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?
346 Responses to “So why did Stephen Hawking think it was ok to visit Iran and China?”
thomtownsend
Nope, you’ve completely misunderstood, but hey..these are blog comments, the home of misundersting.
La6Red9Nec
Because the Apartheid regime in Isreal should be boycotted by all decent human beings.
Alex Ross
But I think that the situation is a whole lot messier than that….There are many occupations in the world, many involving serious abuses of human rights against particular populations, but I think it is mistaken to refer to all occupations as Apartheid – as I think that term has a particular, reserved meaning. In the case of Israel, I think that the “apartheid” label rests upon the conceit that the occupation can be explained solely in terms of ethnic supremacy and domination. Without diminishing the fact that such logic is often openly expressed by the Israeli hard-right…that isn’t the only part of the picture and many (if not most) Israelis view the occupation as necessary only in so far as there are still threats to the lives of Israeli civilians. And the fact is that many Palestinians would not be satisfied with an end to the occupation of the WB, but instead view Israel;s very existence in-and-of-itself as an occupation.
I’d certainly agree that occupants of the OTs ought to have a meaningful vote and should not be subject to Israeli dominion…which is why I supported the symbolic bid for Palestinian statehood at the UN…but I also think that such a right is conditional upon Palestinians accepting a just framework of peace in conjunction with Israel. That doesn’t let Israel off the hook BTW in its human rights obligations towards those under its control – or (at least in the short term) its obligation to remove those settlements which are most disruptive of Palestinian day-to-day life.
But removing the occupation itself will only come through direct talks.
Dave Lawrence
The difference is that the people of Palestine have asked for a boycott. Israel has very powerful protectors that allow it to get away with its crimes with no fear of foreign criticism or retaliation. Good for the apron!
DavidBernstein
Are you denying the three offers, and lack of counter-offers?