10 Comments

You are missing the obvious point: while presumably planned to part of a wider attack, the beepers were set off yesterday because they were on the verge of being discovered.

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That may or may not be true - but a window of opportunity opened and Israel ought to have been ready to take advantage of it.

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Yeah. The premature explosions forced Israel's hand but the bigger picture is that the pagers were going to go off at some point.

More detonations today.

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Israel activated a plan to explode pagers carried by Hezbollah members amid fears the plot was about to be uncovered by the Iran-backed terror group, three US officials tell Axios.

“It was a use it or lose it moment,” a US official tells the outlet when explaining Israel’s reasoning for carrying out the attack yesterday.

While the widescale, coordinated attack has been attributed to Israel, there has been no comment from Jerusalem.

A former Israeli official tells Axios that Israel had planned to use the exploding pagers as an opening blow in an all-out war with the terror group, but had become concerned in recent days that the booby-trapped devices could be discovered.

Axios says Al Monitor reported that two members of Hezbollah had recently raised concerns about the pagers.

According to Axios, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant updated the US a few minutes prior to the attack that an assault was about to take place, but did not give details.

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Again - this is of course speculation and events may prove otherwise, but in the absence of the wider operation referred to in the article, it’s certainly a reasonable possibility.

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Where'd you get that from?

That sounds so strange: "On the verge of being discovered."

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Two of the beepers detonated prematurely after which the Mossad decided to detonate the rest before Hezbullah figured out what happened and had a chance to turn off the beepers. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-times-of-israel-daily-briefing/id1547404042?i=1000669926160

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Thanks! Links are always helpful when making a claim like that. Meanwhile, three more boys and one girl died in Gaza. What's the plan for that?

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The apparent discovery of the beepers is only conjecture.

I suspect that Israel did not wish to utilize this operation in conjunction with a massive military assault as it is attempting to do everything possible to avoid all out war with Hezbollah, yet, get them to cease firing drones & rockets and "withdraw" beyond the Litani River.

There are some who believe that Hezbollah may have biological or chemical weapons that could cause great harm if introduced in any full scale conflict with Israel & that is why Israel is so reluctant to launch a significant military operation.

Whether this is accurate or not, eventually, the IDF & Hezbollah will likely engage in full scale conflict that will result in devastating impacts on Israel, Lebanon, Syria & Iran.

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Anyway, pre-emptive attack or not, Hezbollah is so entrenched in S. Lebanon it will take a lot to defeat them. And the consequences will be tremendous. Might Russia not get sucked into further into Syria?

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