Israel's methods in high-tech warfare.
Israel has long been known for employing innovative methods to eliminate its enemies. The country has recently been accused of carrying out a high-tech attack against Hezbollah.
According to the Telegraph, the unprecedented mass explosion of pagers used by Hezbollah fighters occurred after the armed group switched from mobile phones to more outdated means of communication to reduce the risk of being tracked by Israel.
No one has claimed responsibility, but officials from Lebanon, Hezbollah, and Iran have accused Israel. Many experts say the explosion bears the hallmarks of Israeli special forces units such as the Mossad intelligence agency.
Founded in 1949, a year after the establishment of the state of Israel, Mossad is believed to be involved in numerous Israeli assassinations. For over seven decades, many have suggested that Mossad relied on explosives, remote-controlled machine guns, and even poisoned toothpaste to approach its targets, but with inconsistent results.
In 2012, a documentary titled "Sealed Lips" revealed that in the 1970s, Israel plotted to assassinate then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein using a book rigged with explosives. Saddam refused to open the book and gave it to one of his officials. As soon as the book was opened, it exploded, killing the official who opened it, while Saddam himself was unharmed.
Then came the mysterious case of poisoned toothpaste, allegedly used to kill Wadie Haddad, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
According to The New York Times' book, *A History of Secret Israeli Assassinations*, a Mossad assassination team approached Haddad's home in 1978 and swapped his toothpaste for an identical tube containing a poison developed by Israeli scientists.
The poison is believed to have seeped into the user's mouth through the mucous membrane each time he brushed his teeth, causing Haddad to be hospitalized in Iraq. Eventually, the Palestinian commander was treated in East Germany, where doctors discovered suspicious toothpaste in his personal hygiene bag. Haddad's death is believed to have been slow and painful.
Mossad is also suspected of deploying a remote-controlled machine gun to assassinate Iran's nuclear program chief, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, in 2020. The gun was broken into pieces and smuggled into Iran, then reassembled and placed in a waiting location to ambush Mohsen.
According to Sky News, in 2007, the US and Israeli intelligence agencies created the powerful Stuxnet computer worm, which disabled a key part of Iran's nuclear program. Stuxnet was designed to destroy the centrifuges Iran used to enrich uranium.
