Once upon a time in Hollywood, the movies gave us a very clear sense of the world and of America’s place in it. Most of us learned our history at the movie theater, from blockbusters like Glory or Saving Private Ryan or The Green Berets. And we walked away with our hands greasy with popcorn butter and our hearts full of pride that we were the good guys fighting the good fight and keeping the world safe and free.
How times have changed.
These days, Hollywood either avoids reality altogether—good luck finding more than a handful of mute films about 9/11, say—or delivers grim portraits of Americans behaving badly (see: anything by Oliver Stone). Which makes the new documentary Paging Hezbollah all the more rare, refreshing, and outright wonderful.
Paging Hezbollah tells the story of how the Israeli military managed to trick the Lebanese terrorist organization into using beepers installed with plastic explosives, pressing the button one day in the fall of 2024 and watching the devices—and with them scores of hands, noses, eyes, and testicles—explode.
It’s a riveting tale, and the director, Justin Folk, enjoyed unprecedented access to Israeli officials, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to David Barnea, the head of Mossad, Israel’s legendary intelligence agency. Indeed, this was the first time that the Mossad chief sat down for an on-camera interview to explain in detail precisely how he and his team pulled off one of the greatest operations in modern military history.
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Incredible as these details are, they might’ve, in the hands of a lesser filmmaker, made for a mosaic of mere machismo, all boom and bluster and no soul. Thankfully, the man the Israelis trusted with telling their story also possesses a virtue no less important than the ability to spin a great yarn—a sturdy moral compass.
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