Stephen Hawking Boycotts Israel Academic Conference

[Username]

JERUSALEM, May 8 (Reuters) - British cosmologist Stephen Hawking has pulled out of an Israeli conference, joining an academic boycott of Israel to protest against its occupation of Palestinian lands, Cambridge University said on Wednesday.

The wheelchair-bound Hawking, who has won international recognition for his work on black holes, had been due to speak at a prestigious conference in June organised by Israeli President Shimon Peres that draws hundreds of leading world figures.

However, his name was quietly dropped from the list of participants earlier this week, giving a major boost to supporters of pro-Palestinian groups that want to isolate Israel on the international stage over the continued occupation.

"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," the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine said on its website.

Cambridge University, where Hawking works, confirmed that the statement had been approved by the professor. Hawking did not issue any statement in his own name.

The conference organisers criticised Hawking's decision.

"The academic boycott against Israel is in our view outrageous and improper, certainly for someone for whom the spirit of libertylies at the basis of his human and academic mission," conference chairman Israel Maimon said in a statement.

By snubbing the annual president's conference, which is due to be addressed by former U.S. President Bill Clinton and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Hawking has become one of the prominent scientists to join the boycott movement.

Numerous figures from the world of art and entertainment have also refused to perform in Israel in recent years as part of an effort to promote the Palestinian cause, including British singer Elvis Costello and U.S. indie rock band the Pixies.

Direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians broke down in 2010 over the issue of continued Jewish settlement building on land seized in the 1967 war. Palestinians want to create an independent state on the captured territories.

The United States is seeking to revive the negotiations. (Additional reporting by Estelle Shirbon in London, Writing by Crispian Balmer, Editing by Jeffrey Heller)

Update: The University of Cambridge retracted its statement of Hawking joining the boycott, citing health concerns as his reason for missing the conference. But when reached for comment and clarification, university spokesman Tim Holt provided The Huffington Post with this response:

“We have now received confirmation from Professor Hawking’s office that a letter was sent on Friday to the Israeli President’s office regarding his decision not to attend the Presidential Conference, based on advice from Palestinian academics that he should respect the boycott.

-The above can be found at the huffingtonpost and many other media and news outlets that have covered the same story.-

I would like to know why Hawkings would back out of an Academia conference and what does the Palestinian Boycott against Israel have to do with it?

As far as I know it has something to do with land. Does this go back a 1000+ years BC or is this some type of bandwagon Hawkings and others decide to jump on?

 

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-The above can be found at the huffingtonpost and many other media and news outlets that have covered the same story.-

I would like to know why Hawkings would back out of an Academia conference and what does the Palestinian Boycott against Israel have to do with it?

As far as I know it has something to do with land. Does this go back a 1000+ years BC or is this some type of bandwagon Hawkings and others decide to jump on?

Sometimes there's no understanding the choices people make - the ones based on emotion. It's as much an individual thing as their personal choices in taste. For example, why do some prefer chocolate while others pick vanilla? As I said, when it's an emotional issue there's no logic involved.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

As far as I know it has something to do with land. Does this go back a 1000+ years BC or is this some type of bandwagon Hawkings and others decide to jump on?

Take it up with the Brits. The Romans kicked the Jews out of their own homeland 2,000 years ago. Eventually a new people, the Palestinians, arose in that region. It changed hands several times and ended up as part of the Ottoman Empire. When the British conquered the Turks in WWI, they seized their empire, including Palestine and the Palestinians.

At the end of WWII, the Europeans felt so guilty for the way they had treated the Jews that they were willing to do anything to make it up to them. Well, anything except let them come back to their homes in Europe. So the British looked through their maps and said, "Hey, we've got a nice piece of land down here with a lovely Mediterranean coastline. It's called 'Palestine' and we stole it from the Turks. It doesn't look like anybody is living there right now, at least nobody important. Let's give it to the Jews and maybe they'll stop bothering us."

This was the last dying gesture of the British Empire: giving the finger to the entire world. Creating a problem that we might never be able to solve.

As for the boycott, boycotts are only worth doing if they can be reasonably expected to have a substantive impact on the targeted person, corporation or country. I don't think Israel is going to undergo any economic hardship if this conference is canceled due to low attendance or the dropout of key speakers.

