Fmr. defense minister Gallant confirms additional details of Mossad's Hezbollah pager operation - The Jerusalem Post

Former defense ministerYoav Gallantdiscussed additional details of Mossad's September 2024 pager operation against Hezbollah terrorists in 2024 that killed or wounded some three thousand five hundredHezbollahoperatives during a previously censored interview with Channel 12, which was permitted for publication on Monday.

Gallant discussed many of the detailsThe Jerusalem Postpreviously reported in an interview with a Mossad agent, known by the codename "Adam Feyn," who participated in the operation and wrote about it in his Hebrew book,Hoda’ah Goralit(Fateful Message).

This is the first time a senior defense official corroborated the information that "Adam Feyn" had revealed to thePostand comes shortly after the two-year anniversary of the operation being conducted.

Gallant, who was defense minister at the time of the operation, discussed how the timing of the operation arose out of necessity. “In the first week of August [2024], we discovered that there was someone who suspected the pagers,” Gallant told Channel 12.

"In the middle of the operation, it turned out that somewhere, the pagers were being inspected. The result is that you find yourself in a position where you either have to act or risk being exposed, and that could happen very quickly. There's only one question on the table: if you play around with it somehow, maybe you'll end up carrying out the full operation, starting with the radios and so on," Gallant said.

"Adam Feyn" told thePostin May that Mossad officials and an Israel Air Force colonel discussed how a Hezbollah operative was getting too close to figuring out that the beepers were booby-trapped and requested the air force kill him to save the operation.

Additionally, a new film directed by Justin Polk titledPaging Hezbollahalso highlights details about the operation, which is set to be released on October 30 and includes interviews with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then-Mossad chiefDavid Barnea, and then IDF Northern Command chief Maj.-Gen. Ori Gordin.

According to the film, Iran sent a special X-ray machine to check whether there were explosives in the pagers.

“In the third week of September, we learned that Hezbollah had sent three pagers to Iran for scanning,” Netanyahu revealed in a speech at a conference that was censored until Monday. “Before that, we bombed such a scanner that they were about to bring; we got rid of it and also of the person operating it.”

"Adam Feyn" told thePostin May that Hezbollah had asked Iran to carry out its own checks on the beepers.

Yonah Jeremy Bob contributed to this report.