The pager attack is not the first time Israel has engaged in the planting bombs in civilian objects
By Alex MacDonald for Middle East Eye
Lebanon is still reeling from two waves of Israeli-attributed pager and walkie-talkie explosions that have killed 32 people and wounded thousands more.
Although Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attacks, pro-Israel voices have been quick to praise the attack as a prime example of the country’s skill at conducting surgical strikes targeting its enemies without inflicting collateral damage.
This is despite the fact that two children were killed and numerous civilians wounded in the attacks, leading to condemnation from rights groups who say the indiscriminate nature of the weapons violate the laws of war.
A source close to Hezbollah told Middle East Eye that the pagers were used by a ‘wide network of people, including administrators, medical workers, paramedics, media workers and other civilian members’.
‘They are usually used for directives, summoning to meetings, for emergencies or state of alert,’ the source explained.
But this is far from the first time Israel has used unorthodox booby-trap style methods to target Lebanon, nor is it the first example of civilians and children being maimed and killed using such weaponry.
Cluster bombs and landmines
More than a million cluster bombs have been littered across southern Lebanon as a result of Israeli assaults on the territory over the years.
Since the 2006 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which saw unprecedented use of the widely banned weaponry, scores have been killed in Lebanon after coming across them.
Many children playing in the region have found these unexploded munitions.
‘They seem innocuous, especially to the curious mind of a child,’ said Chris Clark of the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre (UNMACC) in Lebanon, speaking in 2006.
‘They’re small, they easily conceal themselves amongst all the rubble or the debris of the bombing. We find that children unwittingly pick them up and then, sadly, suffer injuries from them.’
Both Lebanon and Israel are among the 33 countries that have not signed the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention (APMBC).
Israel occupied southern Lebanon between 1982 and 2000 and during that period planted hundreds of thousands of landmines.
By the time they left, roughly 37,000 acres of Lebanon were thought to be contaminated with unexploded mines and improvised explosives planted by different parties to Lebanon’s civil war.
As of 2023, mine-clearing activities had cleared about 80 percent of this area of explosives.
The need to protect children in southern Lebanon from both mines and cluster bombs has led to some novel solutions – including the deployment of clown troupes to educate them about the dangers of unexploded ordinance.
However, according to Mine Action Review, work on clearing mines has been suspended as a result of the outbreak of hostilities between Israel and Lebanon since October.
‘As a result, Lebanon is not on track to meet its extended Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) Article 4 clearance deadline of 1 May 2026, and at current capacity predicts it will not meet its obligations until 2030,’ said the site.
Bombs in toys
But a much more sinister accusation has also circulated since the 90s – that of bombs being dropped by Israeli aircraft in southern Lebanon intentionally concealed in children’s toys.
Lebanese newspaper L’Orient-Le Jour reported on the phenomenon in 1997, citing a number of examples including a nine-year-old girl who had her right hand shredded after finding a ‘big apple-green plastic jeep, with six big black wheels’ that blew up in her hand after finding it near her village.
They also mentioned the example of a child who was left with severe burns after finding a booby-trapped flashlight and another girl who was killed after exclaiming ‘I found a doll!’ before being blown up.
An officer of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) confirmed to AFP at the time that the objects were dropped by an Israeli helicopter.
‘It can be a toy or have the shape of an ordinary stone,’ he said on condition of anonymity.
In 1998 a letter from the Permanent Mission of Lebanon to the United Nations addressed to the secretary-general also repeated the claim that Israeli fighter planes had ‘attempted to kill children by dropping thousands of booby-trapped toys on Lebanese villages and towns’.
‘The Israeli occupying forces have used this method through the years and continue to do so, the most recent example being when booby-trapped toys were dropped on the town of Nabatiyah, killing and injuring children and permanently disfiguring others,’ he said.
For their part, Hezbollah at the time said among the items they found were a golden egg, fluorescent yellow cones, a Snoopy dog and a talking doll they said was set to explode when the cord was pulled.
Israel denied the accusations at the time, calling the charges ‘despicable’.
Nevertheless, a report by the UK Foreign Affairs Committee in 2000 warned of the dangers of unexploded bombs in southern Lebanon, mentioning the use of ‘booby-trapped toys dropped by the Israeli airforce near Lebanese villages adjacent to the so-called security zone’.
