What is a 'beeper' and why does Hezbollah use the decades-old device for internal communication?
Pagers, long seen as allowing more secure communications, became the key element in a historic operation
In the immediate aftermath of the attack in Lebanon, which killed almost a dozen Hezbollah operatives and injured thousands more, an entire generation of people accessing the internet for news and social media were left confused. What is a beeper (also called a pager in the United States) and why exactly were Hezbollah commanders and operatives using the decades-old device, which has almost completely disappeared from daily consumer life?
Before the advent of relatively small and cheap cellphones, pagers (beepers) were widely used by many as a way to be notified in the event of an emergency or an urgent work-related situation.
Pagers were invented by Irving “Al” Gross, an American engineer born to Romanian-Jewish immigrants, who worked on many radio-related developments. In 1949, Gross invented a system that used telephone and radio signals to allow remote communication with individuals or a group.
A pager user could receive messages, initially just a beeping sound, alerting them to make a phone call to the person trying to reach them. Gross envisioned his “beeper” being used by doctors so that they could be notified of medical emergencies. For the first decade, they were primarily used as a communication tool by emergency responders, such as police, firefighters, EMS, and police.
Over time, the system of pagers improved, allowing the transmission of information. In the beginning, this was usually the phone number of the person trying to contact the user. Later, with the development of cellular messaging (short message service - SMS), the user could receive text messages on the device.
With the development of cheaper, smaller cellphones, as well as SMS technology, pagers largely fell out of use. Today, they are primarily used by restaurants or other similar service providers to notify the customer that their table is ready or service is available.
However, with the rise of smartphones, which have the potential to be remotely hacked or otherwise compromised, the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon maintained the use of pagers as a way to notify commanders and senior operatives of important messages from the leadership.
Hacking a beeper, or the network, requires physical access to the device, limiting an enemy's ability to compromise the system. In addition, pagers rely on radio signals with a broader reach and better penetration than the radio frequencies used by cell phones. Pagers also cannot be tracked, as the radio signal is sent out over the airways, much like traditional broadcast radio. Pagers can be used to send messages to individual devices or to a large group simultaneously.
Because of the phone network aspect of the pager system, a secure landline can be used to send the original message to the radio broadcaster, again limiting the ability of an outside group to compromise the communication network.
For these reasons, Hezbollah, which has been concerned about Israeli snooping into its communications for a couple of decades, chose to stick with an older, but proven means of instant communication over a broad area.
However, security and anonymity raise the question: How was Israel able to carry out such an attack if it cannot easily trace the location of the individual pagers?
It should be noted that while Israel has refused to comment on the attack, most analysts are convinced that the attack was planned and carried out by Israel's Mossad foreign intelligence agency. The complexity of carrying out the attack, and the damage caused to the Hezbollah communications will likely have profound implications on the ongoing conflict between Israel and the terror group.
According to reports in Arab media, the Mossad managed to intercept a delivery of pagers to Hezbollah. A small plastic explosive, at this point believed to be a compound of Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), was placed next to the battery of each pager and the devices were modified to respond to a specific pre-programmed signal.
This signal appeared to be a message from senior Hezbollah leadership and activated the explosion a couple of seconds later.
The batch of pagers used by Hezbollah is believed to have been delivered in the spring, suggesting the operation was likely planned and executed shortly after the October 7 attacks.
According to a report by al-Monitor, the attack was originally planned as the initial move in the event of an Israeli entry into southern Lebanon. The report claimed that some Hezbollah operatives became suspicious of the devices, which led to the decision to activate the explosives, rather than risk their discovery.
Keren Elazari, an Israeli cybersecurity analyst and researcher at Tel Aviv University told The New York Times the attacks had hit Hezbollah where it was vulnerable, their communications network.
“This attack hit them in their Achilles’ heel because they took out a central means of communication,” Elazari said. “We have seen these types of devices, pagers, targeted before but not in an attack this sophisticated.”
Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah gave instructions limiting the use of cell phones by Hezbollah leaders, over fears of Israel’s ability to compromise the cellular network. This attack targeted a system that was regarded as a secure and reliable means of communication.
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J. Micah Hancock is a current Master’s student at the Hebrew University, pursuing a degree in Jewish History. Previously, he studied Biblical studies and journalism in his B.A. in the United States. He joined All Israel News as a reporter in 2022, and currently lives near Jerusalem with his wife and children.
