Thursday, May 9, 2013

Stephen Hawking boycotts major Israeli conference

Irish Times   In a major victory for the Israel boycott movement, British theoretical physicist Prof Stephen Hawking has pulled out of next month’s prestigious presidential conference in Jerusalem.

Wheelchair-bound Hawking (71), who had agreed to headline the conference, Facing Tomorrow , alongside other major international personalities, informed Israeli president Shimon Peres of his decision last week. Pro-Palestinian groups said he took the decision to respect the boycott “based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there”. [...]

Either way, Israel is not pleased. “This is an outrageous and wrong decision,” said Yisrael Maimon, the chairman of conference’s steering committee. 

“The academic boycott of Israel is outrageous, especially by someone who preaches freedom of thought. Israel is a democracy, where anyone can state his case, whatever it may be. Imposing a boycott goes against the principles of holding an open and democratic discourse.” [...]

Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of the Israel Law Centre, criticised Hawking’s decision, noting that the cosmologist uses Israeli-developed technology to cope with his motor neurone illnesse.

“Hawking’s decision to join the boycott of Israel is quite hypocritical for an individual who prides himself on his own intellectual accomplishment. His whole computer-based communication system runs on a chip designed by Israel’s Intel team. I suggest that if he truly wants to pull out of Israel he should also pull out his Intel Core i7 from his tablet.”

10 comments:

  1. He is a very very ill man and his courage has lent him some sort of moral authority. Nevertheless, this whole boycott furore is a managed stunt. He is in any case too ill to travel to Israel.

    He has a history of radical political views. He believes getting rid of Saddam Hussein, an action in which the elected Labour government of the UK played a major part, was a war crime.

    At the time of Cast Lead he condemned Israel's bombing of Gaza as like the action of the South African apartheid regime against the blacks, so equating internationally designated terrorist group Hamas, who he said Israel must talk to with the ANC.

    I think Hawking never intended to go to Israel in the first place, but to follow the typical celebrity boycotter stunt path of first accepting a star role in response to Israeli invite, then rejecting it with maximum publicity as if scales had just fallen from the celebrity's eyes as the result of pleas from helpless Palestinian victims.

    It's in any case a typical case of the use of celebrities as false authorities. Hawking is one of the world's leading theoretical physicists. That no more makes him an authority whose views should be given special respect on the politics of the Middle East than it does on the procedures of brain surgery.

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  2. Recipients and PublicityMay 9, 2013 at 11:50 AM

    Good news! No one needs this deformed, physically and ideologically, monster in the Holy Land. Let this notorious and abominable ATHEIST stay home in his hole in merry 'ol England with the other anti-Semites boycotting Israel and keep him away from contaminating others with his anti-God crusades. Yimach shemo, shem reshaim yirkav! Israelis must stop running after the false gods of the modern world.

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    Replies
    1. Here in merry ol' England, there are quite a few of these silly boycotts of Israeli products, but there is still Israeli produce in major supermarkets.
      Now, here is the irony of this story. In Israel, there is a biotech company which is doing groundbreaking research on neurological diseases such as the one Hawking suffers from. There is a video of a Rav Shmuelovitch who suffered from this disease, and after treatment was able to walk and talk again.

      If the treatment is approved by the FDA and the NHS (in UK), I wonder if Prof. Hawking will still boycott it? Or perhaps he might get a heter of meah kofrim!

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    2. RaP: Do you always speak like that about handicapped people?

      You are an abomination.

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  3. After his death his legacy and "accomplishments" will no longer be recognized. What did he contribute to science that affected this world?

    He'll be revealed for the idiot and fraud (and con-man) that he is.

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    1. I suppose you would be to stupid to ever understand.

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    2. @remark -

      Read some of the unscientific nonsense Hawking has written in regards to his faith based, atheist multiverse religion.

      The atheist con-men like Hawking were extremely dismayed by the overwhelming scientific evidence that this Universe is both extremely fine tuned to allow life and that it also had a beginning in space and time. To suppress any belief in the possibility of an intelligent Creator, Hawking and company invented a fanciful atheist multiverse religion claiming the existence of zillions of completely undetectable and unreachable alternate Universes, none of which allow life, so that this Universe can then be explained as purely a product of chance.

      If you believe in Hawking's atheist religion then you are truly the stupid one here.

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  4. He would rather stay home and play with his marilyn monroe posters. A perverted, childish creep.

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  5. This man is ill, has been ill for most of his life. If his doctor says don't go, it is wise not go.

    If Israel throws a tantrum, it reminds me of the mother-in-law who will take such things seriously...

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