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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.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
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