Technology of terror

Exploding pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon mark a horrific expansion in the tactics of terror.

If sowing fear was the only motivation by those who designed the operation, then they have reportedly achieved great success ... if “success” also means terrifying ordinary people who have nothing to do with Hezbollah.

An attack like this will probably not happen again, just as using commercial passenger aircraft as flying bombs on US soil will likely never happen again.

That said, it’s not the first time Israel has killed its opponents using telecommunications equipment.

After the 1972 Munich massacre in which 11 Israeli Olympic athletes were murdered by Black September gunmen, Mossad agents stalked the terror group’s leaders — and those friendly to them — across Europe and murdered them one by one.

Mahmoud Hamshari, the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s representative in Paris, was killed by a bomb Mossad agents put in the phone in his apartment.

In 1996, Hamas bomb-maker Yahya Ayyash was killed by a cellphone stuffed with explosives. When he answered the phone to talk to his father, the killers were listening and, confirming it was Ayyash speaking, detonated the device.

Quite similar, as it happens, to the way ANC lawyer Bheki Mlangeni was murdered in February 1991 by a bomb in a pair of headphones which exploded when he tried to listen to a tape marked “Further Evidence — Hit Squads”.

Israel’s spooks may now have proved they can humiliate Hezbollah by hacking its security any time they like. But the only thing the pager attack has done is push Lebanon and Israel closer towards a war none of the rational people on either side want — and all because psychopaths, either placing explosives in pagers or flying fuel-laden jets into towers, are running the asylum.