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?
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346 Responses to “So why did Stephen Hawking think it was ok to visit Iran and China?”
thomtownsend
Had you read the thread, you would have noticed that I wasn’t comparing the behaviour of any country, rather wondering why it’s not expected that people take a “morally consistent” view towards boycotting countries that do things that we, here, would consider utterly barbaric.
Roy
Cue the distortions..
You wrote: “I inferred from you, perhaps wrongly of course, that you think most of the BDS movement is full of anti-Semites”
How exactly did you infer that from: “some of the “anti-Zionist” rhetoric is wrapped up with some very unpleasant anti-Semitism”
The only way you would confuse the word ‘some’ (which is used twice!) with the word ‘most’ is because it’s fits your narrative.
And regarding your broader argument, Stephen Hawking’s decision to “respect the BDS” was given weight because of his stature and reputation. Hawking was giving his approval to BDS and because of his standing in the international community he probably made people view BDS in a favorable light.
As a result, it is perfectly reasonable and even welcome that he should be held accountable for his decision. To claim that it is somehow unfair to put a spotlight on Hawking is ridiculous. You can’t eat the cake and leave it full. If someone is using his fame to promote something, he should expect the public to react to his actions. And the hypocrisy claim is a very legitimate one.
thomtownsend
1. How did I infer that…well, to walk you through the personal process of inference..it went something like this. I read the first sentence which says..”some of the “anti-Zionist” rhetoric is wrapped up with some very unpleasant antisemitism”. The second sentence then says, “The BDSniks are a prime example of the kind of “anti-Zionists”. Given that anti-zionists is in inverted commas in both sentences, and in the first, linked to being an anti-semite, I inferred that the author was subtly suggesting that most of the BDS movement were in fact anti semites. This was inference..a quite personal reading of words written by someone else.
2. I don’t think I’ve made the argument that this story shouldn’t be given focus. What i have argued, and the reason these comments are underneath this article and not the others on the subject, is that it seems a little odd to get him on “moral inconsistency”. At no point did I argue that commentators shouldn’t disagree with Hawking’s choice to boycott, simply that the “morally inconsistent” argument (with reference to China and Iran) doesn’t make much sense.
Ginger Beer
Absolutely so, which is why the BDS movement is dishonest, morally inconsistent and hypocritical.
I think the whole BDS movement is riddled with antisemitism, yes, while individuals may not be antisemitic.
thomtownsend
See above comment from @gingerbeer63:disqus …seems my inference wasn’t too far off.