It's not likely to have any political effect either. Is there one person left on this planet who hasn't already formed his opinion on the Israel-Palestine conflict?

 

[exchemist]

Take it up with the Brits. The Romans kicked the Jews out of their own homeland 2,000 years ago. Eventually a new people, the Palestinians, arose in that region. It changed hands several times and ended up as part of the Ottoman Empire. When the British conquered the Turks in WWI, they seized their empire, including Palestine and the Palestinians.

At the end of WWII, the Europeans felt so guilty for the way they had treated the Jews that they were willing to do anything to make it up to them. Well, anything except let them come back to their homes in Europe. So the British looked through their maps and said, "Hey, we've got a nice piece of land down here with a lovely Mediterranean coastline. It's called 'Palestine' and we stole it from the Turks. It doesn't look like anybody is living there right now, at least nobody important. Let's give it to the Jews and maybe they'll stop bothering us."

This was the last dying gesture of the British Empire: giving the finger to the entire world. Creating a problem that we might never be able to solve.

As for the boycott, boycotts are only worth doing if they can be reasonably expected to have a substantive impact on the targeted person, corporation or country. I don't think Israel is going to undergo any economic hardship if this conference is canceled due to low attendance or the dropout of key speakers.

It's not likely to have any political effect either. Is there one person left on this planet who hasn't already formed his opinion on the Israel-Palestine conflict?

I'm not so sure that boycotts have no effect. The same was said about apartheid-era S Africa, but I think it is reasonable to think that the expressions of disapproval by high profile organisations and people did have an effect on the international politics.

People in the USA are generally not as well aware of the condition of the Palestinians as people in Europe are, due to the power of the US Israel Lobby, which promotes a Likud line and savages anyone who deviates from it as antisemitic. (You may recall Walt and Mearsheimer's rather brave book about this, a few years back.) So, to the extent that Hawking's stance sheds light on the problem, it may be helpful to a more plural debate, within the country that does more than any other to keep Israel afloat.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

People in the USA are generally not as well aware of the condition of the Palestinians as people in Europe are, due to the power of the US Israel Lobby, which promotes a Likud line and savages anyone who deviates from it as antisemitic.

Despite things like the "gentlemen's agreements," the Jews have been treated better in America than virtually any other country, with the shining exception of China several hundred years ago, where they were accepted so unremarkably that they simply assimilated.

Nonetheless, after WWII we assumed responsibility for the Holocaust and the previous 3,000 years of antisemitism that it culminated. So we've been trying to make up for all that.

It's been said that Americans feel like we, too are the "chosen people," almost all of us having ancestors who escaped from someplace where they were persecuted. So we identify with them. It was an American (General McArthur) who was put in charge of the Jewish refugees' welfare after the war was over. None of the Europeans wanted the job.

Nonetheless, while the Holocaust was in the planning stages, Roosevelt did very little to help people escape. Our immigration quotas went unfilled every year, rather than let hundreds of thousands of Jews into the country. It's been said that FDR wasn't antisemitic since he appointed quite a few Jewish advisors. But he was certainly a coward if he wasn't willing to stand up to the antisemites in Congress in order to save millions of lives.

So, to the extent that Hawking's stance sheds light on the problem, it may be helpful to a more plural debate, within the country that does more than any other to keep Israel afloat.

Oddly enough, it's young American Jews who seem to be most quickly losing their love for Israel. After all, who should be better able to spot the mistreatment of an entire ethnic group than the Jews?

Net migration between the USA and Israel is now westward. More disillusioned Israelis are coming here than starry-eyed young American Zionists are going there!

 

[C C]

People in the USA are generally not as well aware of the condition of the Palestinians as people in Europe are, due to the power of the US Israel Lobby, which promotes a Likud line and savages anyone who deviates from it as antisemitic.

The majority religious community is in Israel's back pocket and opportunistically exploited. During this or that intermittent spree of shelling from Hamas in the past, you could watch public interest "commercials" being run on Christian television networks showing the horrors of its effects on the Israeli population and requests for donations from American viewers to help remedy their hardships. Absence of balance in regard to the violations upon Palestinians that kept alive their hatred of Israel and the collateral damage / suffering from the reprisals directed back at Gaza. It's a murky territory of continual tit-for-tat, but figuratively in the distorted historical context of early Hollywood westerns, the Palestinians might be considered the "Indians" and the Israelis the "cowboys" or European "immigrants". Missing is the latter receiving the "benefit" of newly brought diseases radically reducing the surrounding native population of the greater region (thus, "Israel is the minority, the potential future victim here surrounded by an immense enemy.")

