BENJAMIN Netanyahu gave Donald Trump a bizarre golden bleeper as he became the first foreign leader to visit the new President.
The Israeli Prime Minster handed over the gleaming gift – as well as a regular pager – in celebration of his deadly pager attack on Iran in September, Israeli media reported.
Netanyahu became the first world leader to visit Trump in Washington since he took office[/caption]
Trump thanked Netanyahu for the unusual offering and congratulated him on the “grand” operation.
After the gift had changed hands the US President also set out a sweeping vision for transforming the Gaza strip into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.
He said America would take control of the area and that Palestinians would be resettled in neighbouring countries.
Israel booby-trapped Hezbollah’s supply of handheld pagers and walkie-talkies which exploded across Iran in September, killing dozens – including two young girls.
Thousands more were injured in the coordinated blasts including Hezbollah members, civilians and Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon.
Hezbollah said the devices had all belonged to its employees across “various units and institutions” – with Israeli intelligence agents later revealing how they managed it.
Israel and Hezbollah had been pelting each other with missiles over the Lebanese border daily since Hamas’s October 7 attack.
Hours before the pager explosion, Israel made it an official war aim to stop Hezbollah’s attacks on the north of the country so displaced residents could return home.
A second wave of explosions hit the following day, this time from rigged walkie-talkies.
In the days after the two attacks, the IDF launched a ground invasion into Lebanon.
Weeks later, Israel revealed it had been forced to launch the deadly attack early over fears the plot had been discovered by Hezbollah.
Israel had intended to blow up the pagers if all-out war ever broke out, but had to jump the gun when Hezbollah operatives began raising suspicions that could have foiled the plot.
Two former Israeli intelligence agents later told CBS News that Hezbollah had been duped into buying thousands of the rigged devices without realising they had been made in Israel.
Its members carried around the bombs for 10 years without ever suspecting the trap.
The agents revealed that a fake company manufactures the devices with explosives concealed in the batteries.
An agent identified as Michael said: “We have an incredible array of possibilities of creating foreign companies that have no way of being traced back to Israel.
“Shell companies over shell companies to affect the supply chain to our favour.”
“We create a pretend world. We are a global production company. We write the screenplay, we’re the directors, we’re the producers, we’re the main actors, and the world is our stage.”
Lebanon and international partners heavily criticised the attack.
Volker Turk, the UN’s human rights chief, said the attacks had “appalled” him.
He added that they “violate[d] international human rights law and, as applicable, international humanitarian law”.
Israel and Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire on November 26.
How did Israel pull-off the pager attack?
ISRAEL pulled-off an elaborate plan to plant booby-trapped electronic devices inside Iran, which could be detonated at will.
They did this by tricking Hezbollah into buying thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies that had in fact been made in Israel and tampered with.
Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, said it found out that Hezbollah was buying its pagers from a Taiwanese company called Gold Apollo.
The spies then set up a fake company to manufacture their own pagers rigged with explosives, complete with the Gold Apollo logo, without the real company realising.
An ex-Israeli agent called Gabriel said the agency duped Hezbollah into buying the pagers, making advertising films and brochures, and sharing them on the internet.
Mossad claimed it only installed enough explosives to hurt only the person carrying the device.
Gabriel told CBS: “We test everything triple, double, multiple times in order to make sure there is minimum damage.”
Mossad installed an urgent-sounding ringtone that would make Hezbollah operatives check their pagers.
Moments after the ringtone sounded, the explosives were detonated.
Gabriel said: “When they are buying from us, they have zero clue that they are buying from the Mossad,” he said. “We make like [movie] Truman Show, everything is controlled by us behind the scene.”
Hezbollah bought around 5,000 of the booby-trapped pagers by September 2024, according to CBS.
