So boycott Israel, already.

This article by Charles Moore is absolutely superb and I recommend you read it, but what I really want to draw attention to here is yet another brilliant but anonymous comment — The Telegraph don't provide links to comments, so you'll need to scroll down manually (how Twencen!): it was posted by "me" on June 5 at 7:56PM:

There are many ways you can make a personal sacrifice with your anti-Israel boycott.

Most of Windows operating systems were developed by Microsoft-Israel. So set a personal example. Throw away your computer!

The Pentium NMX Chip technology was designed at Intel in Israel. Both the Pentium 4 microprocessor and the Centrium processor were entirely designed, developed and produced in Israel.

Voice mail technology was developed in Israel.

The technology for the AOL Instant Messenger ICQ was developed in 1996 in Israel by four young Israeli whiz kids.

Both Microsoft and Cisco built their only R & D facilities outside the U.S. in Israel.

So due to your complete boycott of anything Israeli, you now have poor health and no computer. But your bad news does not end there. Get rid of your cellular phone! Cell phone technology was also developed in Israel by Motorola, which has its biggest development center in Israel. Most of the latest technology in your mobile phone was developed by Israeli scientists.

Feeling unsettled? You should be. Part of your personal security rests with Israeli inventiveness, borne out of our urgent necessity to protect and defend our lives from the terrorists you support.

A phone can remotely activate a bomb, or be used for tactical communications by terrorists, bank robbers or hostage-takers. It is vital that official security and law enforcement authorities have access to cellular jamming and detection solutions. Enter Israelís Netline Communications Technologies with their security expertise to help the fight against terror.

A joint, non-profit, venture between Israel and Maryland will result in a five-day Business Development and Planning Conference next March. Selected Israeli companies will partner with Maryland firms to provide innovation to the U.S. need for homeland security.

Quite.

I'd love the UK's academics and trades union members to demand a ban on mobile phones and personal computers and to insist that our police refuse to use Israeli technology when defusing bombs — it's always nice to know where people stand — but, like so many of these things, it's just a puerile stance for the self-righteous to adopt. They wouldn't dream of making any genuine sacrifice for their cause.

I am reminded of sitting in a student council meeting at university. I wasn't a member, but was there now and then in order to get things done. Like most students' unions, ours banned all Nestle products, which I'm sure was a great worry to Nestle. Nestle, you see, sell baby milk formula in the Third World, and a lot of Third-World countries have a lot of different languages. All Nestle's baby formula packaging has the usual blurb that breast-feeding is better for your baby than bottled formula, but that blurb isn't always in every single language spoken in a given country. And some of the formula is given away free to new mothers, some of whom can't or don't read the packaging and so don't breast-feed, and then cannot afford to buy the stuff once the free supply runs out. Apparently, this is so unutterably evil that no British left-winger has bought a Fruit Pastille for about twenty years now.

Meanwhile, emphysema and other diseases caused by smoking are now killing two-thousand people a day in China and are predicted to wipe out a third of China's population. Tobacco firms invest heavily in China. When you buy a packet of cigarettes, you are contributing directly to the massive marketing budget that has succeeded in creating what is likely to become the greatest cause of death in China's history.

So, as I was saying, this anti-Israel boycott reminds me of sitting in a student council meeting, surrounded by chain-smokers earnestly discussing the terrible controversy of the Union's shop having accidentally sold a couple of Walnut Whips.