The detonation of Hezbollah members’ pagers across Lebanon and Syria dominated the talk show circuit last night. Also catching the attention of the talking heads last night were President Abdel Fattah El Sisi’s new human development initiative and Education Minister Mohamed Abdellatif’s comments on private tutoring.

On his show Ala Mas’ouleety, Ahmed Moussa noted that the operation was Israel’s largest breach of Hezbollah’s communications systems, saying that Israel had simultaneously detonated some 4k pagers belonging to Hezbollah members and their families, killing 9 and injuring nearly 3k. Moussa regarded the attack as the group’s biggest blow, suggesting that the ramifications of these events may be bigger than any expectations (watch, runtime: 4:04).

Moussa described Israel’s communications penetration and bombing operation as a “terrorist” act, saying that the term was an appropriate descriptor for the actions of a terrorist state that has actively targeted civilians. He called for action to support Lebanon through the UN, the UN Security Council, or the Arab League. (watch, runtime: 2:20).

Moussa struck a note of caution on working with foreign companies, saying that the attack should give us pause over dealing with foreign companies given that the Mossad had been able to tamper with the process and rig the imported devices (watch, runtime: 3:08).

Moussa also noted that Israeli forces are moving north to the Lebanese border, relaying a report from Israel’s Channel 14 stating that Israeli security and military forces have begun relocating from the Gaza Strip to the northern front in advance of an anticipated escalation with Hezbollah (watch, runtime: 4:02).

How did Israel pull it off? IT systems expert Mostafa Abu Hamza told Sherif Amer that he believes the rigging could have occurred during the production, the shipping, or before the delivery of the devices. Abu Hamza added that Hezbollah’s engineers had been unable to detect it because the explosives were embedded inside the devices’ batteries. He also mentioned that the detonation took about 20 minutes, which means it was likely triggered by messages sent to the devices in batches (watch, runtime: 4:39).

ALSO ON THE AIRWAVES- The talk shows touched on the presidential initiative Bedeya, launched by Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly yesterday per a cabinet statement. According Ahmed Moussa, the initiative is supported by around 30-40 entities from government and civil society institutions and is set to run for 100 days across 27 governorates, aiming to provide services to citizens that focus on investing in human development (watch, runtime: 8:31).

Ala Mas’ouleety also shared comments attributed to Education Minister Mohamed Abdellatif on the ministry’s stance on private tutoring: Moussa explained that while Abdellatif noted his inability to immediately ban private tutoring, the system will gradually disappear with the establishment of the new educational regime, which will involve providing more teachers in schools, reducing the number of subjects, and limiting the hours of study — making private tutoring no longer necessary (watch, runtime: 2:39).

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