How Israel Built and Sold Explosive Pagers to Hezbollah

Pagers laced with explosives detonated across Lebanon Tuesday in a targeted attack against Hezbollah. The explosions have killed 20 people and injured 2,700 more.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in the attack, but it had the means and the motivation and multiple sources have told journalists that Jerusalem is responsible. Making the beepers explode in a coordinated attack reportedly took years to prepare, multiple shell companies, and a specially prepared explosive device. Twelve current and former intelligence officials told the New York Times that Israel was behind the attack and that they’d been briefed on how it was accomplished.

The pagers that detonated on Tuesday were purposely built by Israel for the project, according to the report. The beepers use a lithium battery, and Israel reportedly laced this battery with pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), a powdery explosive similar to nitroglycerin. At 3:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, Israel reportedly sent a message to the pagers that appeared to come from Hezbollah’s senior leadership. The message heated the lithium battery which triggered the PETN to explode.

Hezbollah has long been paranoid about Israel and the West’s ability to monitor and track modern technology. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, warned his followers about the dangers of cell phones in February.

“I don’t have a cellphone, but for those who do, I am explaining for the 100th time—particularly to our people in southern Lebanon—give them up,” he said. “Every time there’s an assassination or infiltration into the organization, they tell us to look for the agents. Israel doesn’t need agents and collaborators because every cellular phone is a particularly lethal agent. It gives Israel all the information, even locations at home or on the street or in a car and whether you’re sitting in the front seat or the back…I tell you that the phone in your hands, in your wife’s hands, and in your children’s hands is the agent. Bury it. Put it in an iron box and lock it.”

The speech coincided with policy shifts in the organization. Nasrallah ordered Hezbollah to communicate only via the beepers and carry them at all times. He did not foresee that Israel would go to such great lengths to attack the low-tech solution to Hezbollah’s communication challenges.

The pagers were Gold Apollo brand, a Taiwan-based company known for manufacturing beepers. When journalists reached the company in Taiwan, its founder balked and told a strange story about a mysterious woman who cut a licensing deal on behalf of another company called B.A.C. Consulting.

As part of the deal, B.A.C. would get to manufacture its own beepers and pay Gold Apollo to use its branding. “They said they wanted to cultivate a cohort of engineers,” founder Hsu Ching-kuang told NPR. “I told them, the stuff you make is neither easy to use nor is it aesthetically-pleasing. Why not just use my products?”

Journalists tracked down B.A.C Consulting to an empty building in Hungary. According to the New York Times, Israeli intelligence agents used B.A.C. and two other shell companies to hide their identity and sell pagers while they worked on their real project: manufacturing beepers for Hezbollah laced with explosives.

The Times said Israel and its shell companies have been shipping the pagers to Lebanon since 2022. But shipments ramped up after Nasrallah gave his speech and the bulk of the explosive devices had entered the country in the last five months.