Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
(reuters.com)1063 points by logicchains 3 days ago
1063 points by logicchains 3 days ago
> Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuang said the pagers used in the explosion were made by a company in Europe that had the right to use the Taipei-based firm's brand, "The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it"
He also said it was strange he got paid from "Middle East". That statement of his also indicates this was not a long standing "licensing" agreement. Someone likely called up from "Europe" and asked for the license for that specific device.
Conclusion: the company in Europe is a paper fiction. The devices were made in "Israel" and the only time they may have been in Europe was to get them from Middle East to so a "European" company can ship them back.
This also means Hezbollah has an asset in its upper ranks. We can assume this since they announced before "We're gonna use pagers from now on folks" and thus prior to this Shin Bet had no reason to run a cutout in "Europe" making pagers. The entire production chain was then a fiction setup likely recently, certainly post "headsup everyone, pagers" announcement by the targeted organization.
So the chain of events is clear:
- "Did all you hear we are going to use pagers?"
- Shin Bet sets up the phony production Taiwan -> EU.
- Devices made in "Israel".
- Asset recommends make / model / seller.
- boom.
I think from now on future OEMs will be very careful indicating whether a product was in fact made by them, under their supervision, or was license made by some third party.
You'd think that. Here in America, the NSA has been intercepting and bugging servers for decades, and manufacturers have been suspiciously quiet about the whole affair.
Suffice to say, when enough pressure can be exerted by a government agency, OEMs are happy to keep their mouth shut.
> planted a small amount (3 gm)
The abbreviation for gram is simply "g". I was a bit confused but at least the link cleared things up.
Thanks. I am usually not super pedantic but I've noticed some people using "mt" for meters recently. I immediately fall into confusion when the wrong symbols are used. Then go down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out if it is a cultural or regional thing.
I wouldn't wish to be in the PR damage control team of Gold Apollo right now.
This was a direct attack to their survival as company. Will they sue Israeli government for turning their product into a bomb used to mutilate and kill people? Seems not probable.
Will they sue the Hungarian company making the bombs? That would be a more realistic target. Now Hezbollah has an excuse to attack Hungary interests in the EU and the conflict could escalate. That company should be crushed and closed for good by the Hungarian law system IMO. Either you are a military grade company or you aren't.
If Gold Apollo wants to keep selling pagers, better they start making all the carcasses on their products transparent from now on. With a big photo in the boxes showing how the correct product must look.
> That company should be crushed and closed for good by the Hungarian law system IMO. Either you are a military grade company or you aren't.
Were the pagers military grade? Hungarian company providing military equipment to Hezbollah would be a scandal on its own.
I assume that you, as a company, need a special permit to manufacture lethal weapons or military products on EU. Either you have it, or you don't. And if you don't have and still do it, I understand that you are breaking a dozen of EU laws.
The EU now needs to do something about it, and do it fast. Or to pretend that nothing happened, surrender to Israel, create a dangerous legal precedent "for the cause" and send a clear message that EU manufacture laws are a joke: "All those security filters painfully raised around EU products worth zero and can be easily jumped over". This is a really bad message for all the EU makers.
A franchise of your brand also signed a contract to make your product. I assume that changing the functionality or specifications of your registered product is strictly forbidden in that contract. I bet that this move violated some laws on Taiwan also.
If I was the CEO of Gold Apollo I would be fuming and furious at this moment.
Israel not only pushed them into the middle of a war that is not their war, without their consent or knowledge; also destroyed the brand image and painted a target in the backs of each employee and reseller of Gold Apollo.
At this moment, nothing suggests that the Taiwan based company were part of this. They should apologize, clear things, and detach themselves from this PR mess as soon as possible.
I understand that from the Mossad point of view this can be a big success, but from the point of view of the companies that try to sell their legit products, this is an direct attack.
Doesn't matter. Hezbollah are subject to sanctions by the EU as a designated terrorist organization. Presumably, that applies to all companies operating within the EU.
Sanctions violations are very much a "do not pass go" style crime, and this looks like it was an entire batch that was delivered directly to Hezbollah.
> If Gold Apollo wants to keep selling pagers, better they start making all the carcasses on their products transparent from now on. With a big photo in the boxes showing how the correct product must look.
I don't think that would make a difference at all, explosives could be disguised in any electronic components, being transparent wouldn't help very much. The Taiwanese company's brand is now irreparably tarnished, I think that is the cost of lending the brand name to an untrustworthy partner.
