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Will Pro-Palestinian Boycott Mobs Abandon Their iPhones and Other Devices?

An Apple iPhone. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Anti-Israel student protesters have always sought convenient, effortless ways to demonstrate their hatred for Israel.

In the past, this has meant trying to remove Sabra brand hummus from campus food services. Starting at DePaul University in 2010, efforts to embargo the Israeli-made food spread quickly to other campuses (University of Ottowa in 2014, Swarthmore College in 2018, Dickinson College in 2019, and Harvard University in 2022), but after October 7, 2023, student boycott demands grew more expansive.

It’s no longer enough to change brands of hummus. Today’s students want to ban everything from Israel.

Graduate Students at the City University of New York (CUNY), for instance, now demand not only the familiar Sabra prohibition but also a ban of “all fruits and vegetables grown in Israel.” And their list doesn’t end with food. They also demand that the entire CUNY system “cancel all forms of cooperation with Israeli academic institutions, including events, activities, agreements, and research collaborations.”

What goes unsaid here is that not a single student will ever actually live up to these demands. The rhetorical flourishes are purely for show.

If the thousands of college students calling for a boycott of all things Israel want to live up to their sanctimonious rhetoric, they will have to give up a lot more than one brand of hummus. And they will end up sick, hungry, and underemployed.

I call on all anti-Israel, pro-BDS students and faculty members alike to prove that they aren’t the posers and half-milers I say they are by following through on their categorical rejection of any contact with, use of, or compliance with, any and all Israeli technologies, companies, products, ideas, and universities.

I dare these pretenders to put their futures where their mouths are, and abandon entirely anything with the State of Israel.

It won’t be easy.

Let’s start with their cell phones. Israeli technology is central to the iPhone platform, so Apple phones are out. Unfortunately they can’t just switch to Samsung. They’ll have to give up their digital umbilical cords altogether because the cell phone was invented in 1973 by Motorola’s Israeli Research and Development Department.

And it’s not just cell phones they will have to shun. Israeli technology is integral to many modern conveniences that college students rely on. If they want to live up to their anti-Israel commitment, they will have to stop using USB ports (an Israeli invention), thumb drives (an Israeli invention) and firewalls (another Israeli invention). Writing term papers, theses, and dissertations without computers worked for centuries. They’ll adapt.

If today’s protesters ever find gainful employment outside of a few select cities, they will need a car, but they’ll have to boycott all models with cameras pointing outward. An Israeli invention called the Mobileye has been warning of obstacles and keeping drivers in their lanes for years. Mirrors work too, as committed protesters will learn.

“No fruits or vegetables from Israel,” say the CUNY student protesters. Will they also eschew all fruits and vegetables grown with Israeli technology?

Israel invented drip irrigation, which is used in almost all modern agricultural enterprises. After researching which fruits and vegetables were not grown with drip irrigation, anti-Israel protesters might find it easier just to give up fruits and vegetables. Or maybe they’ll grow their own (an unlikely scenario in New York City).

Will they boycott life-saving drugs and research developed by Israel? Multiple sclerosis is treated with a drug called Copaxone, developed at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.

It may soon be impossible to avoid Israeli NaNose technology and the “Sniff-Phone” which smells diseases before they are manifested, allowing for preventative therapies prior to the onset of symptoms. Committed Israel boycotters will have to shun this technology in favor of the old ways of detecting diseases — often when they are too advanced to treat effectively.

Many of them seem heartless too, but those who one day need heart surgery will have to forgo the flexible stent, invented at an Israeli company called Medinol. The NIR stent or EluNIR™ has become standard since its invention in 1996. Protesters who shun all things Israel might be able to find some third-world clinic willing to use the rigid stents of an earlier era. I wish them luck.

I suspect that most of the anti-Israel protests are led by faculty and students in the humanities and social sciences, where anti-Israel virtue signaling is de rigueur and comes with few repercussions. Students in other areas of specialization, however, will have to make debilitating career challenges to live up to their performative rhetoric.

Israel has the greatest number of tech companies outside of Silicon Valley, but its influence on the field extends far beyond Israel. The recent Miami Tech and Invest Conference showed the extent to which Israeli companies are “transforming Miami into a global tech hub.” Any student of computer science or software engineering, as well as any budding tech entrepreneur, will suffer greatly by boycotting all things Israel.

STEM students who refuse to work with Israeli technologies, scientists, and universities will sabotage their careers. They will likely wind up at the bottom of their professions — far from important research and Nobel Prize winners. Israeli universities and research companies are responsible for many breakthroughs in detecting and treating cancer, and Israelis have dominated the Nobel Prize in chemistry for most of the 20th century.

Naturally, none of the student demands should be taken seriously. In America today, no one virtue signals like a college student. Their hunger strikes begin after breakfast and end at lunch — so too do their demands end the moment they sign a resolution or shout in front of the camera.

Of course, I would love for just one anti-Israel, BDS, boycotting/divesting protester to prove me wrong and truly refrain from using or benefitting from anything derived from Israeli ingenuity. Write me, using pen and paper of course, and tell me how it’s going.

Chief Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) Political Correspondent A.J. Caschetta is a principal lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a fellow at Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum where he is also a Milstein fellow. A version of this article originally appeared at IPT.

