Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that the Jewish state has “many capabilities that we have not yet activated, I repeat, we have not yet activated.” A foreign source has also confirmed that the sophistication of last week’s exploding pagers attack was “relatively low-level” and that Israel still has even more dramatic abilities.

United with Israel After the report aired on Saturday night, Eyal Hulata, who was Israel’s national security adviser from August 2021 to January 2023, confirmed that “there are more capabilities like these,” saying that thousands of Israelis had been working for years to thwart Iran’s regional proxies. The IDF is making “excellent achievements together with the Shin Bet, together with the Mossad,” Gallant said.

Each of the Hezbollah communication devices that exploded in Lebanon last week was individually detonated, with Israeli intelligence knowing exactly which terrorist operative was being targeted, his location, and whether others were in close proximity, Israel’s Channel 12 reported on Saturday night.

Citing Israeli and foreign sources, the channel said that Jerusalem went to great lengths to ensure that only Hezbollah terrorists carrying the devices would be hurt.

Thousands of terrorists were wounded and dozens were killed in the mass pager and radio communication blasts that rocked Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, with the Iranian-backed terrorist organization immediately blaming the Jewish state for both attacks.

“Each pager had its own arrangements. That’s how it was possible to control who was hit and who wasn’t,” Channel 12 News quoted an anonymous “foreign security source” as saying.

“They knew who he was with and where he was, so that the vegetable seller in the supermarket would not be hurt” when a device exploded on the Hezbollah man next to him, the source said, in reference to footage in which a terrorist was apparently blown up by his pager in a supermarket aisle.

The report said that Israel manufactured tens of thousands of pagers with the knowledge they would be thoroughly examined by Hezbollah, including through inspections by sniffer dogs searching for explosives.

Ronen Bergman, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth, told Channel 12 that the operation started during a previous government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and under the direction of Mossad director Yossi Cohen, who led the intelligence agency between 2016 and 2021. Bergman said that the entire project was devised by a young female intelligence operative stationed “somewhere in the Middle East.”

Maj. Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin, who headed the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate between 2006 and 2010, said Jerusalem’s goal was to cause Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah to realize that his attacks on Israel “are costing him more than he’s gaining,” including his support in Lebanon.

For this reason, the outcome where thousands of Hezbollah terrorists were severely wounded rather than killed was regarded as “preferable” by Jerusalem, due to the pressure this placed on Lebanon’s hospitals, which it hoped would raise domestic opposition to Hezbollah..

Hezbollah has attacked Israel nearly daily since Oct. 8, 2023, firing thousands of rockets, missiles and drones. The attacks have killed more than 40 people and caused widespread damage. Tens of thousands of Israeli civilians remain internally displaced due to the violence.