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?”
Andre De Angelis
Israel is a real human rights abuser
Andre De Angelis
Israeli artists represent Israeli entertainment and arts groups, which are usually government run organizations
Andre De Angelis
Yes the claim that there were 3 offers is BS.
1. In 1948, there was no offer except. The Palestinians were being asked to give up 56% of the land. As Ben Gurion admitted, those who rejected partition were right to do so.
2. Barak wrote an op Ed 2002 that he offered nothing at Camp David.The offer came from Clinton with maps no one has ever seen. Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben Ami said he would have rejected the offer had he been a Palestinian.
FYI. It was Barak that walked out of Taba 6 months later.
3. And Olmert refused to put anything on paper or produce a map and then he couldn’t stick around long enough to follow through with an offer he had no hope delivering.
In any case, Olmert and Livni both said Abbas did not reject the offer.
BTW. Would you sign on for a mortgage without seeing the house?
Ginger Beer
So basically, it IS about targetting individuals for having the temerity to be born in Israel.
This is the foul rancid heart of the BDS movement.
Ginger Beer
I’m saying whatever human rights abuses Israel has been accused of pale into insignificance when placed against real hellholes like China and Iran. But this is a pointless discussion – the BDSniks have absolutely no interest whatsoever in any human rights abuses they don’t think they can pin on Jews. I get it