I guess we'll have to wait until the Mossad releases their technical report.
But since there were reportedly 5,000 pagers that were imported, it seems not all of them went off.
Where are you getting that 5,000 pagers number from?
(Not doubting you, I just haven't seen that number.)
As I said earlier, the Israeli Mossad are no idiots. They are crafty. If they were able to intercept the initial communications, unravel and insert themselves into the deal somehow, intercept and modify the pagers with explosives and new code, do you think they would be so crude and foolish to indiscriminately ALL of the pagers by some simple "BOOM" button?
Yes.
I certainly have no reason to rule it out without evidence.
These are not Iraqi or Afghan rebels wiring up the buzzer power leads to a blasting cap in a anti-tank mine, that gets set off by the buzzer. Otherwise these pagers would have gone off on the first message.
They clearly kept the detonation code to themselves, I agree.
That has nothing to do with whether or not they just blew all the pagers or not.
Also, this would be an intelligence gathering operation as much as a physical explosive attack. As the Hezbollah leader had said, the Israelis had already compromised their cell phone comunications. Enough to learn that they were going to pagers. And pager networks are much easier to intercept. Israel had enough detailed, word by word interception of Hezbollah's communications that they knew a SINGLE person had found the explosives and warned a more senior communications guy in Hezbollah. That's why they detonated when they did, because they knew they'd been discovered and snet the message before the Hezbollah members wearing pagers ditched them..
This has been speculated, yes.
And it may well lead to a conclusion that they were targeted in who they sent the messages to.
Forgive me for wanting actual evidence as opposed to speculation.
This was a very sophisticated operation. And Israel knew they'd catch flak over it going into it. No way they'd not have anticipated the even more severe backlash if they didn't only blow up certain pagers that had been confirmed as being used by Hezbollah. No way.
Why not?
They've repeatedly courted activity that provokes backlash, including bombing refugee camps and hospitals.
I see no reason to casually dismiss it with "no way" given their history.
