What Was The Actual Plan For The Walkie Talkies + Pagers?
Some facts, along with a bit of rank speculation.
The beeper operation became a legend as soon as it happened. But did it actually go as planned? This is where it gets complicated. According to Yoav Gallant, who was the minister of defense at the time these events took place, Israel could (and should) have launched a preemptive attack against Hezbollah in October of 2023. I.E. A few days after Hamas launched its attack.
Gallant: ‘This dramatic day could have changed the course of the war’
Gallant also told [podcast host Dan] Senor about an early regret he had, describing Oct. 11 as a “dramatic day” that “could have changed the course of the war” and “eliminated all the chain of command of Hezbollah immediately.” Gallant asserted that Israel could have detonated 15,000 walkie-talkies that Israel had packed with explosives and distributed to Hezbollah operatives in an undercover operation. “In this walkie-talkie, there [were] three times more explosives than we had in the beepers later on,” Gallant said, referring to the operation Israel conducted on Sept. 17, 2024, when it detonated several thousand Hezbollah pagers and the following day, when it detonated hundreds of walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah operatives. The operations killed dozens and injured thousands of terror operatives.
The day after the pager operation, “we learned that they suspect the walkie-talkies,” Gallant explained. “So we initiated the walkie-talkies and what [happened] is that 200 of them were working efficiently and all the rest were in storages and in isolated places and it [blew up] and nothing happened. So this is a big miss of this war.”
By contrast, current Mossad head Dedi Barnea disagreed:
Mossad director says beeper operation 'broke' Hezbollah, reveals new details
"Hezbollah suffered a very severe blow that broke the organization's morale. Victory in the war is not measured by the number of deaths or missiles but by victory over the morale and motivation of the enemy."
"We initiated and planned operations and deployed special capabilities in enemy territory. And most importantly, we understood that the next war would be different from the previous ones we knew."
"The Mossad does not have tanks, armored personnel carriers, fighter jets, or missiles. We have the men and women of the Mossad who are the engine of its actions and successes. They are the creative brains [of operations] and make the impossible possible."
"The first shipment containing only 500 beepers arrived in Lebanon a few weeks before the October 7 massacre."
….
"Activating both operations (the beepers and the radios) at the beginning of the war would not have led to the powerful achievement that we achieved at the time of its activation.
So what’s going on here?
Here’s my $0.02: Within Israeli intelligence, there’s a long standing rivalry between aman (military intelligence) and the mossad.
It goes back to at least the Yom Kippur war. According to the mossad- and really this is the generally accepted view as far as I can tell- in the lead up to the outbreak of war the mossad kept insisting that it had intel that Egypt was planning a surprise attack. The head of military intelligence downplayed the likelihood. The result was that most of the reserves weren’t mobilized, and the first few days of the war were catastrophic.
The fallout was extremely bitter. How bitter? Well, 40 years after the fact the rival former heads were still sniping at each other. Former Aman chief Zeira claimed that the mossad’s top agent 1 was really a double agent. He then went so far as to reveal the identity of the Angel (as he was codenamed.) Former mossad chief Zamir called for Zeira to be prosecuted. Zeira sued Zamir for slander. The (double?) agent soon met an untimely death. 2
The bad blood between the agencies seems to have continued right until today. In 2023, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war, the mossad actually published a book (really more of a pamphlet, but the mossad usually doesn’t say anything at all) in which they basically repeat over and over and over that Mossad got it right and Aman got it wrong.
But it’s not just a clash of personalities. The 2 organizations have different characteristics. The mossad is the flashier and more well known agency. They’re responsible for running spies and pulling off operations in foreign countries. Aman is part of the IDF. Its job overlaps in some ways with mossad, but mainly it exists to assist the IDF execute its missions. 3 To put it a different way, Aman would be interested in getting a whole bunch of heavy duty walkie-talkies placed near the hearts of Hezbollah fighters and then having those fighters eliminated. By contrast the mossad would be interested in getting a whole bunch of beepers into the hands of a whole bunch of Hezbollah fighters, and then blowing those hands off: From 60 Minutes: Former agents from Israel's Mossad detail how they built and sold explosive pagers to Hezbollah terrorists
Gabriel: The aim, it wasn't killing Hezbollah terrorists. If he just dead, so he's dead. But if he's wounded, you have to take him to the hospital, take care of him. You need to invest money and efforts. And those people without hands and eyes are living proof, walking in Lebanon, of "don't mess with us." They are walking proof of our superiority all around the Middle East.
