications devices in September.
During a cabinet meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu reportedly boasted that Israel was behind the attacks, but while the Jewish state was widely believed to have been responsible, there had been no official confirmation from the government or military until front man Omer Dostri’s statement on Monday.
On September 17, thousands of pagers simultaneously went kaboom! in the southern suburbs of Beirut and other Hezbollah strongholds across Leb
...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
The coordinated attack dealt a deadly blow to the Iran-backed Lebanese terror group, and kicked off an escalation that continued with the liquidation of almost all of Hezbollah’s leadership, including Secretary General His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
...The late, lamented satrap of the Medes and the Persians in Leb...>
, and a limited Israeli ground invasion of southern Lebanon.
A Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity
... for fear of being murdered...
, had said the incident was the "biggest security breach" for the group in nearly a year of conflict with Israel.
Among the victims rushed to hospital, many had eye injuries, missing fingers or gaping holes in their abdomens, Rooters witnesses saw, indicating their proximity to the devices at the time of detonation. In total, the pager attack, and a second on the following day that activated weaponized walkie-talkies, killed 39 people and maimed more than 3,400.
The tolls did not differentiate between civilians and members of the terror group, and among the maimed was Tehran’s ambassador to Lebanon Mojtaba Amani. A Hezbollah official told Rooters a week later that the attacks put 1,500 of the group’s fighters out of commission due to their injuries, with many having been blinded or had their hands blown off.
In the aftermath, various media outlets reported that the attack was a highly sophisticated Israeli intelligence operation years in the making in which Hezbollah was fooled into purchasing the compromised devices.
The pager explosions occurred after almost a year of incessant rocket and drone attacks on Israel by the Hezbollah terror group, which began a day after Hamas
 ..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
’s October 7, 2023, massacre and led to the evacuation of some 60,000 residents from northern Israel towns on the border with Lebanon.
The attacks on northern Israel since October 2023 have caused the deaths of 40 civilians. In addition, 61 IDF soldiers and reservists have died in cross-border skirmishes and in the ground operation launched in southern Lebanon in late September.
Netanyahu reportedly claimed to cabinet ministers on Sunday that senior defense officials and political figures were opposed to the detonation of the pagers but that he went ahead with the operation.
"The pager operation and the elimination of [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah were carried out despite the opposition of bigwigs in the defense establishment and those responsible for them in the political echelon," he reportedly said, in a clear dig at recently fired defense minister Yoav Gallant.
Netanyahu and Gallant have clashed repeatedly over the course of their time in government together. In March 2023, Netanyahu fired Gallant a day after the then-defense minister called for pausing the legislation process of the government’s contentious judicial overhaul plans, which he said caused divisions that posed a threat to national security.
He was reinstated less than a month later, however, and was at the helm of the Defense Ministry when Hamas committed its deadly terror assault in southern Israel on October 7 last year. Gallant remained in his post throughout the subsequent war in the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response ...
Strip, the fighting on the northern border, and the ground operation in southern Lebanon, until he was fired by Netanyahu last week.
Gallant said in a presser Tuesday he was ultimately fired due to his positions on the need to draft Haredi men to the IDF, the imperative to bring back the hostages from Gaza, and the need for a state commission of inquiry in the October 7 Hamas terror onslaught and ensuing war.
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