From exploding pagers to 'honey trapping,' how Israel runs its clandestine operations

Last month, Israel stunned sci-fi and espionage genre junkies by brilliantly executing another daring, sophisticated covert operation, in which it eliminated dozens of Hezbollah terrorists across Lebanon. To achieve their mission, sometimes Israeli spy services take advantage of their targets’ reliance on or fear of technology. Sometimes, they exploit human psychology and weaknesses. Here’s how.

Exploding pagers

The September operation was said to be conceptualized by Israeli intelligence around 2020, when the now dead Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah issued an order to his fighters to replace mobile phones with pagers and walkie-talkies. His concern emanated from Israel’s successful use of geolocation capabilities embedded in cell phones for targeted assassinations of terrorists. Nasrallah repeated his warning as recently as eight months ago, when he referred to cell phones as "lethal collaborators." 

"Disable it, bury it, lock it in a metal box," he said in a speech posted on YouTube on Feb. 13.

Shortly after Nasrallah’s order to augment security by going low-tech came about, Israeli intelligence launched a multi-year complex clandestine operation. A network of front companies posing as an international pager manufacturer was set up, which serviced ordinary commercial clients and Hezbollah. It included a front company in Hungary, which manufactured pagers on behalf of a Taiwanese company, and two additional shell companies. 

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, attends David Barnea's oath-taking ceremony as the new head of Israeli national intelligence service Mossad in Tel Aviv, Israel, on June 1, 2021. Yossi Cohen, left, the outgoing head of Mossad, also attended the ceremony. (Photo by GPO/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Multi-layer security was intended to protect the identities of the Israeli intelligence operatives who were producing the pagers specifically for Hezbollah. Unlike the standard production process used for the regular clients, pagers intended for Hezbollah were produced separately and contained batteries laced with PETN explosive. The front company started shipping pagers to Lebanon in the summer of 2022. 

This past summer, thousands of pagers were in the hands of Hezbollah operatives, who were supposed to carry them at all times to stay in communication with their commanders. Instructions were supposed to be given to the terrorists about where they should deploy when combat operations begin.

This video grab shows a walkie-talkie that exploded inside a house in Baalbek, Lebanon, on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo)

When the pagers started beeping across Lebanon at 3:30 p.m. on Sept. 17, an alert that looked like a message from high command appeared on its screen. It was followed by an explosion, killing or maiming the owner of the pager and those nearby. As a result of the Israeli operation, 2931 people were wounded and 37 killed, according to Lebanese authorities. 

Sexpionage but Flirting Only

High-tech is not always the go-to method for Israelis. Some missions require more traditional methods. Honey trapping in intelligence operations parlance is a form of sexpionage, the oldest type of spycraft. Using the art of seduction, a "honey pot" – typically a very attractive lady, who in reality is an intelligence operative, establishes a false romantic relationship with the target. Depending on the mission of the operation, the target, typically a male, is lured by the honeypot and kidnapped for the purposes of interrogation, prosecution or assassination. Sometimes, the target is blackmailed, based on the incriminating photographs revealing his sexual relations with the "honey pot," into providing secret information to or otherwise working as a double agent for the foreign intelligence service.

Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu appears at the Israeli Supreme Court May 13, 2002, in Jerusalem. Former nuclear technician Vanunu, who is serving an 18-year sentence for treason, asked the court to make public secret documents from his trial and to meet with his British lawyers. Vanunu was sentenced to jail in 1988, two years after he gave The Sunday Times of London pictures of Israel's nuclear reactor near the Negev Desert town of Dimona. (Pool Photo/Getty Images)

An audacious clandestine operation involving honey trapping was ran by Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service focused on foreign threats, in 1986. A nuclear technician, Mordechai Vanunu, who worked on Israel’s top-secret nuclear weapons program at Dimona plant in the Negev Desert, went rogue. Having smuggled classified photographs of the production facility where plutonium was separated, he traveled to London to disclose the program to The Sunday Times. His goal was to build international pressure on Israel to shut down its clandestine program. Israel’s nuclear policy is intentional ambiguity. It, therefore, has not declared its nuclear capability and is officially not a nuclear power.

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Mossad deployed a female agent, Cheryl Bentov, to London to seduce Vanunu and exfiltrate him to Israel. Bentov, a U.S.-born attractive blond, code name "Cindy," posing as an American tourist from Florida, met Vanunu during a sightseeing tour at Leicester Square in London. They had a coffee and arranged to go to the cinema. Eventually, "Cindy" lured Vanunu to travel to Rome for a romantic weekend. (Running a covert operation was safer for Mossad in Italy rather than on British soil.) Upon arrival, Vanunu was apprehended by Mossad operatives, drugged and smuggled on a yacht to Israel where he was put on trial for treason. Having served 18 years in jail, 11 years of it in solitary confinement, Vanunu was released in 2004 but is not allowed to travel outside of Israel.

Using female agents for honey trapping operations is acceptable but not for sexual purposes.  "We flirt, but the line is drawn at sex, said a senior female operational commander in the Mossad named Yael in her interview with The Times of Israel in 2012. 

Explaining that women have certain "advantages" over men, she added, "A man who wants to gain access to a forbidden area has less chance of being allowed in… A smiling woman has a bigger chance of success." However, Rabbi Ari Schvat ruled in 2010 that illicit sex for the sake of national security is kosher for Mossad female agents, calling it a "spiritual blessing" but only if "there is no other solution, and only after asking explicit religious permission from a leading halachic authority." 

Good Samaritans to the Rescue

Sometimes, even after years of hunting for a specific target, operational success can be elusive without random good luck and an assist from good Samaritans. Such was the case of Mossad’s capturing of the Nazi monster Adolf Eichmann, memorialized in the famous movie "Operation Finale." Eichmann was the chief architect of Hitler’s barbaric project Final Solution to the Jewish question, in which 6,000,000 Jews were murdered. Eichmann was in charge of the identification, selection and transportation of Jews from across Europe to their final destination at extermination camps.

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Adolf Eichmann, in a bullet-proof cabin, puts on earphones to hear the reading of the act of accusation against him on Dec. 17, 1961. (Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

In 1946, following the end of World War II, Eichmann escaped from a prison camp where he had been incarcerated by U.S. forces. He eventually settled in Buenos Aires, Argentina, under a false identity and lived an ordinary life with a wife and four sons while working at a Mercedes-Benz factory. Destiny would have it that one of his sons began dating a teenage girl whose Jewish father was a Holocaust survivor. The girl eventually became suspicious that her boyfriend, who had kept the family last name Eichmann, was indeed the son of the notorious Nazi criminal.

After multiple attempts, the daughter, Sylvia Hermann and her blind father, Lothar, succeeded at convincing Israeli intelligence that they had identified the right guy. In May 1960, Mossad deployed a team of 11 agents to Argentina, where, after tracking Eichmann’s movements for days, they kidnapped him, drugged him and smuggled him out of Argentina on a forged Israeli passport. As part of the operation, the Mossad agents sedated Eichmann and disguised him as an Israeli airline EL AL flight attendant who fell ill. In Israel, Eichmann was put on trial and executed by hanging on May 31, 1962. Without the tip off from the good Samaritans, the Nazi monster may not have been captured and brought to justice.

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