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
“Which is worthless since they have declared all Israelis to be enemies, regardless of age, sex or etnicity”
False.
“A clear case of projection, it’s the fakestinians who repeatedly state that their goal is to eliminate their enemy from river to sea.”‘
Again projections seeing as Israel has elimitaed any chance of a Palestinian state emerging.
It’s a case of the world crying wolf.
“The 1967 border, and a group of terrorists recently killed an entire family of Israelis.”
False. The Israeli family was living in an illegal settlement and it was one Palestinian who committed the gruesome murder. The murder should face the most serve punishment, but he was not acting on behalf of anyone but himself.
“The number of fatalities aren’t that many.”
If you consider nearly 400 children not that many.
Andre De Angelis
“Which is worthless since they have declared all Israelis to be enemies, regardless of age, sex or etnicity”
False.
“A clear case of projection, it’s the fakestinians who repeatedly state that their goal is to eliminate their enemy from river to sea.”‘
Again projections seeing as Israel has elimitaed any chance of a Palestinian state emerging.
It’s a case of the world crying wolf.
“The 1967 border, and a group of terrorists recently killed an entire family of Israelis.”
False. The Israeli family was living in an illegal settlement and it was one Palestinian who committed the gruesome murder. The murder should face the most serve punishment, but he was not acting on behalf of anyone but himself.
“The number of fatalities aren’t that many.”
If you consider nearly 400 children not that many.
Andre De Angelis
The Zionists have succeeded in doing so to the Palestinians.
Again, it’s a case of wolf cryhing wolf
Andre De Angelis
“You and the other imates of the Aryan Brotherhood sure love your puppeteers.”
Actually, the Aryan Brotherhood are by and large pro Israeli. You can see then waving Zionist flags and even complaining about anti Semitism these days.
“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.”‘
Still 3 times as long as it was under Jewish control.
“Israel is mentioned the first time in 1200 BC and together with Judea held the region until the Persian conquest in the 530s BC”
Firstly, there were no Jews in the the so-called B.C, era. The letter Jew was not “established” until the 1600.
According to this definition Israel became a nation once it became an independent kingdom in 1011 BC (King David 1011-971 BC; and King Solomon 971-931 BC). In 931 BC, the kingdom was divided in two: Israel in the north, (capital Samaria) from 931 to 722 BC; and Judah in the south (capital Jerusalem) from 931 to 587 BC.
Samaria fell to Assyria in 722 BC and a large portion of the population was deported. This kingdom lasted for 209 years.
Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians in 587 BC and the cream of the population was deported. This kingdom lasted for 344 year.
The total number of years during which Israel was a “nation”, even if we take into consideration the small Kingdom of Judah is 424 years. Outside this period Israel was more of a religion than a nation.
“However, most of the population was Jewish in until 600 AD.”
So what? It was not Jewish controlled.
Andre De Angelis
It’s pretty hard to deny relationship with the Jews when research papers have found they share DNA with the indigenous Jews of Palestine.