The afternoon of Sept. 17, 2024, marked the culmination of one of the most interesting, layered, and ingenious anti-terrorist operations in history. At around 3:30 p.m. local time on that late summer day, thousands of Hezbollah members received a message on their pagers, and what a message it was.

The message was simple: a beep followed by an explosion. But it was effective. The exploding pagers killed dozens of terrorists and wounded thousands more in their faces, eyes, and hands. A similar operation involving walkie-talkies took place the following day.

The head-scratching aspect for millions of Westerners who saw the news — and those of us who covered it — was: PAGERS? What was this, 1994? Thirty years after the peak year for pager use, Israel had turned pagers into effective weapons in its war against terror.

You see, Hezbollah leaders realized that even the most basic cell phones were subject to tracing, so they needed an untraceable way to communicate with their members. Voilà, pagers. It really does sound laughable, but what Israel did with the pagers is mind-blowing.

Hezbollah ordered thousands of pagers from a Taiwanese company called Gold Apollo, and Israel inserted explosives into the pagers. It was innovative and daring, and it paid off.

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Israel National News reported shortly after the operation that Israel had been working on it for a decade and a half:

Israel had a hand in the manufacturing of pagers that exploded on Hezbollah terrorists this week, with this type of "supply chain interdiction" operation having been planned for at least 15 years, a US intelligence source told ABC News on Thursday.

The CIA has long been reluctant to employ this tactic because the risk to innocents was too high, the source said.

Planning for the attack involved shell companies, with multiple layers of Israeli intelligence officers and their assets fronting a legitimate company that produced the pagers, the source confirmed to ABC News, with at least some of those doing the work unaware of who they were actually working for.

I remember editing my colleague Rick Moran’s initial report, and I couldn’t believe what I was reading. But it was true.

The First Report: 9 Hezbollah Operatives Dead, Thousands Injured When Pagers Explode at Nearly the Same Time

Pagers exploded in countless places, including the infamous video of one blowing up inside a grocery store in Lebanon.

Filmmaker Justin Folk has a new documentary about the operation entitled Paging Hezbollah, which comes to theaters next month. Check out the trailer:

Clocking in at just over an hour and a half, Paging Hezbollah details the operation and its execution, including interviews with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, General David Petraeus, former Director of Mossad David Barnea, and Sarit Zehavi, a former member of the IDF’s intelligence division.

Paging Hezbollah makes its way into theaters on October 30. Learn more about it at the documentary’s website.