What do exploding Hezbollah pagers and Harvey Weinstein have in common?

What do exploding Hezbollah pagers and Harvey Weinstein have in common?

By: Rachel Marsden

PARIS — An act of mass terrorism was perpetrated on Lebanon last week as consumer electronic devices exploded in synchronicity across the public landscape. But it’s not terrorism to Washington if the guys who did it are their buddies, I guess.

“I can tell you that the US was not involved in it, the US was not aware of this incident in advance,” said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, about the attack, now widely attributed to an Israeli intelligence operation. It’s hard to recall another time when Washington deliberately avoided denouncing a terrorist act.

Yes, a terrorist act. Because we don’t actually know how surgical a strike this actually was, and whether the 37 people reportedly killed and more than 2,300 injured were all Hezbollah military actors and not just civilian bystanders or members of the legitimate political party of the same name that’s well-integrated into Lebanon’s complex landscape. I have Western friends who have lived in Beirut and have moved to Hezbollah-run sectors because they were much better managed when it comes to everyday things, like trash pickup, than those of their pro-Western counterparts.

Are those guys fair game, too? If so, that’s quite the slippery slope. Are lawmakers in the US who support foreign military action, through funding votes and rhetoric, also personally fair game for America’s foes? Because that’s the Pandora’s Box that risks being opened up here.

Presumably the two kids reported dead weren’t Hezbollah combatants, but who knows what they may or may not have been doing with those Easy-Bake Ovens, right?

NBC News asked, “Why did Israel blow up Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies…?” Well, they did it for the same reason that a kid starts kicking the back of your seat on an airplane. Because they know that no one’s going to stop them. Uncle Sam was too busy reading the in-flight magazine.

The water cooler chat has largely centered on the “terrorists” who “got their testicles blown off” and the “brilliance” of Israeli spy operations. It’s mostly seen as something that’s happened far away from the American homeland.

Caution! Israeli spy operations are closer than they appear.

The incident shines a spotlight on Israeli intelligence practices that have also touched America, although virtually nothing is ever made of them by US officials.

Experts now widely assume that the pagers were intercepted and implanted with timed explosives in a supply chain attack somewhere between their manufacturing in Taiwan and distribution in the Middle East, perhaps through a suspicious entity based in Hungary. All this sounds like a job for Israel’s military and foreign intelligence services. But initially, speculation focused on a potential hacking operation involving remote detonation, drawing attention to the Israel Defence Forces’ cyber warfare and signals intelligence branch, Unit 8200, which has cooperated with the countries’ other intelligence services in various foreign operations.

Much of Israel’s massive tech start-up ecosystem enjoys a sliding glass door relationship with Unit 8200. These companies, staffed by intelligence operatives, have branched out through corporate entities into US and Europe, with a focus on data, mobile applications, and facial recognition technology – to the point where the French press has raised concerns that some of the collected information could end up in the hands of the Israeli government.

Those worries are far from unfounded. Israel’s NSO Group, also comprised of Unit 8200 veterans, developed the Pegasus spyware technology that allowed Israeli authorities to monitor Israeli activists’ activities even prior to the opening of any investigation, according to the Israeli media outlet, Calcalist.

Israel shared the technology with certain allies as a diplomatic bargaining chip, the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations wrote in 2022.

The US is one of those allies. Another, Saudi Arabia, used it to lure US-based Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi, into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul where he was dismembered in 2018.

The German police bought Pegasus back in 2019 with the discreet knowledge of parliament’s interior committee, according to the German press, raising concerns about its potential use for targeting anti-establishment actors.

The Israeli global investigation firm, Black Cube, whose staff members were described by The Nation in 2018 as “veterans of Unit 8200 and the Israeli intelligence apparatus,” was hired by the law firm representing disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, and worked to dig up dirt on his alleged victims, to the point of deploying “agents posing as sympathetic individuals offering aid, comfort, and financial support, but who were actually preying on the victims and serving Weinstein’s interests.”

Some of the Unit 8200 operatives involved in Black Cube during the Weinstein era have since gone on to found Israeli-linked technology companies in the US.

For all the concern expressed by Washington over foreign interference, they sure seem to have a blind spot here. Guess it’s all fun and games until someone’s balls get blown off at the local mall.