4 | DECEMBER 12 • 2024 J
N

opinion
Students Boycott Israel at Their Own Peril
A

nti-Israel students 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 2011,
efforts to embargo
Israeli-made food
spread quickly to
other campuses (the
University of Ottawa
in 2014, Swarthmore
College in 2018, Dickinson College
in 2019 and Harvard University
in 2022), but after Oct. 7, 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, for instance,
now demand not only a ban on the
familiar Sabra prohibition but one
on “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, BDS,
protesting students and faculty
members alike to prove that they

aren’t the pikers, 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 Pecksniffian pretenders to
put their futures where their mouths
are and abandon entirely anything
with the taint 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.
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 before
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.
Assiduously avoiding all Israeli
medical technology may lead to
unnecessary discomfort or worse.
For instance, the “Pillcam,” invented
in Israel, has led to the “capsule
endoscopy,” in which a patient
swallows a pill-sized wireless digital
camera that transmits images as
it travels from entrance to exit.
Adhering to their anti-Israel ethos
will require committed protesters
to endure some far larger and more
intrusive cameras should their
physicians ever need a look at their
entire digestive system.
Many of them seem heartless,
too, but those who one day need
heart surgery will have to forgo
the flexible stent invented by 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

PHOTO BY CARIN M. SMILK.

PURELY COMMENTARY

continued on page 7

An anti-Israel protest
at New York University
on May 3, 2024.

A.J.
Caschetta
JNS.org