The post Will Pro-Palestinian Boycott Mobs Abandon Their iPhones and Other Devices? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Israel Says Missile Launched by Yemen’s Houthis ‘Most Likely’ Intercepted

Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi addresses followers via a video link at the al-Shaab Mosque, formerly al-Saleh Mosque, in Sanaa, Yemen, Feb. 6, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

The Israeli army said on Saturday that a missile fired from Yemen towards Israeli territory had been “most likely successfully intercepted,” while Yemen’s Houthi forces claimed responsibility for the launch.

Israel has threatened Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement – which has been attacking Israel in what it says is solidarity with Gaza – with a naval and air blockade if its attacks on Israel persist.

The Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said the group was responsible for Saturday’s attack, adding that it fired a missile towards the southern Israeli city of Beersheba.

Since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza in October 2023, the Houthis, who control most of Yemen, have been firing at Israel and at shipping in the Red Sea, disrupting global trade.

Most of the dozens of missiles and drones they have launched have been intercepted or fallen short. Israel has carried out a series of retaliatory strikes.

The post Israel Says Missile Launched by Yemen’s Houthis ‘Most Likely’ Intercepted first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Iran Holds Funeral for Commanders and Scientists Killed in War with Israel

People attend the funeral procession of Iranian military commanders, nuclear scientists and others killed in Israeli strikes, in Tehran, Iran, June 28, 2025. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

Large crowds of mourners dressed in black lined streets in Iran’s capital Tehran as the country held a funeral on Saturday for top military commanders, nuclear scientists and some of the civilians killed during this month’s aerial war with Israel.

At least 16 scientists and 10 senior commanders were among those mourned at the funeral, according to state media, including armed forces chief Major General Mohammad Bagheri, Revolutionary Guards commander General Hossein Salami, and Guards Aerospace Force chief General Amir Ali Hajizadeh.

Their coffins were driven into Tehran’s Azadi Square adorned with their photos and national flags, as crowds waved flags and some reached out to touch the caskets and throw rose petals onto them. State-run Press TV showed an image of ballistic missiles on display.

Mass prayers were later held in the square.

State TV said the funeral, dubbed the “procession of the Martyrs of Power,” was held for a total of 60 people killed in the war, including four women and four children.

In attendance were President Masoud Pezeshkian and other senior figures including Ali Shamkhani, who was seriously wounded during the conflict and is an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as Khamenei’s son Mojtaba.

“Today, Iranians, through heroic resistance against two regimes armed with nuclear weapons, protected their honor and dignity, and look to the future prouder, more dignified, and more resolute than ever,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, who also attended the funeral, said in a Telegram post.

There was no immediate statement from Khamenei, who has not appeared publicly since the conflict began. In past funerals, he led prayers over the coffins of senior commanders ahead of public ceremonies broadcast on state television.

Israel launched the air war on June 13, attacking Iranian nuclear facilities and killing top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.

Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

TRUMP THREAT

Israel, the only Middle Eastern country widely believed to have nuclear weapons, said it aimed to prevent Tehran from developing its own nuclear weapons.

Iran denies having a nuclear weapons program. The U.N. nuclear watchdog has said it has “no credible indication” of an active, coordinated weapons program in Iran.

Bagheri, Salami and Hajizadeh were killed on June 13, the first day of the war. Bagheri was being buried at the Behesht Zahra cemetery outside Tehran mid-afternoon on Saturday. Salami and Hajizadeh were due to be buried on Sunday.

US President Donald Trump said on Friday that he would consider bombing Iran again, while Khamenei, who has appeared in two pre-recorded video messages since the start of the war, has said Iran would respond to any future US attack by striking US military bases in the Middle East.

A senior Israeli military official said on Friday that Israel had delivered a “major blow” to Iran’s nuclear project. On Saturday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in a statement that Israel and the US “failed to achieve their stated objectives” in the war.

According to Iranian health ministry figures, 610 people were killed on the Iranian side in the war before a ceasefire went into effect on Tuesday. More than 4,700 were injured.

Activist news agency HRANA put the number of killed at 974, including 387 civilians.

Israel’s health ministry said 28 were killed in Israel and 3,238 injured.

The post Iran Holds Funeral for Commanders and Scientists Killed in War with Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Pro-Palestinian Rapper Leads ‘Death to the IDF’ Chant at English Music festival

Revellers dance as Avril Lavigne performs on the Other Stage during the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm, in Pilton, Somerset, Britain, June 30, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Dylan Martinez

i24 NewsChants of “death to the IDF” were heard during the English Glastonbury music festival on Saturday ahead of the appearance of the pro-Palestinian Irish rappers Kneecap.

One half of punk duo based Bob Vylan (who both use aliases to protect their privacy) shouted out during a section of their show “Death to the IDF” – the Israeli military. Videos posted on X (formerly Twitter) show the crowd responding to and repeating the cheer.

This comes after officials had petitioned the music festival to drop the band. The rap duo also expressed support for the following act, Kneecap, who the BCC refused to show live after one of its members, Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh – better known by stage name Mo Chara – was charged with a terror offense.

The post Pro-Palestinian Rapper Leads ‘Death to the IDF’ Chant at English Music festival first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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