If You’re Still Freaking Out About the Israeli Beeper Operation, You’re Telling On Yourself

Not long ago, it was the revolutionary socialist left and sundry other skeptics of the Western liberal covenant who dissolved into apoplectic puddles whenever anyone was gauche enough to celebrate the Israeli pager operation that targeted Hezbollah fighters and operatives.

It was, for example, a display of “shameless depravity,” according to the World Socialist Web Site’s Landon Gourov, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented Senator John Fetterman with a silver-plated beeper commemorating the operation. Indeed, “the gift-exchange bears resemblance to events at the Buchenwald concentration camp during World War II.” Gourov saw no distinction between the Israeli leader’s swagger and Nazi SS officers’ fetishizing the vivisected remains of the Jews they’d tortured and murdered.

About the Author

Noah Rothman

Noah Rothman is a senior writer at National Review. His third book, Blood and Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence, was published by Hachette in May 2026.

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Not long ago, it was the revolutionary socialist left and sundry other skeptics of the Western liberal covenant who dissolved into apoplectic puddles whenever anyone was gauche enough to celebrate the Israeli pager operation that targeted Hezbollah fighters and operatives.

It was, for example, a display of “shameless depravity,” according to the World Socialist Web Site’s Landon Gourov, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented Senator John Fetterman with a silver-plated beeper commemorating the operation. Indeed, “the gift-exchange bears resemblance to events at the Buchenwald concentration camp during World War II.” Gourov saw no distinction between the Israeli leader’s swagger and Nazi SS officers’ fetishizing the vivisected remains of the Jews they’d tortured and murdered.

About the Author

Noah Rothman

Noah Rothman is a senior writer at National Review. His third book, Blood and Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence, was published by Hachette in May 2026.