 

[exchemist]

Despite things like the "gentlemen's agreements," the Jews have been treated better in America than virtually any other country, with the shining exception of China several hundred years ago, where they were accepted so unremarkably that they simply assimilated.

Nonetheless, after WWII we assumed responsibility for the Holocaust and the previous 3,000 years of antisemitism that it culminated. So we've been trying to make up for all that.

It's been said that Americans feel like we, too are the "chosen people," almost all of us having ancestors who escaped from someplace where they were persecuted. So we identify with them. It was an American (General McArthur) who was put in charge of the Jewish refugees' welfare after the war was over. None of the Europeans wanted the job.

Nonetheless, while the Holocaust was in the planning stages, Roosevelt did very little to help people escape. Our immigration quotas went unfilled every year, rather than let hundreds of thousands of Jews into the country. It's been said that FDR wasn't antisemitic since he appointed quite a few Jewish advisors. But he was certainly a coward if he wasn't willing to stand up to the antisemites in Congress in order to save millions of lives.

Oddly enough, it's young American Jews who seem to be most quickly losing their love for Israel. After all, who should be better able to spot the mistreatment of an entire ethnic group than the Jews?

Net migration between the USA and Israel is now westward. More disillusioned Israelis are coming here than starry-eyed young American Zionists are going there!

Interesting perspective, thanks. I suppose in the UK we now face the reverse guilt: that of having stupidly offered a homeland to the Jews (out of European guilt for Hitler) when it already belonged to someone. Typical late-colonial arrogance, for which the world is now paying. But we are where we are and need somehow to make the best of it. Suspect a lot of us in Britain feel that, as with N Ireland, the only way forward is for both sides to abandon intransigent aggression and learn to "love their enemies", instead of demanding "an eye for an eye", which seems to lead nowhere. Which is why Netanyahu's policies excite so much indignation and contempt.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Interesting perspective, thanks. I suppose in the UK we now face the reverse guilt: that of having stupidly offered a homeland to the Jews (out of European guilt for Hitler) when it already belonged to someone. Typical late-colonial arrogance, for which the world is now paying.

Indeed. The "donation" of Palestine to the Jewish refugees has been called the last act of the British Empire, as the sun finally set on it. It's also been less charitably called "the dying Empire's giant middle finger to the entire world." Three-quarters of a century later, we're still grappling with the effects of this gesture.

But we are where we are and need somehow to make the best of it. Suspect a lot of us in Britain feel that, as with N Ireland, the only way forward is for both sides to abandon intransigent aggression and learn to "love their enemies", instead of demanding "an eye for an eye", which seems to lead nowhere.

It took more than a century of incredible violence for that to work in Ireland, where the people on both sides of the issue were rather closely related, spoke the same language, etc.

The Jews and the Palestinians have virtually nothing in common. Except, of course, the fact that they were both kicked out of their homelands.

I've always thought that we Americans are exactly the wrong people to meddle in this affair. Suppose we decide that, since the Jews were there first and it was their homeland all the way back to Biblical times, they have a stronger claim to it so we should give it back to them? Well then the Palestinians can turn around and tell us, "Okay, then, you have to give Arizona back to the Navajo."

So we think about that and say, "You're right, possession is nine points of the law. The Palestinians have been living in Palestine for more than a millennium and a half--they're even named after it. We should give it to them." Then the Israelis can say, "Well fine. As soon as you give Arizona back to Mexico."

Which is why Netanyahu's policies excite so much indignation and contempt.

In an episode of Star Trek:TNG, a war has been going on for a long time between two empires (I think one was the Cardassians). No one on the outside can understand what the fighting is about. Capt. Picard explains it to one of his officers: "When a man has been living with hatred for his entire life, it becomes comfortable, like old leather." [Not an accurate quote. I'm sure it's on the internet somewhere since everything about Star Trek is.]

The Israelis and Palestinians are hardly the only two peoples on earth who bear a trans-generational hatred for each other. Probably not even the only two whose hatred was caused by the meddling of a third party.