So why did Stephen Hawking think it was ok to visit Iran and China?

Brexit & Foreign Policy

Is Israel uniquely bad, or has hypocrisy towards the Jewish state become so widely accepted among some progressives that even an eminent scholar like Hawking is susceptible to hypocritical and lazy double standards?

After a great deal of confusing reports, it was confirmed yesterday that physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking has pulled out of a conference in Israel next month after being lobbied by pro-Palestinian campaigners.

Initially some had claimed his decision to pull out of the conference was due to ill health, but a statement published by the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine with Hawking’s approval cleared the matter up.

“This is his independent decision to respect the boycott, based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there.”

So “respect for the boycott” was a humanitarian gesture, then?

Ok. But why did professor Hawking see fit to visit Iran in 2007 for a conference? As far as I am aware, there was no statement at the time from Hawking refusing to travel to the Islamic Republic out of “respect” for the country’s political dissidents, or until the government stopped executing homosexuals.

A year earlier, in 2006, Stephen Hawking visited China, whose government is responsible for large scale human rights abuses in Tibet. Tibet is, as Human Rights Watch noted several years before his visit, “a place where some of the most visible and egregious human rights violations committed by the Chinese state have occurred”. A 2008 UN report found that the use of torture in Tibet was “widespread” and “routine”.

There’s no need to be an apologist for the Israeli occupation of the West Bank to question where professor Hawking’s moral compass was when he chose to visit these two serial human rights abusers – and ask why it has suddenly appeared when the country in question is Israel.

Is Israel uniquely bad, or has hypocrisy towards the Jewish state become so widely accepted among some progressives that even an eminent scholar like Hawking is susceptible to hypocritical and lazy double standards?

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346 Responses to “So why did Stephen Hawking think it was ok to visit Iran and China?”

  1. thomtownsend

    I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about..really not sure what your example is about.

  2. JarekAF

    It’s boycotting institutions. Not people. I don’t think BDS during Apartheid South Africa was undermined by the ongoing Genocide in Cambodia.

    Israel is a democracy is it not? It can be influenced by public opinion. Iran is already subject to sanctions including boycotts! And China . . . well . . . they’re a super power. You can’t exactly force them to reform.

  3. thomtownsend

    I think we would disagree on whether or not those choices are moral, so, yes, I’m happy to argue in favour of something that you find moral reprehensible. That’s somewhat the nature of opinion isn’t it?

  4. Ginger Beer

    Hmm – ok, so why do the gibbering BDSniks picket performances by Israeli artists? What “institutions” do they represent?

    And again, you’re making the argument that you should only take action against democracies while leaving far worse human rights abusers well alone.

  5. JarekAF

    you should only take action against democracies while leaving far worse human rights abusers well alone.

    Did you miss the part where Iran is already subject to sanctions and boycotts?

    Is that really the argument you want to hang your hat on? Yes, they’re bad, but they’re not as bad as Kim Jong Un; thus any critique of Israel is hypocritical because you’re not criticizing Kim Jong Un.

    I guess we were wrong to protest South Africa. We should’ve only focused on genocide in Cambodia and the Occupation of East Timor.

    I’ll get this out of the way. Re: Resistance. I believe any acts of violence committed in the name of resistance is wrong and should be condemned.

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