Putting it all together, I think we can reasonably suggest the following: The beeper and walkie talkie operations were jointly coordinated by Aman and Mossad. But Aman was more interested in the brute force of the walkie talkies on the battlefield, while Mossad was more interested in the shock value of beepers exploding all over the place. And that difference in focus shaped how they viewed the outcome of the operation. Mossad sees it as a brilliant success which allowed Israel to really turn the tables on a newly frightened Hezbollah and ultimately batter it (though it’s still too soon to say whether they’ve really destroyed it permanently). By contrast, Gallant (who was defense minister and is a life-long military guy) is more focused on the fact that it still required Israeli ground forces in Lebanon. I obviously don’t know nearly enough to say who’s got the better argument, but it’s definitely something to keep an eye on.
Getting back to the Yom Kippur war, remember that it took decades for the public to learn about the existence of Ashraf Marwan. As frustrating as it is for news junkies like myself, a lot of crucial details on many stories only emerge a very long time after those stories are out of the headlines. As they say in Israel, רב הנסתר על הגלוי.
Coda:
After I finally managed to type out my ramblings on this topic, I came across the video below. It’s a Hebrew long form report titled ‘10 ten days in September- here’s how we took out Nasrallah.’
It covers a lot of the same ground with some additional details from behind the scenes. It’s well worth watching if you understand Ivrit. One point which is related to the post above is just how chaotic the planning of all this was and how many aspects were really completely unplanned. 4 While the the world was (justifiably) amazed at the Israeli intel ingenuity, maybe the most impressive part was that none of the politicians leaked anything in advance.
Ashraf Marwan- son in law of Egyptian president Nasser.
From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashraf_Marwan
“Egypt had begun preparing a war to retake the Sinai Peninsula, which it had lost to Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967. Marwan became an intelligence asset to Israel, offering his services as a "walk-in" to the Israeli embassy in London in 1969.[6] Initially turned down, Israeli intelligence recruited him as a source in 1970.[6][7] Mossad referred to him as "the source" and gave him the codenames Angel and Babylon.[8]
Marwan continued to provide information to Israeli intelligence in London after Nasser's death and the rise of Anwar Sadat.[7] He became part of Sadat's inner circle.[6] Marwan's unparalleled access to his nation's best-kept secrets, especially after his promotion in May 1971, allowed him to provide Israel with information about the coming Yom Kippur War (1973), including detailed accounts of Egyptian war plans and military exercises, original documentation of Egypt's arms deals with the Soviet Union and other countries, the Egyptian military Order of Battle, the minutes from meetings of the high command, accounts of Sadat's private conversations with other Arab leaders, and even the minutes of secret summit meetings in Moscow between Sadat and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.[9] The information that Marwan provided made its way to the desks of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, and Israeli Defense Force Chief of Staff Chaim Bar-Lev in raw form.[1]: 74, 114 Meir shared the intelligence about the Sadat–Brezhnev meeting with U.S. President Richard Nixon and his top advisor Henry Kissinger.[10] Despite the valuable information provided by Marwan over several years, some within Israeli intelligence questioned the truth of the information he provided; Zvi Zamir, the director of Mossad, reassured Meir that Marwan was legitimate.[8]
Marwan's role as an Israeli asset was revealed in 2002.[11] Uri Bar-Joseph, a scholar of the Yom Kippur War,[11] regards Marwan as the most valuable Israeli human intelligence asset during the war period.[12] While the Israelis had other intelligence sources in Egypt at the time, Marwan was apparently the most highly placed.[7]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashraf_Marwan#Death_in_London
“The cause of death was traumatic aortic rupture following a fall from the balcony of his fifth-floor apartment.”
Specifically in this case, Unit 8200, which is part of Aman. See here: “There are three major intelligence bodies in Israel. Mossad is their foreign intelligence, Shin Bet is their internal intelligence, and Aman is their military intelligence body. Unit 8200 falls under the control of Aman, their military intelligence branch because 8200 works closely with combat troops and not so much on criminal investigations.”
I would say it’s pretty clear Hashgacha pratis, but I don’t want to push anyone’s anti-religious buttons.