What drove Israel to carry out one of the most extraordinary intelligence operations in modern warfare? At the Los Angeles premiere of "Paging Hezbollah," director Justin Folk, executive producer Brad Parscale, producer Kirby Williamson and Israeli reservist Rotem Avni discussed the escalating conflict with Hezbollah, the human toll of Iran-backed militancy and the circumstances that preceded the exploding pagers.
For nearly a year before Israel’s September 2024 pager operation, communities along the country’s northern border had been living under Hezbollah fire. The Iran-backed Lebanese organization began launching rockets and missiles toward Israel on October 8, 2023, the day after Hamas’s attack from Gaza. Roughly 60,000 Israelis and 95,000 Lebanese were displaced during the ensuing border conflict, according to a Congressional Research Service account.
minute documentary, released in U.S. theaters October 30. The film reconstructs Israel’s extraordinary September 17–18, 2024 intelligence operation, when explosives concealed inside pagers and handheld radios used by Hezbollah were detonated across Lebanon. Through interviews with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Mossad director David Barnea and others, the documentary examines how the operation was conceived, secretly prepared and executed, and why Israeli leaders considered it a turning point in the war.
At the October 26 Beverly Hills premiere, JooTube.TV spoke with the filmmakers and recorded the post-screening discussion. What emerged was an argument extending beyond Israel’s military ingenuity: that the conflict cannot be understood solely through images of Israeli firepower or Lebanese casualties, without also examining the organization Israel was confronting and the regional consequences of its actions.
The conflict beyond Israel’s borders
Iran helped build Hezbollah into a heavily armed Islamist organization whose 1985 founding manifesto called for Israel’s destruction. Armed, trained and financed by Tehran, Hezbollah became a powerful military and political force within Lebanon, launching attacks against Israel while extending its influence throughout the region. During Syria’s civil war, Hezbollah deployed fighters to help preserve Bashar al-Assad’s government, intervening in battles that devastated communities and displaced civilians. Its operations made Hezbollah far more than a threat to Israel’s northern border: the organization became a central instrument of Iranian power in the Levant. These developments are documented by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Carnegie Endowment.
Photo: Tasnim News Agency / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 4.0.
Photo: Tasnim News Agency / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 4.0.
For northern Israelis, the threat was anything but abstract. In Kiryat Shmona, Metula and smaller border communities, months of rocket, drone and anti-tank-missile attacks drove families from their homes, interrupted schooling and work, damaged houses and farms, and even sparked wildfires. Reuters followed displaced residents who did not know when they could safely return.
Photograph: Alexander Khanin / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0.
The danger extended beyond Jewish towns. On July 27, 2024, a rocket struck a soccer field in the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, killing 12 children and teenagers. The United States and Israel blamed Hezbollah; the organization denied responsibility.
Photograph: Nizzan Cohen / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 4.0.
Photograph: الرجل من مجدل / Wikimedia Commons · CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication).
Israel also warned that Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force was preparing something worse than continued shelling: a cross-border assault aimed at seizing communities in the Galilee. Israeli officers described a plan to capture northern towns and kill or abduct residents, and reported discovering weapons and infrastructure near the border. The reported “Conquer the Galilee” plan was not carried out, but the threat of an incursion compounded the fear of another October 7.
Across the border, Lebanese civilians suffered from a war many had not chosen. In the predominantly Christian village of Rmeish, residents told Reuters they had confronted armed men attempting to launch rockets from their village. They feared that launches near their homes would invite retaliation and drive them permanently from the area. Lebanese Shiite families, too, were uprooted by the escalating Israel-Hezbollah conflict. In Syria, Hezbollah’s military support for Bashar al-Assad’s government carried another civilian cost: a Human Rights Watch investigation described the siege of al-Qusayr, while a United Nations inquiry documented the part government forces and Hezbollah played in besieging Madaya, where civilians faced severe hunger and blocked humanitarian supplies.
These conflicts formed part of a wider regional confrontation involving Iran-backed armed movements. Hamas fought Israel from Gaza, Hezbollah attacked from Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen launched missiles and drones toward Israel while also striking Red Sea shipping; Iran-aligned militias in Iraq and Syria added other fronts. Calling this a three-front war captures three prominent directions of attack, though the network extended beyond three and its members were not necessarily taking every order from Tehran. The Congressional Research Service describes both Iran’s support and the groups’ varying degrees of independence. Hezbollah’s own foundational ideology, as summarized by the Council on Foreign Relations, explicitly envisioned Israel’s destruction.
Photograph: Frode Bjorshol / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0.
That is the larger danger the film’s makers want viewers to consider: not an Israeli army confronting a single defenseless population, but overlapping struggles involving armed organizations, neighboring states and civilians of many faiths. It is also why the civilian casualties of Israeli operations matter and should be reported accurately. A broader account of Hezbollah’s conduct does not mean every person harmed in Lebanon was a combatant, or that every Israeli action was lawful.
Watch the Paging Hezbollah trailer
Before the premiere interviews and post-screening discussion, watch the documentary’s trailer.
Trailer for Paging Hezbollah. Watch on YouTube.
The day the reservists felt hope again
Rotem Avni, an Israeli reservist and co-producer, supplied one of the clearest firsthand accounts of the pager operation’s psychological impact. He told the premiere audience that after nearly a year of war and exhausting reserve deployments, the explosions brought shock, followed by hope and pride. When Hezbollah’s walkie-talkies exploded the next day, he recalled a sense that Israel was regaining its footing.
The personal cost had not disappeared. Avni, an independent business owner, said he was recalled shortly after finishing another round of service. Israelis, he explained, often live two parallel lives: civilian work and family life on one side, reserve duty on the other.
