"Counting coup" is an old Plains Indian custom, broadly describing any act of winning prestige against an enemy in battle. One of the greatest coups one could get was to actually touch an enemy in battle and escape unharmed; the enemy didn't have to be killed or injured; in fact, the prestige was greater if the one counting the coup left the enemy unharmed and escaped unscathed.

Israel gained an enormous amount of prestige in their battle with Hamas and Hezbollah with last year's loaded pager/walkie-talkie operation, which had the goblins looking at their personal electronics and seeing grenades. Israel managed to remove a fair number of goblins from the game with this complex and impeccably executed operation, and on his visit to the White House on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gifted President Trump with a gold-plated pager to commemorate the event. (This pager was not built to explode.) 

That, folks, is how you count coup in the modern era.

During their meeting, Netanyahu gifted Trump a golden and a regular pager.

Trump reacted: “That operation against Hezbollah was incredible.”

😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/MnvC5vc8jl

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) February 5, 2025

The original operation, of course, involved Israel arranging for pagers and cellular phones used by Hezbollah terrorists to come with a bonus - batteries laced with the explosive Pentaerythritol tetranitrate, or PETN. This once more demonstrated the old military principle that there is no problem that cannot be solved with a suitable application of high explosives.

Last September, my colleague Mike Miller described the complex operation.

See Related: Bombshell Report: Israel Didn't Hack Hezbollah Pagers — It Made Them As Part of Complex Ruse

Mike wrote:

It has also been widely reported that Mossad, Israel's national intelligence agency, intercepted a large shipment of Hezbollah-bound pagers months ago and rigged them with high explosives.

However, according to a bombshell report by The New York Times on Thursday, Israel didn't intercept and hack the pagers — it manufactured them.

The stunning NYT report alleges that a Hungarian firm that supplied pagers used by Hezbollah was secretly set up by Israeli intelligence agents as part of a wide-scale operation that appeared to culminate this week when the devices exploded. 

In all, the op un-alived at least 20 Hezbollah goblins and wounded as many as 450, and when you consider where most people carry pagers, the nature of those wounds becomes downright unsettling - if you're a Hezbollah terrorist.

This was a great operation, not because of its complexity, although that was certainly impressive.

See Related: 'They Got a Good Price'-Former Mossad Agent Describes Ingenious Exploding Pager Plot

While this operation - and I pointed this out at the time - was successful in taking out a number of terrorist goblins, the real goal was almost certainly psychological. These terrorists depend on pagers and hand-held radios to prevent having their locations tracked and their communications monitored through cellular networks, and now they are realizing that they can't rely on those, either. Looking at your personal devices and wondering if they will explode tends to make goblins maladjusted, and knowing that Mossad has the capacity to plan months, years ahead to make sure pagers and walkie-talkies come with an unhealthy bonus has to make them wonder just what else Mossad might be up to.

It was a brilliant operation, tactically and strategically. And now, months later, President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu have finally met to count that coup, and with a suitable commemoration, at that. Well done.