I doubt the company exists anymore or that there's anyone left in hungary who can be held responsible. Here's what i imagine took place:
step one: mossad sets up some sham manufacturing facility in Hungary or buys an existing one.
Step 2: reach out to gold apollo and make a deal to produce their pagers under license. Money no object they probably offered them very good terms. Gold apollo is so pleased by the money being offered they fail to investigate the company properly. Step 3: mossad agents start production introducing lethal batteries into the design, produce several thousand units then vanish leaving apollo executives bewildered but they have the money already so they don't ask too many questions.
Step 4: sell all the pagers at a great price to some hezbolla arms dealer, go home, buy some popcorn and turn on the tv.
In short everyone involved have probably disappeared months ago.
Also a really clever part is that they could have turned a profit on the sale meaning the operation was at least partly subsidised by hezbolla themselves.
There are lots of companies with questionable practices in Hungary. One scam I am aware of is companies that are registered in the names of homeless people whose sole function is to churn out receipts that other companies buy at fractions of their face value in order to run “clean” expenses through their books and effectively launder money.
Would not surprise me if this turned out to be something like that.
> This was a direct attack to their survival as company. Will they sue Israeli government for turning their product into a bomb used to mutilate and kill people? Seems not probable.
Would Toyota or any other car manufacturer sue Arabs et al. for turning their pickups into rolling suicide bombs?
Toyota will definitely sue to death somebody --selling-- thousands of new Toyotas modified in mass to kill their drivers. If not, they would be sued massively instead, so is not something that they could just let pass.
If the owner wants later to trow their Toyota over a cliff is a different problem and not Toyota's business.
As it can be expected the situation is extremely murky. Hungarian press is abuzz with this, I will translate a few hard facts and leave speculation to others. I will also use English sources as appropriate. Hungarian sources are below the list, you can run them through automated translation to fact check me.
* There's a small consulting company called BAC after the initials of the founder Bársony-Arcidiacono Cristiana. One of their services is https://archive.fo/kwTKA "We develop international technology cooperation among countries for the sale of telecommunication products. This cooperation entails scaling up a business from Asia to new markets e.g. developing countries". Their home page https://archive.fo/dXtMx lists these: Strategic Advisor for major International Organizations including Financial companies (Venture Capitals, IAEA, UNESCO, CNRS, EC, etc.). Business Developer and Savvy Analyst for Innovative/ Solutions in diverse fields (Sustainable Development (SDGs), Water, Energy, Resilience-Mitigation-Adaptation, Capacity Building, Complex Emergencies, Digitalization (AI, Blockchain, ICT) within Humanistic Economy.
* The official place of business is just a business "placeholder". The woman who answered the doorbell for journalists said no one ever from BAC is there, maybe once a month a mail comes which she receives.
* This house is also the registered address for a number of companies. Two companies have Russian owners. One of them is an oil wholesaler.
* BAC revenue in 2023 was 210 million forints and 13 million profit. What's remarkable is how person-related expenses (payroll etc) was a mere 0.5 million forints for the entire year. Hungarian monthly minimum wage was a bit over 0.25M HUF. One million HUF is about 2820 USD.
* NBC talked to the founder. According to her "I don’t make the pagers. I am just the intermediate. I think you got it wrong". https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/taiwan-firm-denies-making...
* The founder's linkedin is still up https://www.linkedin.com/in/cristiana-b%C3%A0rsony-arcidiaco... Her PhD from 2006 is at https://ucl.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?do... so it seems real.
https://hvg.hu/kkv/20240918_hezbollah-bac-consulting
https://telex.hu/belfold/2024/09/18/mit-lehet-tudni-a-magyar...
In conclusion, if I needed to speculate based on the LinkedIn page and the archived consulting page, what gives me pause: if this woman indeed exists she is one of the most talented people in all of Hungary. Seven languages, degrees in diverse fields and a PhD in physics. At the same time, I have indeed found a PhD from 2006 and her grants and scholarships from even earlier are probably not hard to verify either. I do not know what to think.
To me the content archived consulting page looks very much like something a large language model would generate. Impressive, but doesn't make any sense considering the size of this company. Probably good enough to fool Hezbollah anyway.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240401000000*/www.bacconsultin...
The timeline of web archive snapshots is strange. No real change or activity for years - then a flurry of changes in 2024.
