Hezbollah Claims It Hit “Israel’s NSA” Which Conducts Assassinations

I’ve had a mixed assessment of Hezbollah’s actions since October which I hope to flesh out in a future piece. But I did find it notable that Nasrallah in his speech this weekend said and stressed that they hit Unit 8200. This has received remarkably little attention, so I put out this news release via accuracy.org this morning:

Hezbollah Claims It Hit “Israel’s NSA” Which Conducts Assassinations

Journalist and translator Haidar Al-Karrar wrote a thread on X, reporting that Hezbollah leader Nasrallah stated in a speech on Sunday that: “From the beginning, we set guidelines for the response: A- It should not be a civilian target, even though there are civilian martyrs in the southern suburbs of Beirut, and we have the right to target ‘civilians’ there. …

“We identified a primary target for the operation deep inside, which is the Glilot Base. This is a military intelligence base (Aman), housing a large number of officers and soldiers, and it manages many assassination operations. …

“The intended target was the Israeli Military Intelligence (Aman) Unit 8200 base in Glilot, near Tel Aviv, and our information indicates that one of the two rockets reached this base. …

“#Nasrallah: #Netanyahu’s claim of destroying thousands of rockets and thousands of rocket launch platforms is a false claim. …

“#Nasrallah: Since this morning, we have heard Netanyahu and the occupation army’s narrative, which was later adjusted to emphasize that they carried out a preemptive operation and claimed they thwarted the attack, but this narrative is full of lies. …

“#Nasrallah: The claims that there was a plan to target Tel Aviv, or targets within the city of Tel Aviv, or Ben Gurion Airport are false allegations. …”

As’ad AbuKhalil wrote on X: “Nasrallah’s speech won’t be published in Western media. But he refuted so many of the Israeli propaganda lies which made it into US and Israeli media about the attack today (esp about quality and quantity of missiles). He even conceded that two missile launchers were actually hit.”

James Bamford, a leading analyst on intelligence matters, has described the highly secret headquarters of Unit 8200, “which specializes in eavesdropping, codebreaking, and cyber warfare — Israel’s equivalent of the American National Security Agency. One of Unit 8200’s newest and most important organizations is the Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Center, which, according to a spokesman, was responsible for developing the AI systems that ‘transformed the entire concept of targets in the IDF.’ Back in 2021, the Israeli military described its 11-day war on Gaza as the world’s first ‘AI war.’ Israel’s ongoing invasion of Gaza offers a more recent — and devastating — example.” Also see: “Reporting Says Israel Hacked Russian Intelligence, Secretly Colluded with the Trump Campaign.” And from +972 Magazine: “‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza.”

BASHIR SAADE, bashir.saade@stir.ac.uk, @bashir_saade
Saade is author of Hizbullah and the Politics of Remembrance (Cambridge University Press) and is available for a limited number of interviews. He is lecturer in Politics and Religion at the University of Stirling.