‘I’ve forgotten how a normal person sees’: Survivor of Israel’s pager attack talks to RT (VIDEO)
A Lebanese woman left with life-changing injuries in Israel’s 2024 pager attack has told RT how she is adapting to her new reality two years after the incident.
On September 17, 2024, thousands of pagers used primarily by Hezbollah members exploded across Lebanon, followed by hundreds of walkie-talkie detonations the next day. The attacks killed dozens and injured thousands. Israel later acknowledged responsibility for the operation.
Zeinab Mistrah, who survived one of the explosions, told RT correspondent Steve Sweeney on Friday that she was not carrying a pager but that one detonated nearby. She lost her left eye, was left with only 10% vision in her right eye, and lost the tips of three fingers on her right hand.
“I’ve actually forgotten how a normal person sees things,” she said. “I simply view the world this way now.”
Before the blast, Mistrah had studied interior design and was preparing to marry. She said her injuries transformed her daily life, making even routine tasks difficult.
More than a year later, while three-and-a-half months pregnant, Mistrah was injured again when an Israeli missile struck the building where she was sleeping. She said the strike targeted someone below her apartment and left her with a serious back injury that confined her to bed for an extended period.
Mistrah accused Israel of disregarding the danger the pager operation posed to civilians and others nearby. “That is when you realize just how hostile Israel is towards humanity,” she told RT, while also criticizing Washington’s support for Israel. “They didn’t think about whether a pager might be near children or women.”
The pager explosions came after nearly a year of cross-border fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and were followed by an intensified Israeli military campaign in Lebanon. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut later that month, before Israeli forces launched ground incursions into southern Lebanon.
Fighting flared again in March 2026, when Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel following the outbreak of the US-Israeli war on Iran. A US-brokered ceasefire in June largely halted the hostilities, although Israeli strikes and military activity in southern Lebanon have continued. More than 4,000 people have been killed and over 12,000 wounded in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since March, according to the country’s Health Ministry.
Watch Steve Sweeney’s full report from Beirut.
