> In these cases often optics matter more than facts. Using something common that has some israelian authors? Probably fine. Personally accepting a contribution from someone with a very israelian sounding name? Possibly treason, I would want to take chances.

What do you think is going to happen to that story relayed on hackernews and reddit? This developer by doing so has made himself a target of the Iranian governement already which is going to check how much "Israeli code" this developer relies on, just by looking at the composer.json dependency file. What chances are you talking about again?

I don't think he has anticipated this and I think he is probably panicking right now. I would be. Even though this got attention because he tried to comply, getting any government attention for any reason is not a good idea in such situatios.