An Israeli operation last September involved electronic devices exploding across Lebanon, killing scores of militants as well as civilians
An Israeli official has confirmed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented US President Donald Trump with a gold-plated pager during their meeting at the White House on Tuesday. Dmitry Gendelman, an adviser to Netanyahu’s office, clarified that the device was a reference to Israel’s covert operation against Hezbollah militants in Lebanon last autumn.
Sharing a picture of the gift in a Telegram post on Thursday, Gendelman said Netanyahu had given Trump a “gilded pager,” explaining that the device “symbolizes the prime minister’s decision that led to a turning point in the war, and became the starting point for undermining morale within Hezbollah terrorist organization.”
Israeli media first published reports about the unusual gift earlier this week, claiming that Trump had described the September wave of explosions in Lebanon as a “tremendous operation.” The US president also reportedly gave Netanyahu a signed photograph of their meeting, inscribed with the message: “To Bibi, a great leader.”
Israel carried out the operation on September 17, when thousands of pagers simultaneously exploded across Lebanon as well as in parts of neighboring Syria, followed by the mass detonations of hundreds of walkie-talkies the next day. The blasts left at least 42 people dead, with 12 civilians among them, and more than 3,500 injured, including women and children.
In the aftermath, Israel intensified its military campaign against Hezbollah, killing its long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah in a September 27 airstrike on Beirut. In November, Netanyahu publicly claimed responsibility for the pager operation.
In December, CBS cited two recently retired senior Mossad agents as reporting that the Israeli intelligence agency had spent more than a decade preparing the covert operation. Mossad supposedly first shipped a number of walkie-talkies with explosive batteries to Hezbollah through an elaborate chain of shell companies. Some time later, Israeli spies devised a similar plan involving pagers, according to the media outlet.
In the wake of the attack, UN Human Rights Commissioner Volker Turk characterized it as a “shocking” and “unacceptable” act that violated human rights laws.
Speaking at the UN General Assembly in late September, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that “another glaring example of terrorist methods as a means of achieving political aims is the inhumane attack on Lebanon that transformed civilian technology into a lethal weapon.” The diplomat also spoke in favor of an immediate international investigation at the time.
