ByNathan Jeffay, Nathan Jeffay
A new app is promising to boost to the campaign to counter the boycott of Israel by providing information on products originating from the Jewish state.
The app is called Am Yisrael Buy, a play on the phrase "am Yisrael chai", which means "the Jewish People lives".
As its name indicates, the interface aims to get Jews in the diaspora buying Israeli produce to counter the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign.
It was created by Daniel Cohen, rabbi of Temple Sharey Tefilo-Israel in South Orange, New Jersey, and works on most mobile platforms including iPhone.
But how does Rabbi Cohen's app square up to the technology being used by those leading the boycott? Unfortunately, it is disappointing.
Devoted Israel boycotters have various apps at their disposal, but probably make most use of Buycott, an app that was not specifically developed for their cause.
Buycott turns a phone into a barcode scanner that checks whether a product offends a shopper's beliefs and then tells the user whether or not they should drop it in disgust.
The app can be programmed to detect whether the product "conflicts" with any "campaigns" a shopper is engaged in, whether related to animal welfare, the environment - or Israel.
By contrast, Am Yisrael Buy's shopping information consists of decidedly low-tech lists of companies and products, without even featuring a search facility.
The contrast in app quality raises a basic question. Why are Israel supporters slaving away on app design and not just downloading the whole digital arsenal of the anti-Israel campaign - much of which tells you where Israeli products are to be found, not only when you have stumbled on one, as in the case of Buycott - and using it to buy the very products that its activists are rejecting?