“Oct 7 2023”

Founded in 1982, the Lebanese paramilitary group now claims to have 100,000 fighters — and has formed an uneasy partnership with Hamas against its old foe Israel

A senior Hezbollah figure was walking along a quiet Damascus street one February evening after dinner in 2008 when a bomb planted in a spare tyre on the back of an SUV exploded.

Imad Mughniyah, Hezbollah’s international operations chief, was killed in the burst of shrapnel. It emerged that the CIA had built the bomb. Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence agency, triggered it remotely from Tel Aviv.

Mughniyah was on the “hit list” for his role in a bombing on the American embassy in Beirut, in 1983.

Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs Badr Abdelatty said on September 18 that his country will never accept any Israeli security presence at the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. “Abdelatty asserted that Egypt maintains complete opposition to any military presence at the [Rafah border] crossing or the Philadelphi Corridor [between Egypt and the Gaza Strip],” according to Egypt’s Al-Ahram newspaper.

In April 1983, a truck loaded with 2,000lb of explosives sped through the gate to the US embassy in Beirut and struck the building.

The blast turned the embassy into rubble and killed 63 people, including 52 American and Lebanese employees.

One of the men behind it was Ibrahim Aqil, a senior Hezbollah commander with a $7m US bounty on his head, who was allegedly killed in an Israeli strike in Beirut on Friday.

After thousands of pagers and radio devices exploded in two separate incidents in Lebanon – injuring thousands of people and killing at least 37 – details are still being pieced together as to how such an operation was carried out.

Lebanon and Hezbollah, whose members and communication systems were targeted, have blamed Israel – though Israel is yet to comment.

The inter net wins again.

This pager meme is gold pic.twitter.com/0E4BsQ2dZE

— Dailymindvirus (@dailymindvirus) September 17, 2024

US officials now believe that a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas is unlikely before President Biden leaves office in January, according to a report.

The Wall Street Journal said top-level officials in the White House, State Department and the Pentagon are not expecting a breakthrough in talks between the two sides, who have been fighting a bitter war in Gaza since Hamas’s terror attack against Israel on October 7.

Officials have for months said that a ceasefire and deal to release Israeli hostages taken by Hamas were close.

At his electronics shop, Kevor says there is little demand for pagers. Everyone wants mobile phones these days, he adds.

He is not likely to sell any soon, though, reflecting the fact that in the Lebanese capital this week, holding some electrical devices is akin to holding a bomb. “I’m Lebanese, I’m used to this,” he says. “What happened yesterday was extraordinary.”

@fancypants_s https://t.co/Z4reG1TZS4

— Patti Jo (@TheSupeHero) September 19, 2024

On Wednesday, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted overwhelmingly with a vote of 124-14 to strip away Israel’s right to self-defense in the region, calling for the IDF to withdraw to pre-1967 territory lines. Forty-three countries abstained. Especially given that there is no mention of the October 7 terrorist attack against Israel perpetrated by Hamas, the vote was a particularly egregious one from the anti-Israel body.

After nearly a year of suffering and grievous losses, most Israelis and Palestinian Arabs will likely observe the anniversary of the war started by Hamas on Oct. 7 with sorrow. But not everyone. An interview The New York Times conducted with Khaled Mashaal, the head of Hamas’s “political wing,” in his luxurious living quarters in Doha, Qatar, revealed he thinks the war has gone just fine.

As the Times put it, Mashaal thinks that Hamas is “winning the war” and is confident that the genocidal Islamist organization will, despite the battering it has received from the Israel Defense Forces, play a “decisive” role in Gaza in the future.

The left’s crazy wailing over the exploding Hezbollah pagers shows that Israel can’t do right for doing wrong.

Getting your balls blown off by a primed pager has got to be the most ‘f**k around, find out’ thing that has ever happened. It took place in Lebanon yesterday. To the approval of both supporters of Israel and meme-makers everywhere, thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah operatives suddenly exploded. The footage coming out of Lebanon is extraordinary. A man’s trouser pocket erupting in a supermarket, a man writhing in agony in the middle of the road after his trusted comms device turned on him. The battle of the pagers will surely be recorded as one of the most unusual and audacious acts in the entire history of human warfare.

A #Hezbollah walkie talkie explodes at a funeral today in #Lebanon after yesterday’s exploding Hezbollah pagers. pic.twitter.com/b8TIfUUBKq

— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) September 18, 2024

Embattled union leader Fred Hahn says he has not decided whether to seek re-election at CUPE after its national executive board “lost confidence” in him and sought his resignation over a Facebook video post denounced as antisemitic.

“We’ll cross those bridges when we come to them,” Hahn told reporters Tuesday, noting the next vote for national vice-presidents of Canada’s largest public-sector union isn’t until spring 2026.