Anything before 2021 is not this company at least according to the Hungarian corporate registry.
Also, https://web.archive.org/web/20211210194900/https://www.bacco... this is interesting, it's 2021 Dec and yet, it has AI on the front page.
And now there's a second set of explosions, this time using handheld radios.
I'm hopeful that this won't escalate, but I'm very anxious that it will.
One more thing: she posted Russian propaganda to her LinkedIn feed.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cristiana-b%C3%A0rsony-arcidi...
She also regularly reposts antivaxx posts.
Which does not really mesh with her supposed education level.
Weird.
You are right in tha aspect that terrorism doesn't care about excuses (at least externally, it needs to justify its actions to its "follower base" though).
I have an intuition that the grandparent tried to express someting like:
Now Hezbollah has a motivation to attack Hungarian interest in the EU.
Which I'd simplify as something more concerning for me, as a Hungarian: Now Hazbollah has motivation to attack Hungarians.
The terrorists didn't need an excuse to put bombs in pagers. The person you were responding was talking about the Hezbollah, though.
Hezbollah and Hamas need the inherent anti Israel bias of Europe. It's the only international group with money and influence that sides with them. If they attack anything in Israel then it is a massive Israeli win.
Europe only care for geopolitical games in the Mediterranean and petroleum. The Gaza conflict has shown that oil is on its way out as a top level geopolitical influence.
Lol military grade. This is a guerilla fighting group getting leftover oil money from Iran. They were using pagers.
Israel has been fighting for 100 years with its hands tied. With the unofficial and largely official sunni/saudi Israel alliance, only Iran cares about the freedom fighters of Gaza and Lebanon, and you can put a ten year clock on that funding once EVs start taking real chunks of transport
You know, as this is a tech forum, I'll reply via a tech business, re: branding angle.
Yes Gold Apollo, they were yours. That's because you licensed your name, and your name is your business.
(EG your mark(name) of trade)
I've seen this in everything from hotels to frying pans. License that name! We made 1% more this quarter. Yeehaw!
Holiday in has corporate owned hotels, franchised hotels, and of course licensed hotels. Franchised ones have more control from corporate, licensed far less. And it shows.
Same as t-fal, which in Canada is just the cheapest junk you can get, with Canadian Tire owning and manufacturing under the name:
https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/t-fal-viva-aluminum-fryin...
Anyone buyong t-fal pans there will think t-fal is the cheapest junk ever. Because it is.
This worked well pre-Internet, but now people see reviews for Canadian Tire t-fal when researching pans in Europe. Way to trash your local name.
Licensing your name doesn't work the same in 2024 as 1994. Don't do it.
More concisely, why should anyone who, due to these explosions, does not trust devices branded as Gold Apollo care about a distinction between a product using a licensed trademark vs a product that has been contracted out for production of products using the brand name they own?
Or to really drive the point home, the only reason we give companies exclusive control over certain names (trademarks) is so that they can build a reputation. If companies are going to just license out the names to whoever gives them money anyway then we might as well get rid of trademarks entirely and let anybody produce crap knock off products without having to pay a trademark owner.
Ironically this appears to be because another company wanted to protect its trademark.
> In the United States, Tefal is marketed as T-fal. This is to comply with DuPont's objection that the name "Tefal" was too close to DuPont's trademark "Teflon". The T-fal brand is also used in Canada and Japan.
It sounds more like "tay" (as pronounced in English).
And it would hardly make sense to make a name for US market based on how it sounds in French.
It's difficult enough to secure the supply chain towards the OEM as it is. It's nigh impossible for a vendor/OEM to secure the supply chain towards retail and distribution, not relative to nation-state attackers of great sophistication and with huge budgets. This sort of thing could happen with any smartphone, any feature phone, laptops, etc. Though it was a lot easier to mount this attack given an order for thousands of units from one company.
It’s okay. CTC bought Paderno, a Prince Edward Island perennial, to juice out more brand value after they’re done sucking T-Fal dry.
I don’t think they’ve started including explosives in their product yet.
CTC bought Paderno, a Prince Edward Island perennial, to juice out more brand value after they’re done sucking T-Fal dry.
It's worse than that.
Panerno, a high quality manufacturer of stainless steel cookware, using North American steel, was indeed bought by Canadian Tire.
Immediately after purchase, the factory was sold to a Chinese firm, who wanted to import crappy Chinese steel, but still label cookware "Made in Canada".
