When Cyber Warfare met Psychological Warfare

Ron Jager | Sept 18, 2024

Ron Jager

Rigging thousands of pagers worn and used by Hezbollah terrorists and operatives in Lebanon, Syria, and other northern locations surrounding Israel to explode simultaneously, signifies even now only a sliver of insight into Israel’s offensive capabilities. With over 4000 terrorists injured simultaneously, many critically, the devastating psychological effect of the cyber-attack attributed to Israel on Hezbollah is only a pre-emptive stage in the expected war on the murderous terror organization in Lebanon. With the threat from Hamas largely destroyed and mopping up operations being executed by a relatively small IDF force in the Gaza Strip, the focus of Israel has shifted to the north. Hezbollah, the terror organization, and the Republic of Iran, a terror state have been put on notice.

Over the past year since October 7 of last year when Hamas invaded Israeli communities and army camps in the Gaza Strip envelope; Hamas terrorists savagely tortured, raped, and murdered 1200 men, women, children, and infants. Oct 7 also signified the beginning of a well-planned traumatizing psychological warfare of the Israeli public. Hamas, one of the most experienced terrorist organizations in the arena of propaganda and psychological warfare, sought to combine terror warfare with a psychological campaign that would lower the morale of Israelis, create divisions’ within the nations’ solidarity, question the need to fight and sacrifice, diminish confidence in the political and military leadership, and lastly weaken personal and community resiliency. Hamas planned its psychological operations from day one; from the cameras used to videotape the massacre and stream it online, to the use of living as well as murdered hostages as bargaining chips to keep the IDF at bay. The people of the State of Israel, and the Israel Defense Forces have shown their ability to move ahead, showing Hamas that not only have they lost the ground war and their control over the Gaza Strip, but that their psychological war against the Israeli public has failed as well.

As thousands of Hezbollah terrorists and operatives injured flooded hospitals throughout Lebanon, the simultaneous explosion of wireless pagers delivered a substantial morale blow to the terror organizations’ membership and leadership sowing chaos, operational confusion, and bringing the terror organization to a standstill. The simultaneous detonation of thousands of pagers has demonstrated to Hezbollah just how penetrable the organization is digitally, unable to defend against Israel’s offensive capabilities, and has also shown the dismal efficacy of intelligence capabilities of Hezbollah and her Iranian patron. The goal of Israel’s psychological warfare is understood not only by Hezbollah but also by the international community; Hezbollah will have to stand down, move her forces 15 kilometer north of Israel’s international border, and cease firing missiles and drones. After nearly a year of a war of attrition with Hezbollah while Israel’s focus was in the south, taking control of the Gaza Strip and the destruction of Hamas; the psychological message of the beeper attack is apparent to Hezbollah’s leadership. Israel has had enough after a year of tit-for-tat exchanges forcing the relocation of tens of thousands of residents out of harm’s way, and that the people of Israel and her leadership are unhinged by the psychological warfare of Hamas, are ready and willing to do what must be done to repel Hezbollah from Israel’s northern border, and deter the organization for the years to come.

The TikTok, Instagram, and WhatsApp generation might be asking themselves; what’s a beeper? What are the ‘beepers’ that were used by Hezbollah terrorists? The beeper, which predates mobile phones, allows users to receive messages in remote areas lacking reception needed by cellphones. The beeper which many thought had died out as a communication device was originally invented in the US in the 1920s. The beeper’s operation was simple yet ingenious: when someone wanted to send a message to the beeper user, they would call the beeper center and give the message to the operator. The message would then be sent via a radio frequency unique to the user’s device. Upon receiving the message, the beeper would emit a loud beep. Initially, it was used in security and public systems in the US, especially in hospitals and emergency units. After its approval for widespread commercial use, the ‘beeper’ marked its beginning as a personal communication solution. Hezbollah, deterred and unable to defend against Israel’s digital supremacy in cellphone technology, adopted the wide spread use of beepers to coordinate and time the launches of missiles and drones into Israel, as well as to alert Hezbollah terrorists about expected IDF air force strikes.

Finally, Israel’s use of ‘beepers’ to execute a mass cyber-attack wounding over 4000 Hezbollah terrorists and operatives, has exposed the vulnerable low-tech capabilities of Hezbollah and her Iranian patron. Iran’s strategic posture has continued to deteriorate over the past year, with Hamas largely destroyed, and Hezbollah’s proxy status proving itself to be a ‘paper tiger’ rather than an effective deterrence against Israel. The impact of Israel’s psychological warfare will penetrate the consciousness or as is commonly stated, “get into the heads” of the leaders of Iran. Iran’s proxy strategy, is under increasing pressure and has failed in the Gaza Strip, in Judea and Samaria (aka West Bank), in Lebanon, in Syria, and in Yemen.

Iran’s use of psychological warfare aimed to hype their achievements via Hamas and Hezbollah has run its course and proven to be a failure. What Iran’s leaders fail to grasp is that psychological warfare may be effective against weak and failing states such as themselves and their cohorts, but it is largely ineffective and can backfire when used against a militarily powerful and regional superpower such as Israel. In contrast, Israel’s successful use of psychological warfare may very well prove to be the most effective strategy to weaken Iran’s goal of becoming a nuclear state, and weaken her goal of expanding its Islamic ideology beyond her borders.