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?”
Baltiron
Lies, lies and lies.
The cease fires were proudly broken by the Hamas. who boasted about it on it’s TV channel.
Baltiron
Tell us all about the ZOG and all the other neo-nazi talking points.
Andre De Angelis
“As for Hamas Determination it’s in their charter, the one that also states that their will be no peace as long as they don’t rule the planet.”
As usual, the Hamas Charter features among the posts despite the fact that it contains a qualifier that forbids members harm to those who have not “borne arms against you on account of religion, nor turned you out of your dwellings”
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No such qualifier is seen in the founding documents of organisations like Likud, Shas and Betar all of which pledge the clearance of Palestinians from at least the Jordan to the sea.
The leader of Shas is well known for his pronouncements calling for the “annihilation of Arabs”.
“FInally, no Israeli prime minister has sent killlers across the border to knife infants in their beds.”
What border might that be? The Israelis are illegally occupying the west Bank and no one sent anyone to kill infants.
On the other hand, Israeli leaders kill infants by the hundreds.
Andre De Angelis
Why don;t you tell me abou them – you’re clearly the expert.
Andre De Angelis
Sorry to burst your hasbara bubble.
Hamas neve boasted about breaking ceasefires, so you are making that up.
The ceasefires were broken by Israel. It’s documented fact.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nancy-kanwisher/reigniting-violence-how-d_b_155611.html