Andrew Bolt: Israel should be applauded for its ‘perfectly targeted’ pager-bomb attack

Give Israel some credit for its pager-bomb incursion against Hezbollah — the cleanest attack you’ve seen on an enemy hiding among civilians.

Warning, graphic images

What? No applause for these pager-bomb attacks? For Israel launching the cleanest attack you’ve seen on an enemy hiding among civilians?

Some credit, please, for Israel blowing up 4000 Hezbollah terrorists and supporters all at once, with just one civilian supposedly killed.

At 3.30pm local time on Tuesday in Lebanon pagers went off in thousands of pockets. After half a dozen beeps – bang!

Oops, Taiwanese-licensed pagers Hezbollah had issued to its men, scared Israel was monitoring its phones, had been rigged, possibly with an explosive designed to kill only the bearer.

Lebanese men injured after pager attack.

CCTV and social media clips show the result. Men of military age out shopping, or on scooters, or in their cars dead or maimed – many around their manhood. People around them stunned but apparently uninjured.

A hospital in Beirut was thronged by cars bringing in wounded men, including Iran’s ambassador – bloodied proof that Iran is too close, literally, to the Hezbollah terrorists who’ve fired thousands of rockets into Israel, forcing 60,000 Israelis to evacuate the north.

There are claims of 11 dead so far in Lebanon, and several more in neighbouring Syria. Lebanon says of the 4000 wounded, 400 are in a critical condition.

No other country I know has pulled off a kill as perfectly targeted, but no Israeli act of self defence is pure enough for its critics.

Most reports I’ve seen mentioned the one alleged civilian death – an eight-year-old girl, says Hezbollah – before any of the thousands of terrorists maimed or killed. Is Israel, and only Israel, banned from hurting thousands of its attackers if even one civilian is hit, too?

Hezbollah meanwhile played the dead-civilians card Hamas has also used against Israel, with devastating success in the media.

Videos showed the moment of the blasts. Picture: X

Hezbollah spokesman Ibrahim Al-Moussasi claimed this Israeli attack was a “crime against civilians”, without explaining why the injured seemed almost all men, or why so many civilians carried pagers rather than mobile phones.

The United Nations also did its routine whenever Israel defends itself. “These developments are extremely concerning,” complained spokesman Stéphane Dujarric.

“We, of course, deplore the civilian casualties.”

See how it works? If the UN can’t give Israel a pass even on a strike as surgical at this, then its problem is not how Israel defends itself, but that it defends itself at all.

Lebanese man injured after pager attack.

But make no mistake. This strike is a stunning success. Thousands of Hezbollah terrorists have been put out of action. Hezbollah leaders can’t even now trust pagers to communicate with their gunmen, and will be paranoid about what else Israel has booby-trapped.

Israelis, meanwhile, will gain heart. Their confidence in their army and intelligence agencies seem shattered on October 7, but Israel has since assassinated the top Hamas leader by planting a bomb under his bed in Tehran, blown up Iran’s top military official in Beirut, and sent in a ground unit just last week to destroy an underground Iranian missile factory in Syria.

Israel’s warriors are back in form, and critics can only howl at a prey that’s escaped again.

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Israel should be applauded for its ‘perfectly targeted’ pager-bomb attack