A new documentary is taking viewers inside Israel’s years-long operation to infiltrate Hezbollah’s communications network and turn thousands of the Iran-backed terrorist group’s own pagers against its operatives.
Paging Hezbollah, from director Justin Folk, tells the inside story of the extraordinary September 2024 operation through firsthand accounts from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior Israeli and American intelligence figures.
The film’s first teaser was released Thursday, offering a glimpse into the elaborate planning, engineering, deception, and supply chain infiltration that ultimately placed compromised communications devices in the hands of Hezbollah operatives across Lebanon.
“A handful of TNT changed the world,” Netanyahu says in the trailer.
Former CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus, who also appears in the film, describes the operation as a “modern-day Trojan horse.”
The documentary features interviews with Mossad Director David Barnea, former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, former Israeli National Security Council chief Yaakov Nagel, former U.S. intelligence official and Hezbollah expert Matthew Levitt, and former Israeli intelligence official Sarit Zehavi.
The teaser arrived the same day Netanyahu invoked the operation before world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
“Remember the pagers?” Netanyahu said from the podium Thursday as he held one up before the chamber. “Hezbollah sure does.”
The operation erupted into public view on September 17, 2024, when thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah members began exploding nearly simultaneously across Lebanon and parts of Syria.
A second wave followed the next day, when hundreds of handheld radios used by members of the terrorist organization exploded.
Hezbollah had increasingly turned to pagers and other low-tech communications after its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah warned that cellphones could expose members to Israeli surveillance and targeting.
The security precaution instead became an extraordinary vulnerability.
The attack was the product of a sophisticated intelligence and supply chain operation years in the making, with Israel working to engineer compromised devices and maneuver them into Hezbollah’s communications network while convincing the terrorist organization that the technology was secure.
The filmmakers say Paging Hezbollah goes behind the explosions themselves to examine how the devices were “engineered, marketed, and smuggled in before anyone knew what it was,” tracing the operation from its origins through the decision to activate it.
“Many people heard about the pager operation and wondered how it was even possible,” Folk said. “We wanted to tell the actual inside story — years of patience, engineering, deception, and tradecraft that seem more like fiction than fact.”
“We aimed to make the film of record for the operation, so we went right to the source,” he added. “The deeper we went, the more incredible the real story became.”
The pager attack proved to be an opening blow in a devastating campaign against Hezbollah’s leadership and military infrastructure.
Ten days after the pager explosions, Israel killed Nasrallah in an airstrike on Hezbollah’s underground headquarters in Beirut, along with other senior commanders. Israel subsequently launched a ground operation in southern Lebanon as it sought to push the terrorist organization away from its northern border and allow tens of thousands of displaced Israelis to return home.
The documentary also places the operation within the wider conflict that followed the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. Alongside the intelligence officials and policymakers, the 93-minute film includes testimony from October 7 survivors and the sister of a victim of Hezbollah’s deadly July 2024 rocket attack on the Druze town of Majdal Shams.
Near the end of the film, Netanyahu casts Israel’s fight against Hezbollah and other Iran-backed forces as part of a broader struggle.
“The test of Western civilization is now, in Israel,” Netanyahu says. “Because Israel is fighting the forces that will destroy Western civilization and Western freedom.”
Paging Hezbollah opens in theaters nationwide October 30.
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
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