4 | DECEMBER 12 • 2024 J
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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

