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?”
Ginger Beer
Well by that standard so is every country in the world. But you keep on obsessing about Israel. I know damn well what it stems from – either knee-jerk anti-Americanism or antisemitism. Which is it in your case?
ryhope1
The “why Israel?” response was bound to follow Prof Hawking’s very brave and commendable decision, just like the “antisemitism” slur is reflexively deployed against even those Jews who dare to utter the mildest criticism of Israel’s atrocities. But the good thing is that as evidenced by the comments on this site, these shameless attempts to stifle criticism no longer work.
As for the vile personal attacks on him, let them remain as an odious testament to the utter foulness of the ideology that informs Zionism.
In regard to the “why Israel?” question, the simple answer is that unlike Israel, neither China nor Iran (nor indeed, North Korea, or Saudi Arabia, if you like) has ever sought to remind the world about its “democratic” values. Indeed, if anything, these countries have consistently reminded the West that their values are not the same. By contrast, Israel never stops reminding us all that it is “the only democracy in the Middle-East.” Well, if you make it your duty to highlight your “democratic” values, that gives us the right to hold you to those same values. You are either guided by democratic values or you aren’t; you can’t claim to be a democracy but wish to be judged by Chinese or North Korean standards.
Andre De Angelis
Israel has the most powerful lobbies in the world operating in the US and Britain.
Are you suggesting that he didn’t hear Israel’s side of the argument?
Andre De Angelis
>> Well by that standard so is every country in the world.
South Africa used to use that argument to deflect criticism of apartheid too. Everyone else is doing it, so why pick on us?
Charles Manson should have used that as his defense.
Andre De Angelis
No, it’s about targeting institution that benefit from violating the 4th Geneva Conventions on Human Rights. Mind you, your augment sounds like the defense of someone who commits patricide and then demands leniency on the grounds he/she is an orphan.
The foul rancid smell is that of colonialism.