Israel Forced to Live Beyond Hollywood’s Imagination

Only in the Movies

In the box office hit You Only Live Twice, a SPECTRE ninja assassin unrolls a length of thread through the bedroom skylight until the end of the thread is just above James Bond’s lips. The ninja drips a viscus fluid down the thread, but at the last-minute Bond’s “cover” wife, Aki, rolls over and gets the poison instead.

The film industry revels in exotic murder and mayhem, particularly when they can drape it around convoluted Machiavellian plots of revenge  —  patiently planned and meticulously executed. Even better when the intended victims’ own hubris or avarice are essential to “success.”

Countless remakes and re-imaginings of Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians insidious subplots relentlessly kill bewildered pawns on schedule with poison, chandeliers, clubs, knives, axes, guns, phones, and nooses  —  all ticking along like clockwork towards an unpredictable and inexorable end.

In the cross-genre thriller Law Abiding Citizen, Clarence Darby (Gerard Butler) swears to “tear the system down” after an ambitious attorney cuts a plea deal with the scumbag who raped and murdered Darby’s wife and child before his very eyes.

Darby turns out to have a black ops background with special skills: weaving a carbon fiber ratchet into a necktie which all-but cuts the target’s head off, killing the judge who accepted the plea deal with an explosive projectile implanted in the judge’s cell phone, and modifying a bomb disposal robot with an EMP device and .50 caliber machine gun to wipe out the prosecutor at a mass funeral for victims that Butler had blown up with remote-control car bombs. (READ MORE from Michael Howard: ‘Martians Wanted’ for NASA Simulation: White Males Need Not Apply)

In The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Phibes (Vincent Price) choreographs spectacular deaths through fanciful takes on the ten plagues from Exodus: blood, frogs, gnats, flies, beasts, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and the death of first-born sons.

While the genre doesn’t always demand murder and mayhem, it does demand audacious planning and patient execution. In the British farce The Spy with a Cold Nose, British agents implant a radio transmitter in the Russian president’s pet bulldog to access top-secret conversations in an otherwise impenetrable ultra-secure room.

Where do they dream this stuff up? Well, they don’t really have to look far for fodder.

Stranger Than Fiction

Truth is as strange as fiction. In 1978, a Bulgarian Darzhavna sigurnost (State Security) assassin reportedly stabbed accused defector and BBC broadcaster Georgi Marhov with an umbrella to implant a deadly ricin pellet.

On the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, the CIA cast a wide net, and getting word that he was hiding out in Abbottabad, Pakistan, worked with a local doctor to organize a fake vaccination program. Working door to door, the team gained access to Bin Laden’s compound and the DNA of his extended family. On May 1, 2011 President Obama sent two-dozen mission-built Black Hawk helicopters, carrying U.S. SEAL Team 6 members, 79 operators, and one K-9 dog  —  and shot Osama Bin Laden to death.

A less imaginative but just as bizarre assassination attributed to North Korean despot Kim Jong Un was carried out in February of 2017 at the Kuala Lumpur airport. Two women jumped Un’s older half-brother Kim-Jong-nam and sprayed VX nerve agent in his face.

In August 2020, Russian SRV Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki (previously KGB) agents sneaked into a hotel room and painted Novichok nerve agent on Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s underpants. Navalny survived, only to be subsequently arrested and die “mysteriously” in the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service on 16 February 2024.

Israel and It’s Enemies

As wild as these few examples appear at first glance, they pale in comparison with this last month’s Mossad strike on the Hezbollah terrorist leadership.

On October 7, 2023 over 6,000 Hamas terrorists and a ragtag assortment of supporters and sympathizers stormed across the length of the Israel-Gaza border, pouring through sewer-like tunnels, bashing through checkpoints, and tearing through fences.

Outlandish Mad Max styled marauders on motorcycles, battered pickup trucks, jeeps, and even paramotors (those flimsy go-carts slung under parasails) wreaked havoc on  a music festival, farmsteads, villages, schools, and border-control checkpoints. They murdered, tortured, and raped civilians. They hurled grenades into bomb shelters, recording their atrocities on go-pros and cell phones  —  smiling while taking “selfies” with their dead and dying victims.

The next day, with social media lit up with visuals of bloodied, wounded, and terror-stricken hostages being motored away into Gaza, Hezbollah terrorists further north in Lebanon began firing hundreds of missiles indiscriminately into Israeli territory.

Other than taking out most Hezbollah rockets with their “Iron Dome” air defense systems, there was an ominous silence from the Israeli High Command and their Mossad action groups. Days turned into weeks and the Hezbollah rockets continue to rain down  —  mostly ineffectually, with sporadic but devastatingly accurate Israeli counter fire. Then  —  on October 27, 2023, Israel launched its ground campaign counter offensive on Gaza.

Today  —  twelve months after the psychotic Hamas raids into Israel, Gaza is largely rubble. A few Hamas terrorists remain cowering in tunnels  —  uncounted innocent Western hostages suffer in darkness. But what about Hezbollah and Lebanon?

Israel’s Plan

In January of this year, Mossad began putting the Dairy Queen curl on their plans to deal with Hezbollah aggression. They didn’t want to risk a two-front war with Hamas. Not with Hezbollah up north, Houthis in the rear, and Iran pulling the strings. What to do? Whatever they did would be under intense global criticism. And precision targeting of the Hezbollah leadership was difficult  —  they’d stopped using cellphones for internal communications and were resorting to “untraceable pagers” and handheld “walkie talkie” styled two-way radios.

The light bulb went on.

Mossad infiltrated Hezbollah logistics, identified the manufacturers of preferred pagers and radios, and designed retrofits that included triggering devices and a few ounces of explosives. They placed the modified devices into Hezbollah supply channels — and waited. (READ MORE: Three’s the Charm for Elon Musk’s Starship Launch)

Five months later, on Tuesday, September 17, 2024, just after 3:30 p.m., the pagers began buzzing, chirping, and chiming, alerting Hezbollah operatives to an important communique from high command. Some had time to hold their pagers to their faces to read the screen. Some were still fumbling at their belt holsters or digging in the pockets when the bombs detonated. Talk about targeting. Surprisingly few “innocent” bystanders, women or children were harmed.

The Hezbollah leadership, now eschewing pagers, were left with their walkie talkies as relatively secure communicators. Not so much. On Wednesday, September 18, 2024 at 5:00 p.m. hundreds of walkie talkies  —  these carrying much larger packets of explosives  —  blew, some tearing out the sides of Hezbollah office buildings.

Phew.

More fodder for Hollywood’s gristmill. High tech, Machiavellian plots, prescient plotting, technicolor visuals, deadly outcomes.

It’s not over.

Just this last Friday, September 27, Israeli jets took out Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, along with his main headquarters hidden beneath a residential condo in the Haret Hreik Dahiyeh stronghold of the Lebanese capital. In so doing they reduced four adjacent buildings to smoking rubble. Still  —  a precision strike, all things considered.

Hussein Fadlallah, head of Hezbollah in Beirut, vowed not to give in, no matter how many commanders Israel kills. “We will never abandon the support of Palestine, Jerusalem, and oppressed Gaza,” Fadlallah said.

“Never” is a long time, and the Israeli ground assault hasn’t even started.

But Hollywood is taking notes.

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