The movie “Paging Hezbollah” came out two days ago, and it’s a film worth noting, as Liel Leibovitz has done at the Free Press. I don’t know if it will be available on Netflix, but for sure you won’t find it at the local theater, nor will you see it reviewed in the NYT (I hope I’m wrong).

As you might guess from the title, it’s about “Beepergate”, also known as “Operation Grim Beeper” or, as Wikipedia calls it, the “2024 Lebanon electronic device attacks.” And you may remember some details: how, over a ten-year period, Mossad created an elaborate scheme of shell companies and advertising schemes that would sell pagers to Hezbollah, who decided that pagers and walkie talkies were safer than cellphones.  But the Israelis had put 3 grams of a cryptic explosive into each device, and then somehow sold thousands of pagers and walkie talkies to Hezbollah, rigged so that, after Mossad sent a signal to these devices, the receiver would buzz or vibrate, and, when the “notified” Hezbollah member tried to answer or clear them, they’d explode. The devices were set off on September 17 and 18, 2024.

This explosion would normally occur when the device was held beside the head, leading to head injuries, including loss of eyes or ears. They weren’t designed to kill, but to injure, taking Hezbollah members out of action but leaving them alive. Note that the specific targeting avoids injuries to non-combatants, refuting the notion that the attack on Hezbollah was “genocidal.” (Also note that Shin Bet’s current series of attacks to kill Gazans who participated in the October 7 massacre of Israelis is also targeted, again refuting “genocide.” We’ll read about that tomorrow.) At any rate, the ratio of civilians killed to terrorists killed was below 1:2—an extraordinary low figure. As Grok tells me when I asked for the mortality figures:

Despite this targeted operation and low civilian mortality, people were outraged, with some calling it an Israeli war crime.  I would take issue with that, and for sure Hezbollah would have done it to Israel if they had the capacity and smarts. And you won’t find a lower ratio of civilians/combatants killed in any such operation.

At any rate, here’s what Leibovitz says about the movie, starting off with a bit of jingoism (i.e., it’s a “feel good” movie) that I won’t reproduce:

Paging Hezbollah tells the story of how the Israeli military managed to trick the Lebanese terrorist organization into using beepers installed with plastic explosives, pressing the button one day in the fall of 2024 and watching the devices—and with them scores of hands, noses, eyes, and testicles—explode.

It’s a riveting tale, and the director, Justin Folk, enjoyed unprecedented access to Israeli officials, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to David Barnea, the head of Mossad, Israel’s legendary intelligence agency. Indeed, this was the first time that the Mossad chief sat down for an on-camera interview to explain in detail precisely how he and his team pulled off one of the greatest operations in modern military history.

Incredible as these details are, they might’ve, in the hands of a lesser filmmaker, made for a mosaic of mere machismo, all boom and bluster and no soul. Thankfully, the man the Israelis trusted with telling their story also possesses a virtue no less important than the ability to spin a great yarn—a sturdy moral compass.

Rather than rush into his story, Folk takes his time explaining to his viewers what’s at stake. And at stake, he realizes, is the fate of our civilization, everywhere under attack by men hell-bent on death and destruction. Hezbollah, Folk reminds viewers who might’ve forgotten or have never really known, was founded in 1982 to murder not only Israelis but also Americans, a task at which the organization, sadly, once excelled: In 1983, the terrorist group bombed the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American service members. That same year, it bombed the U.S. embassy in Beirut as well, claiming the lives of 17 more Americans, before kidnapping, torturing, and executing others in years to follow, including CIA station chief William Francis Buckley. Folk shows us archival footage of these horrors, doing everything he can to help a generation reared on social media and enamored with blowhard banshees like Tucker Carlson realize who are the real enemies of Israel and America, and everywhere in the still-free world.

That history lesson, brief but deeply moving, is worth the price of admission alone. Hollywood these days is hardly known for its excess of moral clarity, which is why its luminaries love wearing the red hand pin, which appears to symbolize the lynching of two Israelis by a Palestinian mob in Ramallah in 2000. Folk delivers more candor and clarity in a few minutes than most of our self-appointed intellectual and moral betters have in decades, giving us an unvarnished look at the merciless marauders at war with the West.

. . .it’s here that reality—and with it, Folk’s film—takes a turn to the fantastic. The solution, like something out of a particularly twisted episode of Mad Men, turns out to be not technology but advertising: What if, quips one female Mossad agent, a would-be Don Draper with a license to kill, what if we could make Hezbollah’s terrorists believe that only large devices could withstand the wear and tear afflicted by real, tough men? What if we could turn comically large beepers into status symbols for the terrorist on the make?

No sooner does the film pose the question than Folk cuts to an actual commercial, produced by Mossad, showing the supersize pager—think about three tins of Altoids stacked on top of each other and encased in black plastic—in a host of manly settings. You can get it wet! You can toss it on the sand! It’s indestructible, just like you! Another recreation of an absolutely true story shows us what happened next: The terrorists, enamored with the well-marketed gizmo, place their orders, giving Mossad a direct supply chain into Hezbollah HQ.

And the end:

Because some things in life, Paging Hezbollah reminds us, really are that uncomplicated. Some cultures cling to life and others sanctify death. Some create and others destroy. And when the two clash—onscreen and in real life alike—we have no other job than to watch with bated breath and applaud wildly when the good guys, against all odds, pull it off.

I applaud the cleverness of this operation—especially the elaborate advertising and sales campaign—and I think it was a good way to target a nefarious enemy. And I’m surprised but pleased that Israel uncharacteristically shared details of the operation with the filmmakers.   But somehow I can’t share Leibovitz’s apparent glee, for it seems to celebrate the very sacralization of death that it abhors. Civilians were killed, and the terrorists had families.  I think of this as a necessary tragedy, but not something that should bring glee. But I will try to see it.

Here’s the trailer: