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
The real numbers of refugees from the 1948 war was 600,000 fakestinians and 800.000 Jews. So you’re lying again, to noones surprise.
Baltiron
Iran is the centre of Holocaust denial, having given asylum to most of it’s main practicioners. You’re certainly one of Ahmedinejad’s fanboys, and thats probably why.
Baltiron
BS, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are blowing up civilians by the thousands. Most of the refugees are fleeing the Jihadis sent by Ahmedinejad and you’re his Goebbels.
Baltiron
Well, it’s like this with the neo-nazis; they see the agents of the Jews everywhere. Even among their allies.
Baltiron
You and the other imates of the Aryan Brotherhood sure love your puppeteers. Defending their foul aggression at every turn.
Islam took the area in the 630s and lost it in 1918. Subtract the 200 years the Crusaders and Byzantines held it and you’re down to eleven hundred years.
Israel is mentioned the first time in 1200 BC and together with Judea held the region until the Persian conquest in the 530s BC. After a rebellion it ruled itself for another hundred and fifty years prior to year 6 BC. However, most of the population was Jewish in until 600 AD.