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?”
ugluk2
Not very high. Sharon was a pragmatist, but of the immoral variety. He’d have tried to find some solution that would take as much land from the Palestinians as possible, with as few Palestinians as possible. I doubt he’d have ever supported a 2SS on the 67 borders (with minor adjustments acceptable to Palestinians.)
Mark
Seriously? Do you really believe what you are saying? Claiming to be good makes Israel that much worse then those who don’t?
Mark
Ah ha,makes sence, real logic that we all can appreciate…
Mark
Have you ever been there? You seem to know everything first hand. Don’t believe everything you hear, or more accurately everything you want to to hear.
DavidBernstein
Source: http://www.volokh.com/posts/1153141591.shtml, it links to a paper that is no longer online, but the facts are well-known, even to “economists.” As for “usurping,” I’m sure you are aware, but choose to ignore, the fact that Jordan occupied the West Bank in 1967, and Egypt Gaza, and they each lost control following a war that Egypt provoked by closing the Suez Canal, and Jordan joined without particular cause. The West Bank is legally unallocated territory of the British Mandate, subject to negotiation, it’s never been “Palestine,” again thanks to Jordan.
And what if the Palestinians don’t want a state?: http://www.volokh.com/2010/04/14/what-if-the-palestinians-dont-want-a-state/
http://www.volokh.com/2010/04/16/more-on-what-if-the-palestinians-dont-want-a-state/