Israeli security officials were reportedly caught off guard when Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu publicly disclosed highly sensitive details regarding a covert Israeli operation targeting Hezbollah’s communications infrastructure during a recent address, according to a report broadcast Monday night.
Back on September 17, Hezbollah operatives throughout Lebanon experienced a wave of explosions triggered by thousands of pagers, injuring many and killing over two dozen individuals. The following day, similar attacks targeted hundreds of walkie-talkies, resulting in additional casualties. These devices had been covertly outfitted with miniature explosives by Israel before being covertly supplied to Hezbollah operatives.
The operation marked a dramatic escalation in Israel’s ongoing confrontation with Hezbollah, part of a broader regional conflict that intensified following the brutal October 7, 2023, Hamas-led assault on Israel.
During his remarks at a Jewish News Syndicate event on Sunday night, Netanyahu revealed that Israel had launched a strike on a device scanner shipped by Iran to Lebanon once Hezbollah grew suspicious that its pagers had been tampered with. The individual operating the machine was also eliminated in the same strike.
“We learned that Hezbollah had sent three beepers to be scanned in Iran; we had previously bombed the scanner they were going to bring in, so we got rid of that, and the guy who operates it,” he said.
These revelations had been deliberately withheld from public disclosure until now, due to concerns that revealing them could expose classified intelligence methods and compromise national security, Channel 12 reported.
Netanyahu indicated that the circumstances pushed Israel to detonate the compromised devices immediately, rather than risk losing the opportunity.
He further noted that the timeline for an Israeli ground operation in Lebanon was significantly accelerated—by about three weeks—because the pager sabotage operation was executed earlier than originally scheduled.
Although Israeli law permits the prime minister to declassify sensitive material, this is typically coordinated with defense officials to avoid unintended fallout. Channel 12 said no such coordination was done in this case.
Speaking at the same event, Netanyahu explained that he deliberately withheld information about the pager mission from the United States, citing concerns over potential leaks.
“I don’t read The New York Times that often, but why give them the advance? It would be on the net,” he said.
The fallout over Netanyahu’s candid comments comes at a time when his office is already facing scrutiny due to the unauthorized release of classified documents.
Eli Feldstein, a spokesperson for Netanyahu, was indicted in November for endangering Israel’s national security by allegedly passing classified IDF material to the German newspaper Bild, in what investigators say was an effort to boost Netanyahu’s public image.
Feldstein has also been implicated in the ongoing Qatargate investigation, along with two other senior Netanyahu associates. Authorities believe the trio carried out illicit activities on behalf of a Qatar-linked lobbying outfit, including unauthorized contact with foreign agents and a range of corruption-related offenses.
{Matzav.com}