Rotem Avni describes the operation’s impact on morale and the disruption of reserve service. Edited Panel 1: 2:18–4:17.
What made Parscale want to tell the story
Executive producer Brad Parscale had been near the Gaza border just weeks before the October 7, 2023 attacks. He told JooTube.TV that people he met there were subsequently killed. Afterward, he became more engaged in what he called the communications fight over Israel.
The pager operation raised another question for Parscale, who had worked in politics and government: how could a plan requiring years of preparation and secrecy come together without being exposed? He began sketching the idea for a documentary, discussed it with his friend David Keyes, a Los Angeles-born Israeli-American and former Netanyahu spokesman, and sought investors. Parscale says Keyes suggested the title Paging Hezbollah.
But Parscale wanted more than the mechanics of espionage. He said the film also had to convey the "ring of fire" around Israel: the sense of living within range of hostile armed organizations and the pressure that creates for ordinary people.
Parscale explains the film’s origins and its larger historical purpose. This embed plays the complete published interview; original transcript cues: 5:31–7:23, but the public video was shortened.
Folk’s challenge: telling Israel’s side of the conflict
Director Justin Folk said he had long been drawn to Israel’s ancient history and modern struggle to survive. A Christian who studies the Hebrew Bible, he describes his religious connection to the country as an important part of why he undertook the film.
Folk said Netanyahu, Mossad and the Israel Defense Forces cooperated with the production, while maintaining that officials did not dictate its content. His larger argument was about perception: Israel had learned to fight what he called the kinetic war, but had not been as effective at explaining itself through Western media.
The filmmakers’ ambition, in that telling, is to counter the image of Israel as a powerful aggressor fighting a helpless population by giving audiences more context about Hezbollah’s ideology, armaments, attacks and regional role. That is an argument made by the filmmakers, not a conclusion viewers are obliged to accept.
Kirby Williamson: the civilians behind the headlines
Producer Kirby Williamson, meanwhile, argued that Western news coverage gives insufficient attention to Islamist militancy, including attacks on Christians in parts of Africa. Those conflicts are not all Hezbollah’s doing, but she sees them as part of a wider problem that audiences should understand.
Her most affecting examples were personal. Williamson recalled an Israeli tank commander who could see his own home from his position near the border, with his wife and children nearby. Later she described an Israeli mother holding a baby and imagining a Lebanese mother who also brushes her children’s teeth and longs for peace. Williamson was not certain the latter scene remained in the final film, but its meaning had stayed with her.
For Williamson, concern about Hezbollah and Hamas need not mean indifference to Lebanese or Palestinian civilians. Her point was that ordinary families on opposite sides of a border may desire much the same things, even while armed groups pursue very different aims.
Williamson discusses a tank commander’s family and the shared hopes of Israeli and Lebanese mothers. Edited interview: 3:01–5:23.
The uncomfortable images, and the larger story
The explosions that make the documentary’s subject so extraordinary also took place in shops, homes and other civilian settings. Children and medical personnel were among those killed or injured, and human-rights investigators have raised serious questions about the legality of the operation. Human Rights Watch documented those consequences. They should not be erased in telling the story of Israel’s intelligence success.
Nor should the images of the explosions erase the history of Hezbollah’s attacks, its armed power within Lebanon or its intervention in Syria. The people interviewed at the premiere offered perspectives on a conflict whose stakes cannot be reduced to one set of images: Avni described renewed morale, Parscale remembered acquaintances killed after October 7, Folk explained the need for historical context, and Williamson spoke about families who want to live without war.
Paging Hezbollah gives audiences the filmmakers’ account of how the operation was planned and why they regard it as consequential. Readers can see the documentary and evaluate that account for themselves.
Where to see Paging Hezbollah in U.S. theaters
Selected theaters as of November 8, 2026: These are confirmed examples in major metropolitan areas, not a complete nationwide listing. Showtimes and engagements can change. Select a theater for its schedule, or use the film's live ticket finder to search any U.S. city.
- Los Angeles area: Regal Edwards Long Beach (Long Beach); Regal Simi Valley Civic Center & IMAX (Simi Valley)
- Chicago / Northwest Indiana: AMC Schererville 16 (875 Deer Creek Drive, Schererville, Indiana)
- New York City: Kent Theater (Brooklyn; special engagement Nov. 13–19)
- Long Island, New York: AMC DINE-IN Huntington Square 12 (East Northport)
- Washington, D.C. / Northern Virginia: Phoenix Theatres Village 14 + PTX (Village at Leesburg, Leesburg, Virginia; formerly CMX Village 14)
- Miami / Fort Lauderdale area: AMC Aventura 24 (Aventura); Cinemark Paradise 24 and XD (Davie)
- Atlanta area: GTC Merchants Walk Cinemas (Marietta)
- Dallas area: Cinemark Legacy & XD (Plano)
- Phoenix / Scottsdale, Arizona: RoadHouse Cinemas Scottsdale (Scottsdale)
- Las Vegas: Regal Red Rock (Las Vegas)
- Nashville area: AMC DINE-IN Thoroughbred 20 (Franklin)
- Jacksonville: Regal Avenues 4DX & RPX (Jacksonville)
Find current showtimes and tickets in your city at the official Paging Hezbollah ticket site.
Note: A city not listed here may still have a screening. This guide is a November 8 snapshot; check the official finder for current availability.
Paging Hezbollah opened in U.S. theaters October 30, 2026.
Reporting and sources: JooTube.TV interviews and premiere panel, October 26, 2026; Congressional Research Service; CSIS; Carnegie Endowment; Human Rights Watch; film credits and release information.
