Understanding Israel’s pager attack on Hezbollah

Hezbollah fighters carry the coffins of a person killed after hundreds of paging devices exploded in a deadly wave across Lebanon the previous day, during their funeral procession in Beirut's southern suburbs on September 18, 2024. Hundreds of pagers used by Hezbollah members exploded across Lebanon on September 17, killing at least nine people and wounding around 2,800 in blasts the Iran-backed militant group blamed on Israel. | AFP via Getty Images/Anwar Amro

Can you imagine the level of physical and psychological trauma throughout Lebanon and parts of Syria this week as thousands of Hezbollah pagers exploded, leaving many Islamic militants injured, hundreds of them critically, and several of them dead? It sounded like something out of a sci-fi movie more than real life, especially at the scale on which it occurred.

In the midst of all the trauma and suffering, here’s what you need to know.

Hezbollah, which in Arabic means “The Party of God,” is a Shiite Muslim organization founded in 1982, inspired by the theocratic vision of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini. From first to last, it has represented radical Islamic ideology and, in that regard, is no different than Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, or Hamas. They share the same goals of an Islamic State, and they have a deep antipathy for America and Israel.

In the words of Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, the current leader of Hezbollah, which is a registered political party in Lebanon holding a fair amount of seats, “[Israel] is an aggressive, illegal and illegitimate entity, which has no future in our land. Its destination is manifested in our motto, ‘Death to Israel.’”

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