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
1) There is no evidence that the choices are made in racist considerations. If Hawkins was a racist or anti Semite, he would never have visited Israel
2) The nation of Israel is 65 years old. The ancient cultivation you are refereed to ended more than 2000 years ago and was usurped by another.
History proves me right and you wrong.
3) The Principle Allied Powers decided there were no bases for a legal entitlement, so Lord Balfour suggested that some polite words about the “historical connection” of the Jewish people be added to the Mandate instead. The travaux préparatoires of the British Foreign Office Committee that was tasked with drafting the Mandate reveal that the Allies did not consider the historical connection as a basis for any Jewish claim:
“It was agreed that they had no claim, whatever might be done for them on sentimental grounds; further that all that was necessary was to make room for Zionists in Palestine, not that they should turn “it”, that is the whole country, into their home.
– See PRO FO 371/5245, cited in Doreen Ingrams, Palestine Papers 1917-1922: Seeds of Conflict, George Brazziler, 1972, pages 99-100
The General Assembly resolution that you cited not only excluded the bulk of Judea and Samaria from the Jewish state, it prohibited the inhabitants of the Jewish state from obtaining citizenship and moving there:
no Arab residing in the area of the proposed Arab State shall have the right to opt for citizenship in the proposed Jewish State and no Jew residing in the proposed Jewish State shall have the right to opt for citizenship in the proposed Arab State.
— United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, November 29, 1947, Chapter 3: Citizenship, International Conventions and Financial Obligations
“Israel does not occupy any territory other than that which is its own lawful possession.”
False. UNSC242 states clearly that territory occupied by Israel during he 1967 war was inadmissible under international law.
Not even Israel claims it is in lawful possession of the territory but that it is disputed – and even then, Israel is the only state out of 195 at the UN that refers to them as disputed as opposed to occupied.
Andre De Angelis
“Iranians are oppressed and terrorized by this oppressive tyrannical regime.”
False. Iranian live under the leadership of their chosing. It’s up to some yuppie sitting in California smoking weed to decide what is best for Iranians – especially someone who thinks that bombing Iranians is for their own good. California
Andre De Angelis
“I am sad and disappointed.”
I can imagine. This must come as a blow to your Islamophobic campaign to target muslims
Andre De Angelis
“Why didn’t he boycott Iran or China”
There are already sanctions on Iran.
“Maybe he somehow went to China in 2006 without reading a 2008 UN report.”
Maybe you didn’t read last year’s UN Report on the occupied territories.
Andre De Angelis
“shame on him for visiting iran whose regime has committed atrocities against its own people in iran and abroad.”
And to be consistent, shame on him for visiting Israel whose regime has committed atrocities against the native people of Palestine and abroad.