Israeli engineer disqualified from hackathon event: "Participants carry pagers"

Israeli software engineer Adam Levy was disqualified from a hackathon in San Francisco after the event organizer linked his service in Unit 8200 to the pager explosion operation in Lebanon. The organizer cited 'security reasons' and fear that participants' electronic devices would explode. The event was removed from the Tech Week calendar.

Israeli software engineer Adam Levy, who served four years in Unit 8200, was disqualified from participating in a hackathon in San Francisco. The event organizer, Mustafa Banhanda, justified the disqualification by stating that hackathon participants carry pagers, smartphones, and laptops, and expressed concern that the IDF would cause them to explode, referencing the operation that detonated pagers and communication devices of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Banhanda used the derogatory term "IGF" (Israel Genocide Forces) to describe the IDF. Levy published the correspondence on X, and within hours it garnered over 460,000 views. In response, the event was removed from the official Tech Week calendar due to "violation of terms of use," though it is unclear if the hackathon itself was canceled. Banhanda invited Levy to the next hackathon in Tel Aviv.