Welcome to Psychological Operations. I would not at all be surprised if the WSJ article was sourced by Mossad. I can tell you that Mossad did not booby trap a batch of pagers over a weekend. They have been planning and influencing this for a while.
The easiest way to modify a behavior is to think it originated organically, rather than from an outside source. It’s much easier to accept change if you think it can from within your organization. So if Mossad could make Hezbollah think they realized internally that cell phones were bad and pagers were good, the change would happen swiftly and quickly.
Think of it this way. Mossad was definatley using cell tracking to kill a few Hezbollah operatives. They could have kept quiet on their methods. But if they saw an opportunity to have a greater effect, they release a statement saying “We will continue to use cell tracking technology to locate and kill our enemy.” Somehow that story makes Toto the WSJ. Now Hezbollah leadership says, damn—we need to shit can our cell phones for pagers that can’t be tracked. And the end result is by influencing behaviors, Mossad can put their pager plan into action.
Down and dirty lesson on Psywar in a combat environment.