It is their ingress into the North American market.
And as Paderno's plant is gone, it means that Paderno of Canadian Tire is now made with Chinese steel, not North American steel, and built to lowest quality standards.
But of course it still says "Made in Canada".
Canadian Tire has boasted in earning reports that more than 60% of its profits now come from its own brands. Often like this, quality brands bought and turned into junk.
This is one pf the reasons why many jurisdictions in Canada have warranty laws that say the retailer is liable too.
Oh wow!
I never understood why I felt that t-fal was garbage in Canada but mediocre in the US. Now it makes sense: they're totally different products.
Gold Apollo claims the devices were assembled in Hungary by a company named BAC.
My guess that entire company was just a Mossad front.
* They seem to have little or no actual presence at their Hungarian address * CEO has a profile that seems to have very little to do with the manufacturing of telecom devices * Gold owner says their payments were strange and came through the middle east. * Orban is very pro Israel
A front yes. A front for who though? Was it a front for Hezbollah that got infiltrated or a front setup by Israel fit for purpose.
I have no sympathy for Hezbollah but empathy a plenty - I've been on that side of a security breech and step one involves tearing things apart; things that are the problem and invariably unless you've got ice water in your veins you'll tear apart things that are not the problem as well.
> "The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it"
That's whitewashing. If they license the brand, they should control every aspect of manufacturing. Otherwise they are irresponsible. If I was their client, I wouldn't trust them any longer and return all pagers.
I am curious about the technical details - where were the explosives packed, how were they connected and triggered? Did any pager survive and didn't blow up?
Unfortunately I’ve been trying to tell this to friends and family for almost a decade in regards to clothing and home goods.
People are stuck in the 80s and 90s that a logo defines how something was made, which isn’t true at all these days. Calvin Klein is a great example where most of their income comes from licensing, not selling their own clothes. They might review designs but have no say on if the resulting garment can be sold with their logo. As long as they get get the licensing fee. Unfortunately I know people who will spend more on their items than the same garment made by the same manufacturer but with a different license on jt
Same for Toshiba TVs and many others
Working at an electronics retailer a few years ago, this was well-known (though news to me, when I started). They hid the fact that the company no longer manufactured their products, and/or that multiple companies were selling similar or even the same product (produced in the same factory, even).
It is trouble, though, since the entire point of a "brand" is to signal provenance in manufacturing, quality, etc. It's supposed to be a way to know something about the product (if nothing else, who to hold accountable when something goes wrong). If it doesn't, what's the point?
These declarations sound so stupid to me. What's the point of having your brand on a product, if you're going to claim you have nothing to do with it? What is the point of the concept of a brand even?
To make money, like with all the merchandising that happens with a popular movie. Any number of things are licensed with the owner of the IP having very limited involvement in it, like turning down certain types of licenses as bad for the brand but not getting into the weeds of manufacturing. It's not like if there was some branded Disney cell phone that Disney is going to inspect all the board-level components. I can't speak about this pager company other than to think they're glad for any business they could get, so would license the brand.
To prepare for lawsuits from families of the injured in what appears to be a supply chain attack maybe without the knowledge of their licensee in Budapest (BAC Consulting), and likely without their (Gold Apollo) knowledge. Deny and distance.
Brands died as anything reliable from the consumer perspective when the Chinese bought all the dying brands in the 2000s.
The only cheap goods with maintained brands are things like McDonald's which have recurring relationship with consumers.
I guess with QR-Code Menus, Smartphones replacing their tech almost everywhere, Starlink etc. they where happy to take any revenue.
You can judge them to be not a generally super-trustworthy brand.
But I would grant them that their responsibility for the deaths of these people is limited.
Where is the line between war and terrorism ?
This attack is quite indiscriminate. There are already videos circulating of random people being collateral damage.
Israel is losing the support of people more and more, and all that due to the crusade of Netanyahu to stay in power and to not be imprisoned for his former crimes.
Despicable. So much human suffering and for what ?
> Where is the line between war and terrorism ?
Easy. When it is you or your allies committing an act, it is war and collateral damage. When it is someone else, it is terrorism.
It is often a difficult topic to discuss because both sides tend to be in the wrong. It ends up being asymmetrical warfare. The stronger side accuses the weaker of hiding behind civilians while the weaker side accuses the stronger of human rights violations.
