‘Paging Hezbollah,’ now playing in US theaters, tells the story of an ingenious Mossad operation

NOVEMBER 3, 2026 16:21The story of how the Mossad planted exploding pagers on members of the terror group Hezbollah in Lebanon is one of the most amazing stories to come out of the wars of the past three years, and now there is a documentary about it, Paging Hezbollah, that is playing in theaters around the US.The pager operation was carried out on September 17, 2024, when the Mossad detonated about 5,000 pagers that it had surreptitiously sold to Hezbollah after convincing them that their phones were not secure.Between 3,000 and 4,000 members of the Hezbollah terror group were wounded in the operation, some seriously, others lightly, and the group’s members panicked. The next day, the Mossad detonated a smaller number of Hezbollah’s walkie-talkies.The event sparked a thousand memes, including cartoons showing the group’s then-leader, Hassan Nasrallah, nervously eyeing his electric kettle, and jokes like, “From the liver to the knee.”The operation was the opening salvo in a larger Israeli campaign against Hezbollah, which had been bombarding northern Israel since the Hamas attack on the southern border on October 7, 2023, displacing hundreds of thousands of Israeli residents of these areas and endangering thousands more residents of southern Lebanon.The movie was clearly made with international audiences in mind, and it is not just the story of the pager operation, but of Hezbollah in Lebanon. (credit: Courtesy)Nasrallah was killed 10 days after the beeper operation, in a daring raid that succeeded against all odds. As of this writing, more than 70% of residents of northern Israel have moved back to their homes.Movie made with international audiences in mindThe movie, which was directed by Justin Folk, contains some anecdotes and facts that many Israelis will not have heard. More importantly, though, the movie was clearly made with international audiences in mind, and it is not just the story of the pager operation, but of Hezbollah in Lebanon.Viewers for whom Hezbollah is just a name will get a detailed but entertaining history lesson of how the group destabilized Lebanon and focused for decades on bombing and trying to infiltrate Israel’s northern border. Paging Hezbollah makes it clear that the end game for the terror group was the total annihilation of Israel.The film also traces the history of the Mossad, from its origins in the1940s 1940s to the pager operation in 2024.The film features firsthand accounts and interviews with people connected to the operation and its aftermath, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Mossad director David Barnea, US General David Petraeus, IDF Major-General Ori Gordin, former Israeli ambassador Michael Oren, counterterrorism expert Matthew Levitt, IDF Brigadier-General (Res.) Professor Jacob Nagel, and Sarit Zehavi, a major in the IDF reserves and the founder and CEO of ALMA, an organization specializing in research and analysis of Israel’s security challenges. Naturally, there are other interviewees who cannot be identified, for security reasons.Folk said in a statement, “Many people heard about the pager operation and wondered how it was even possible. We wanted to tell the actual inside story – years of patience, engineering, deception and tradecraft that seem more like fiction than fact. We aimed to make the film of record for the operation, so we went right to the source. The deeper we went, the more incredible the real story became.”It really is incredible, and Director Folk tells it through interviews, news clips, and reenactments, although these look a bit awkward. It turns out that the sudden, devastating pager activation was actually 10 years in the making and proves the adage that “Truth is stranger than fiction.”If a director of a dramatic film had come up with a scenario where the Mossad set up shell companies to produce pagers in Asia and then marketed these products to terrorists, reviewers would have said that the story was not credible.But that’s just what the Mossad did. After the Mossad’s top engineers discovered that they could not cram enough explosives to do any meaningful damage in an average-sized pager, they crafted a larger one.Mossad creates advertising campaign for 'Rugged Pager'But it was bulky and awkward to carry, so the Mossad came up with an advertising campaign for what they called the “Rugged Pager,” convincing the terror organization that in this case, size did matter, and that this model was the kind of indestructible waterproof pager that real men should carry.The successful marketing campaign was a part of the story I had never heard before, although other parts of the film will be familiar to Israelis. For example, we have already seen Netanyahu take credit for the operation, as he does here.Many who remember the country’s lack of preparedness on the southern border on October 7 will question some assertions made by the prime minister and his associates in the documentary about how well the government handled the northern border and the Hezbollah threat throughout the war.But there is no denying that the pager operation was a triumph for Israel and the Mossad, and this film tells everything you want to know about it, detail after fascinating detail.To find out where the movie is playing in the US, go to tickets.paginghezbollah.com/Follow us on Google