Clever: Israel Uses Phone Call to Lure, Delete Hezbollah Leader

Israel has long been known to have a great intelligence apparatus; being a small nation surrounded by people who want you dead tends to sharpen your intelligence-gathering skills. Now we are presented with another example of just how good Israel is at information-gathering, as on July 30th, they used a ruse involving a mysterious phone call to lure a Hezbollah commander out of hiding to a location where he could be (and was) deleted by an airstrike.

Israel lured out an elusive Hezbollah commander with a mysterious phone call moments before launching the deadly airstrike that would kill him and cause the terror group to vow revenge, according to a new report.
Fuad Shukr, who had evaded even the US for four decades, was killed on July 30 when he received a phone call in the southern Beirut neighborhood of Dahiyeh, a Hezbollah official told the Wall Street Journal.
The evening call instructed the Hezbollah commander to go up to the seventh floor of his building, with an Israel missile slamming into the complex at around 7 p.m., killing him, his family and injuring 70 others, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.

Once more we see further proof of the accuracy of the military aphorism, "There is no problem that cannot be solved with a suitable application of high explosives," and turning senior Hezbollah commanders into a pink mist is one of the best of all possible uses for that suitable application. It would be interesting to know just what was said to Fuad Shukr in that phone call: "We'd like to talk to you about your car's extended warranty. Would you mind just stepping up to the seventh floor so we may send you a renewal package? Yes, just stand by that window on the southwest corner." Whatever the message was, Shukr listened, resulting in the worst and shortest day of his life.

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This surely makes it look like Hezbollah needs to step up the security of their communications (COMSEC) if they don't want any more of the senior people un-alived; let's hope that's a lesson they never learn. Israel, in the meantime, just keeps making bad terrorists into good terrorists.

Officials in the terror group believe the call came from someone who had breached its internal communications network, exposing failures in Hezbollah’s intelligence network that compromised one of its most senior and elusive leaders.
Shukr was one of Hezbollah’s key founders and trusted ally of chief Hassan Nasrallah, both of whom backed the terror group’s ongoing attacks on Israel since Oct. 8.

This was a guy who richly deserved to be taken out. There does appear to have been some collateral damage, as the report notes his family was killed as well, but there are no details as to which family members were involved and what their status was. Following the Oct 7th attacks last year, it's apparent that the Israelis aren't inclined to be squeamish about blowing guys like this up; the IDF goes to great lengths to avoid collateral damage, but this is, after all, war.

Hezbollah, of course, has vowed revenge, as the report notes. They will no doubt pronounce this goblin to be a "martyr." But you what the thing is about martyrs?

They're dead.