Paging Hezbollah: Israel Lifts the Veil on Its 2024 Pager Operation

With gag orders eased, Israeli leaders describe the last-minute decisions behind the September 2024 pager explosions, just weeks before a major documentary reaches cinemas.

By Khurram Ali RazaFaith & Freedom News – FFN · Source: Monitoring Desk · September 29, 2026

A documentary, and a lifted censorship

Israel has now allowed the full story of its 2024 pager operation against Hezbollah to be told. A wave of new details has emerged just ahead of Paging Hezbollah, a documentary directed by Justin Folk and set for release on October 30, 2026.

The film features rare on-the-record interviews with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then-Mossad chief David Barnea, former CIA director David Petraeus and other senior Israeli and U.S. security figures. It frames the attack as a modern “Trojan horse” that penetrated Hezbollah’s own supply chain, according to The Times of Israel. The U.S. opening falls three days after Israel’s October 27 election.

What the newly cleared accounts say

Former defense minister Yoav Gallant said Israeli intelligence learned in August 2024 that a Hezbollah member had grown wary of the pagers and was probing them. Israeli sources say that operative and another person were then killed in a strike designed to look like a separate operation, so Hezbollah would not conclude the devices were compromised, per Israel National News.

The same accounts say that when Israel discovered inspection equipment being brought in to scan the devices, it destroyed the apparatus and, in one case, killed its operator. Netanyahu disclosed that in the third week of September 2024, Hezbollah sent three pagers to Iran for scanning, raising fears that hidden explosives would be found.

Israel detonated the pagers on September 17, 2024, and struck radios and other devices the next day.

How the operation worked, as now described

The documentary and newly allowed accounts describe a multi-year effort to infiltrate Hezbollah’s communications supply chain. Israeli intelligence helped design, market and deliver compromised pagers while convincing the group the devices were safe, The Daily Wire reports. In the trailer, Barnea recalls being told, “You have to turn this pager into a bomb,” while Netanyahu says the small amount of explosives inside “changed the world.”

The devices are portrayed as a Trojan horse, with Hezbollah members unknowingly distributing the booby-trapped gear within their own ranks, as Townhall notes.

Casualties and scope

Israeli estimates put the toll at roughly 3,500 Hezbollah operatives killed or wounded in the pager and follow-on radio explosions. Lebanese officials have long said civilians, including children, were also among the dead and injured. Earlier reporting from the aftermath cited at least a dozen fatalities and thousands of injuries on the first day alone, with hundreds more casualties in the second wave, according to The Jerusalem Post.

The Hungarian connection and the Iran offer

The pagers bore the Gold Apollo brand but were produced under license by Budapest-based BAC Consulting KFT, according to Daily News Hungary. Hungarian officials insisted BAC was only a trading intermediary with no manufacturing site and that the devices never entered Hungary, Conven reports.

A leaked September 30, 2024 call transcript, authenticated by a Western intelligence service and reviewed by The Washington Post, shows Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó telling Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi that Hungary’s secret service had contacted Iran and would “share all the information we have gathered.” Because Iran is Hezbollah’s main sponsor, Israeli officials feared scanning could expose the plot, IBTimes reports.

Important context: there is no public evidence that Budapest knew how Israel compromised the pagers or that it handed over Israeli operational secrets. Szijjártó later called the existence of recorded diplomatic calls a “huge scandal,” and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán ordered an investigation.

A story that still shapes politics

Netanyahu revived the episode at the UN General Assembly in late September 2026, holding up a pager and asking, “Remember the beepers? … Hezbollah certainly remembers them,” per the Jerusalem Post. Analysts will note the timing: the film opens days after Israel’s election. As with any account released with official consent, readers should weigh these claims as Israeli-sourced, and several details remain unverified independently.