Speaking at the UN on Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres re-emphasised that ‘civilian objects’ should not be part of warfare.
‘I think it’s very important that there is effective control of civilian objects, not to weaponise civilian objects – that should be a rule that…governments should be able to implement,’ he said.
‘What has happened is particularly serious, not only because of the number of victims that it caused, but because of the indications that exist that this was triggered, I would say, in advance of a normal way to trigger these things, because there was a risk of this being discovered.’
In both Afghanistan and Iraq, the US dropped yellow cluster bombs and similar sized yellow food packets. The bombs and food packets were not shaped exactly the same; an adult could distinguish the two even though they were the same bright color. Hungry children were not quite so lucky.
“Children playing are frequently attracted to unexploded cluster bomblets because of their unusual
bright colours. The actions of the USA – dropping aid packets and cluster munitions of the same
colour over the same areas – remain unexplained to this day. This led to
fatal confusion in Afghanistan and Iraq between unexploded yellow BLU97 cluster munitions and the yellow food packets (see photo). ”
Page 12: http://www.streubombe.de/documents/german%20cluster.pdf
ed note– why are you so keen to change the direction of this conversation from what Israel has done in Lebanon to what the US did in Afghanistan?
WHY???
UK& US did the same thing over Germany during WW 2 by the way
To the editor:
Are these commenters really changing the direction of the conversation? The Zionist project, aka Israel, was instrumental in starting both World Wars, and creating the excuse for the Afghan invasion. The Zionist project, as more and more people are beginning to realize are in control of all of the so-called Western liberal democracies that aid and abet Israeli war crimes. Perhaps unwittingly, these commenters have exposed depth and length of this evil.
ed note—ummm, YES, THEY ARE changing the direction of the conversation.
WWII was nearly a century ago, and, sad to say, no one knows about or cares about what the Americans and the Brits did to the Germans.
Afghanistan was 20 years ago, and while there may be many who do know about and care about what the US did in hiding explosives in toys, the fact is that these facts have no bearing on what is going on in the here and now.
Right now, the center of the bullseye is ISRAEL. She is the one who is throwing everything she has into seeing WWIII/Armageddon started, and the only chance that exists (and it is a SLIM chance) of averting or otherwise mitigating this approaching apocalypse is by getting as many human beings as possible on God’s green earth to direct their concentrated ire at her and to put political pressure on their respective governments, and this will not, repeat, WILL NOT be achieved by deflecting discussions about what is going on in the here and now with discussions concerning what happened in the distant yesteryear.
And we thank you for your comments on this issue, TUT
To the editor: “ed note– why are you so keen to change the direction of this conversation from what Israel has done in Lebanon to what the US did in Afghanistan?
WHY???”
Changing direction? Not at all. I had HOPED that by showing this sort of horrific child murder has a documented history that people on the fence about the subject would see that it is perfectly believable that Israel is doing as well. If you really want to understand “the ugly truth” about things, a good knowledge of history is always your best friend.
ed note– you have our sincerest apologies for raising doubts about your motives. You are new here and therefore we assumed the worst, for reasons which must be obvious. Please post again when you are so moved by the spirit to do so.
Only devils think of doing such things. AND if the U.S. and Britain did such things in the last century in Germany or Afghanistan or elsewhere, it is because both the U.S. and Britain (aka England) were and continue to be ruled by The Jews. The Jews took over England several hundred years ago and took control of the U.S. approximately in A.D.1860. The Jews must be stopped with extreme prejudice.
To the editor: Sincere thanks for your kind words, and apologies on my part for any confusion I may have inadvertently caused. I am heartened and encouraged by your response. Quite simply, there is no excuse, NONE, for warfare targeting children. Any place, any time, any nation (and yes, that includes Israel), any religion, any group, practicing this has given up their place in humanity and joined the ranks of demons. Feel free to take that phrase “ranks of demons” either metaphorically or literally, as you think appropriate.
Thank you for your work in standing against such evil.
Watch for the Jews to bomb Qana, Lebanon in the next few upcoming days (if not already). The story of Jesus turning water into wine is a well-known event in the New Testament of the Bible, in the Gospel of John. It was his first miricle. They are addicted to killing/bombing anything that is associated with Jesus. It is one of their first targets when they routinely bomb Lebanon.