Qassem to wounded of pager attacks: Israel will fall because it is an occupation

Hezbollah Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem on Wednesday made a video message to the wounded of the 2024 Israeli pager attacks, marking the first anniversary of the bloody operation that resembled the opening strike of an all-out war against Hezbollah.

He described the wounded of those attacks at the “pioneers of insight, the key to hope, and the love of eternal life in obedience to God Almighty.”

“You are the light through which we see the safety of the path, and you are the life that gives the true pulse for continuity,” he added.

“What the Israeli enemy wanted was to nullify your power. It wanted to remove you from the battle. Now you have entered it with greater strength and greater energy. Some of you want to complete your university studies, some of you want to open a workshop, some of you want to work in the social field, one of you wants to advance your cultural standing, and another wants to work in the media,” Qassem said. “With the help of the brothers and sisters around you, there are innovations that you are now offering,” he added.

“Know that Israel will fall, because it is an occupation, oppression, crime, and aggression, and because the resistance fighters will confront it until liberation on the path of one of the two good things (victory or martyrdom),” Qassem went on to say.

At that moment on Sept. 17, 2024, thousands of pagers distributed to the Hezbollah group were blowing up in homes, offices, shops and on frontlines across Lebanon, remotely detonated by Israel.

After years of planning, Israel had infiltrated the supply chain of Hezbollah, the most powerful of Iran's armed proxies in the Middle East. It used shell companies to sell the rigged devices to commercial associates of Hezbollah in an operation aimed at disrupting the Iran-backed group's communication networks and harming and disorienting its members.

The pager attack was stunning in its scope. It wounded more than 3,000 people and killed 12, including two children.

Israel boasts of it as a show of its technological and intelligence prowess. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently presented U.S. President Donald Trump with a golden pager as a gift.

Human rights and United Nations reports, however, say the attack may have violated international law, calling it indiscriminate.

Hezbollah, also a major Shiite political party with a wide network of social institutions, has acknowledged that most of those wounded and killed were its fighters or personnel. The simultaneous explosions in populated areas, however, also wounded many civilians.

A year later, survivors are on a slow, painful path to recovery. They are easily identifiable, with missing eyes, faces laced with scars, hands with missing fingers — signs of the moment when they checked the buzzing devices.

The day after the pager bombings, Hezbollah walkie-talkies exploded in another Israeli attack that killed at least 25 people and injured over 600, according to Lebanon's health ministry. Israel then launched a campaign of airstrikes that killed Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and hundreds of other militants and civilians. The war ended with a ceasefire in November.

Pagers are widely seen as outdated, but they were a main part of Hezbollah's communication network. Nasrallah had repeatedly warned against cellphones. Israel could easily track them, he said.

With old pagers breaking down, the group ordered new ones. Israel sold the rigged devices through shell companies.

According to a Hezbollah official, the group had ordered 15,000 pagers. Only 8,000 arrived, and nearly half were distributed to members. Others destined for Lebanon were intercepted in Turkey days after the attack when Hezbollah tipped off officials there.

Hezbollah's investigation into how its communications networks were infiltrated found that the purchase of the rigged pagers resulted from negligence, and its officials were cleared of suspicions of collaborating with Israel, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the probe.

Some Hezbollah members had complained the new pagers were too bulky. Some didn't use them because batteries died quickly or heated up.