Protect yourself from exploding devices

Are you worried that your phone or some other communications device may blow up in your face? If you are, I’m on hand to propose a sure-fire method of protecting yourself:

Do not under any circumstances join a terrorist organisation, especially one whose stated mission in life is to wipe Israel off the map.

And if you can’t resist the temptation of becoming a member of Hezbollah, Hamas or some such, eschew newfangled devices, whether high-tech, such as I-Phones, or low-tech, such as pagers and walkie-talkies. Stick to smoke signals, carrier pigeons or, if you must, the odd payphone.

None of these is likely to explode into your face, hands or those parts of your anatomy that are close to trouser pockets. However, as thousands of Hezbollah thugs have discovered, anything more sophisticated just may blow up unexpectedly.

Blow up is different from ignite, which points at the sabotage technique used by the Israelis. Those devices couldn’t have been made to explode by using their integral parts, such as batteries.

An overheated battery may catch fire and burn down the house while the residents are otherwise engaged. But it won’t blow up with sufficient force to… well, I’ll spare you the lurid details of the physical damage those pagers, walkie-talkies and fingerprint-recognition devices inflicted on Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon. Let’s just say that the injuries were quite horrendous and, in some 20 cases, fatal.

One has to admire the ingenuity, skill and sheer guts of Mossad, or whatever Israeli agency was involved in planning and executing the operation. Their agents had to gain access to large consignments of devices travelling along the supply chain to their Hezbollah procurers. They then had to hide inside a small amount, perhaps only a gramme or two, of pentaerythritol tetranitrate (or a similarly powerful explosive) and a circuit acting as a remote long-range trigger.

No slapdash work was allowed. If even one of the charges had gone off before its time, the whole operation would have been exposed. The blasts had to be synchronised and so timed as to occur at a time when the devices were likely to be in use.

My admiration of Mossad’s brilliance isn’t universally shared. Thus Volker Türk, the current UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, referred to the detonations as “shocking” and “their impact on civilians unacceptable”.

“The fear and terror unleashed is profound,” he added, displaying the customary knack of international functionaries for stating the blindingly obvious. Of course, the operation will spread fear and terror. That’s its whole point, apart from taking thousands of militants out of commission.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres added his own contribution by stating that “civilian objects should not be weaponised” and “that should be a rule that … governments should be able to implement”.

To begin with, no device used by terrorists to coordinate their murderous activities is ever truly civilian. Weapons include not only bombs, rockets and guns, but also communications systems. When a pager or a walkie-talkie is used in that fashion, it’s already weaponised. But never mind semantics; let’s talk about counterterrorism.

I don’t have the ear of either gentleman, which is a shame. I’d like to know which methods of fighting Arab terrorism they’d recommend to Israel as an alternative to weaponising civilian objects.

Would they prefer for the Israeli air force to level the Beirut buildings inhabited by Hezbollah terrorists and their families? Or perhaps, in order to curry favour with UN officials, the Israelis should drive tanks into the centre of Beirut and start laying about them with their tracks and high-calibre guns?

I can’t help thinking that any such foray would result in much higher collateral damage. In fact, this operation by, I assume, Mossad is a marvel of a precision strike. The devices involved were commissioned specifically for use by Hezbollah commanders of various ranks – not, judging by the number of the devices procured, for the rank and file.

The likelihood of a Lebanese civilian using a pager, walkie-talkie or a fingertip-recognition device would have been infinitesimally low. In fact, I can’t think of any other tactic, other than a sniper’s bullet, that would be as humanely selective in its targeting.

Perhaps Messrs Guterres and Türk are more knowledgeable than me, and there indeed exists some possible weaponry they’d rather recommend to Mossad and the IDF. But somehow I doubt that.

In fact, I’m sure that, if probed on their preferred methods of Israel’s anti-terrorist measures, they’d opt for ‘none of the above’ or rather ‘none’. To be sure, assorted Lefties will talk your ear off about the Israelis’ right to defend themselves. However, if we got down to the nitty-gritty, they’d explain that such defence shouldn’t involve killing or maiming those who wish Israel ill and do their best to kill Israelis.

Western Lefties, such as Messrs Türk and Guterres, are viscerally attracted to those who hate the West, and they use their offices to help them as best they can. They feel a Mowgli-like empathy for Third World terrorists, “We be of one blood, thou and I”. While decent Westerners root for Israel because it’s an oasis of Western civilisation in the Middle East, the Lefties hate it for the same reason.

In public, they’ll happily profess regret that Israelis have to live in constant anticipation of rockets raining on their heads or hordes of sadistic savages descending on their villages. But smouldering deep down is their inextinguishable affection for anti-Western actions, no matter how barbaric.

My congratulations to the Israelis on this brilliant operation, the likes of which I’ve never even heard about. I wish we had the same courage to fight for our liberties as that shown by the people of Israel and the Ukraine.

If we did, we’d be the ones wiping out terrorists and aggressors, even if we weren’t their immediate victims. Remember what John Donne wrote about men and islands?