As sad as this case is, I find it pretty interesting since it is clearly an extrajudicial act of violence carried out in a foreign land. The west will likely celebrate this, but I personally find this much worse than the Indian assassination that took place in Canada "recently" and didn't have significant collateral damage, yet the west was up in arms about.
Terrorism is attacking civilian targets in order to create political pressure from fear.
War is attacking military targets to reduce the enemy’s capability to wage war against you.
Civilian target = terrorism
Military target = war
There absolutely are grey areas and overlap between the two but not nearly as much as people like to make out.
Exactly this >Easy. When it is you or your allies committing an act, it is war and collateral damage. When it is someone else, it is terrorism. <
Terrorism is a statecraft term of art used as part of a propaganda campaign. Outside of that is a meaningless term.
This military response was the opposite of indiscriminate. It was proportionate and targeted. It focussed as best as anyone ever could on the precise set of people who (hiding among their own civilians) have been launching hundreds of inaccurate rockets to kill Israeli civilians - for months.
> It focused as best as anyone ever could
It isn't the "best ever" as there was no guarantee the pagers were worn only by combatants. As of now, of the 9 dead, 1/3rd are definitely not: 2 children & 1 woman.
> set of people who (hiding among their own civilians)
These people should always wear military uniform and live in a separate neighborhood even when they're not on duty? What do you propose?
> have been launching hundreds of inaccurate rockets
Guess what else is also reckless and killed civilians? https://www.stephensemler.com/p/israel-has-fired-over-11k-mu...
Do we know approximately how many terrorists were killed and how many civilians were killed? Do we know what steps Israel took—if any—to prevent the target pagers from falling into civilian hands?
Dropping kilotons of aviation bombs on a populated city is indiscriminate. This is nothing in comparison to that. Frankly I would even call this surgical.
There is no question that an enemy setting off thousands of small bombs in American supermarkets and homes, maiming unknown numbers of bystanders and killing children, would be designated an act of mass terrorism.
Anyone who claimed such mass terrorism is acceptable because it is not as bad as obliterating cities would be condemned as an apologist for terrorism.
There is no way to control where the pagers will end up. No way to control who will be near them, even if they are owned by a target.
You do know that carpet bombing is a war crime by Geneva Conventions ?
You're shopping for groceries. someone is standing next to you. Their pager explodes and you are severely injured. You never had anything to do with this war.
Still think it's surgical? By that definition 9/11 was surgical as well, after all they only targeted two towers and just a few people who happened to be there got hurt.
Israel has clearly steeped into terrorism and beyond before day 3 of this war.
Exactly this. It's interesting how I haven't been able to find any single media portraying this as a possible act of terror while they have been quite critical of conduct in Gaza. I hope this changes as there really needs to be a reckoning with the idea of bombs randomly triggered anywhere, maybe hospitals, schools, theaters.
Indiscriminate?
I'd say the pager bombing was as /surgical/ as one could possibly be.
A very sophisticated and targeted attack, putting tiny amounts of explosives in devices used by terrorist-linked individuals (ONLY Hezbollah were using the pagers because of their paranoia about Israeli monitoring of cellphones).
An example of an /indiscriminate/ attack is Hezbollah's firing of unguided rockets into Israel's civilian areas. In July, for example, a Hezbollah rocket killed 12 children playing football in the Golan Heights. THAT is indiscriminate killing.
It's so weird that this super mild take is downvoted on HN... I got the same yesterday.
Everything has to be binary, good vs evil, once you pick your side you have to ignore everything that compromises your idyllic vision.
It's downvoted because it's the definition of proportional.
3g of explosives personally handed to the most senior leadership of your enemy and with enough explosive force that 98% of people who had them attached to their person survived is the very definition of restrained and targeted. Certainly not "indiscriminate".
What is this news source NDTV? I've never heard of it. Are they reputable?
Indian network, a bit tabloidy but i think they are mostly ok.
Israel's Mossad spy agency planted a small amount (3 gm) of explosives inside 5,000 pagers made by Gold Apollo (a Taiwanese company). "The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code." 3,000 of the pagers exploded when a coded message was sent to them.
Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuang said the pagers used in the explosion were made by a company in Europe that had the right to use the Taipei-based firm's brand, "The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it"
Hezbollah fighters have been using pagers as a low-tech means of communication in an attempt to evade Israeli location-tracking,
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/3-grams-of-explosives-per-pa...