In 2016, Jewish critics of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump became targets of online anti-Semitic attacks that often took the form of digital images, frequently featuring a humanoid frog in a Nazi uniform. These images—“memes” in Internet lingo—introduced the public to an underground online subculture of jokey neo-Nazism. Gavriel Rosenfeld explains the subculture’s development and its dangers:

Memes are videos, catchphrases, and images that spread and mutate from user to user through social-networking sites. . . . [A]s transgressive, attention-grabbing clickbait became an easy method of attracting eyeballs, a new phenomenon arose: the more popular the web image, the greater its likelihood of being “Hitlerized”—from memes of [characters from the children’s cartoon] Teletubbies with Hitler mustaches to jokey depictions of the Führer himself. I have called this the “law of ironic Hitlerization,” and it is anything but funny. This smirking irony helped to normalize Hitler and Nazism in certain precincts of the Internet.

The insidiousness of this trend is epitomized by the fate of Pepe the Frog. Created by the artist Matt Furie in 2005, the cartoon character was originally a likeable loser who did whatever he felt like (“Feels good, man!” was his slogan). Eventually Pepe became Hitlerized, at first for laughs, then as a coded message or secret handshake, and eventually as the ubiquitous symbol of the alt-right. Among his subtler uses was the mocking phrase, “Green lives matter.” . . .

The transformation of Pepe the Frog from innocuous Internet icon to de-facto swastika highlights the utility of memes for the alt-right. They are the visual counterparts to the idiosyncratic vocabulary and numerology used by the alt-right—for instance, “cucks” for mainstream conservatives and “1488” to signal the fourteen-word white-power pledge together with the salutation “Heil Hitler” (the eighth letter of the alphabet is h). The ostensible irony of these catchphrases provides extremists with plausible deniability. . . .

[In effect], ironic memes are gateway drugs. Various alt-right activists have reported that they were initially attracted to ironic memes as fun ways to troll liberals, and their prolonged exposure eventually led them to become “red-pilled”—in their parlance, “enlightened”—and embrace more overtly anti-Semitic imagery. This explains why some members of the alt-right eventually migrated from Pepe the Frog to “Le Happy Merchant,” a hooked-nosed Jew rubbing his hands together conspiratorially. The image was seen on the 4chan website as early as 2012 and is arguably the most widely used anti-Semitic meme on the web today.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.