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
The panel of UN legal experts tasked with defining apartheid agreed that a “Bantustan policy” consisting of the creation of reserved areas for certain groups is prima facie evidence sufficient to prove a case of apartheid.
– See the Human Rights Commission, Study Concerning the Question of Apartheid from the Point of View of International Penal Law, E/CN.4/1075, 15 February 1972, pp. 51 – 52.
The written petition that Palestine submitted to the ICJ in the 2003 Wall case said that Israeli officials were criminally liable for the crime of apartheid. See Chapter 10
http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/131/1555.pdf
The Secretary of the Arab League turned over its fact finding report to the ICC Prosecutor during a meeting on the subject in Cairo that was held in late 2009. So the ICC has already heard all about Israeli apartheid. It’s really not a question of whether on not Israeli officials are liable for the crime, only a matter of determining which ones.
There is no dispute that Israel is apartheid.
Andre De Angelis
“Why don’t you quote David Duke as well?”
Are you seriously comparing Education Yossi Sarid, Ehud Barak, and Africa Alon Liel to David Duke?
Andre De Angelis
” the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are blowing up civilians by the thousands. ”
False. Not a single IRG was involved in any of those terror attacks They were Sunni Jihadists.
“Most of the refugees are fleeing the Jihadis sent by Ahmedinejad and you’re his Goebbels.”
No wonder you’re so clueless. You don’t even know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites. The Jihadis are Sunnis and regard Iran as their enemy.
Andre De Angelis
No, the number of Palestinian refugees was 800,000. The 800.000 Jews you are referring to includes all the Jews that left Arab states over a period of 3 decades.
As wrote in 2003:
“… Any reasonable person, Zionist or non-Zionist, must acknowledge that the analogy drawn between Palestinians and Mizrahi Jews is unfounded. Palestinian refugees did not want to leave Palestine. Many Palestinian communities were destroyed in 1948, and some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled, or fled, from the borders of historic Palestine. Those who left did not do so of their own volition.
In contrast, Jews from Arab lands came to this country under the initiative of the State of Israel and Jewish organizations. Some came of their own free will; others arrived against their will. Some lived comfortably and securely in Arab lands; others suffered from fear and oppression.”
Hasbara fail!
Andre De Angelis
Even if it was true that Iran was the center of Holocaust denial, we were not discussing the Holocaust. Like I said, you pulled the Holocaust card because you don;t have any logical argument to back up your indefensible position.