<snip>

...thereby joining the ranks of brilliant anti-Semites like Bobby Fischer. (IMO)

(May 8, 2013 at 4:11 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: ...thereby joining the ranks of brilliant anti-Semites like Bobby Fischer. (IMO)

Being against Israel's policies makes one an anti-semite?

I don't know what I'm supposed to take from Stephen Hawking not going to a conference to tell me. He seems to have been pressured into not going by his friends, so this tells me he might not be an expert in the issue. SO I don't know why his opinion matters to me.

(May 8, 2013 at 4:12 pm)frankiej Wrote: Being against Israel's policies makes one an anti-semite?

If you compare Israeli policy with apartheid South Africa, then I say yes. But I acknowledge that reasonable people can disagree with that assessment.

West of Eden
by Chemi Shalev
Stephen Hawking is now the academic boycott movement’s unlikely poster boy
Israel is no South Africa, but boycotts spark similar public reactions. The more Hawking is condemned, the more severe the repercussions will be.
By Chemi Shalev | May.08, 2013 | 9:30 PM | 18
1. The regrettable decision of world-renowned astro-physicist Stephen Hawking to cancel his participation in the upcoming President Conference could be a breakthrough moment for the anti-Israel boycott movement. The recruitment of such a universally respected and admired international figure to the cause of BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) clearly overshadows other significant gains that boycott advocates have made recently with groups such as the Irish Teachers Union or the American Association for Asian Academic Studies.

With Hawking, the Palestinian-inspired BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement now has a powerful symbol and an unlikely poster boy at its disposal in its increasingly successful drive.

2. Hawking’s fame and celebrity make him a public relations prize for the BDS movement, but there is no doubt that his physical condition multiplies its impact a thousand times over. The juxtaposition of Hawking’s frail, helpless and paralyzed frame against the all-powerful and brutish image that boycotters try to ascribe to Israel could very well be molded into an iconic recruitment tool. It’s more Helen Keller than David vs. Goliath.

3. Judging by its initial reactions, Israel and its legions of so-called defenders will do their best to help the BDS make the most of it. The Presidential Conference could have made do with “regret”, but no, their spokespersons had to be “outraged”, thus setting a high bar for Israeli politicians who will now try to outdo each other in denouncing and condemning Hawking. To this one must add the foul and vile social media jokes of average-Joe Israelis on social media that have already found their way into the mainstream press.

Not only is a campaign against Hawking bound for defeat, as any PR expert will tell you, but its fallout will be compounded the more that the protests are aimed at his physical disabilities – including the too clever by half calls for him to “boycott” the technological remedies for his affliction provided by Israeli knowhow.

Israelis aren’t known for their subtlety or genteel manners, so one can rest assured that this is exactly what is going to happen.

4. The only mitigating factor is the strange statement and then retraction issued by Cambridge University ascribing Hawking’s decision to his health. Strange, because it was issued many hours after the Guardian’s original report on Hawking’s political motivation had been published without any denial or retraction; stranger still, because it now seems that the university hadn’t bothered to check with Hawking himself.

Nonetheless, the muddle and contradictions can work in Israel’s favor by sowing doubt about the true circumstances of Hawking’s controversial decision or, at the very least, by allowing right wing aficionados of the genre to run free with sinister conspiracy theories.

5. Israel is no South Africa. Israelis are not Afrikaners. Ramallah is no Sun City, and Gaza isn’t Bantustan. Inside the 1967 borders there is no apartheid, and, whatever you may think of the occupation, none outside as well. The ongoing disenfranchisement, deprivation of civil rights and hardships of living under the shadow of a military regime may be regrettable and even deplorable, but their history and origins are radically different from those that shaped the racial segregation policies instituted by Pretoria, ironically, in 1948.

The Calvinist Afrikaners may have venerated the Old Testament, believed they were the Chosen People, viewed their 19th century “Great Trek” as the wandering of Israelites in the Sinai, anointed Transvaal as their God-given Promised Land and found their justification for subjugating the blacks in Joshua’s conquest of Canaan - but there was never any historic or theological basis for comparing their trials and tribulations with those of the Jewish people and their 3,000 year link to the Holy Land.

South Africans may have viewed themselves as an enlightened and civilized outpost in a jungle of heathen savagery and as a bastion of Western capitalism and ideals standing up to a sinister Communist onslaught, but the basic injustice and inhumanity of apartheid eventually trumped their economic and strategic advantages and became their ultimate undoing. White South Africans may have felt misunderstood, maligned and betrayed, first by fickle liberals on the left and then by their erstwhile conservative allies on the right, but their obstinate refusal to countenance even gradual half-way measures fueled the boycott, disinvestment and sanctions campaigns that were being waged against them, with ever growing intensity, from the 1960s onward.

The more the economic, cultural and academic noose tightened around South Africa’s neck, the more its population felt beleaguered and besieged, the more they rallied behind the ruling National Party and the groups to its right, the harsher and stricter the measures that the government consequently employed against the blacks became, and, in a vicious circle, the more that the international community felt justified in expanding and deepening the sanctions regime.

And even the way too close strategic relationship that Israel maintained for far too many years with South Africa does not create any kind of moral equivalence between the two countries. In the late 1960s and 1970s Israel was internationally ostracized and isolated, through almost no fault of its own, by Arab and Third World countries led by the menacing Soviet-led Communist bloc. Israel needed any friend it could get and, almost by default, it gravitated towards a country with which it seemed, on the surface at least, to have so much in common.

6. The stark differences between the two situations, so clear and self-evident to any true Zionist or lover of Israel, unfortunately don’t mean that Israelis are not bound to repeat the same mistakes that South Africans made 40 years ago.

Israel’s growing sense of siege, isolation and righteous indignation, its intolerance of criticism, its tendency to condemn and then distance itself from anyone who doesn’t conform to its point of view, its growing disdain for NGOs, human rights advocates and other do-gooders, internal and external, its feeling, stoked by cynical politicians and willfully blind ideologues, of being misunderstood, maligned and potentially betrayed by the whole world – including Google! – are ominous signs, if one goes by historical precedent.

The more that Israel veers to the right, the more narrow-minded it seems, the more its leaders appear to be retreating from any genuine wish or intent to reach a settlement with the Palestinians - the more it actually confirms the perceptions that fueled the boycott movement in the first place. It is a self-fulfilling backlash.

Rather than containing the damage or serving as a wake-up call, unfortunately, the reactions to Hawking’s decision to join the ranks of boycotters is much more likely to make matters worse.

Follow me on Twitter @ChemiShalev

Stephen Hawking confirms he is boycotting Israeli conference
University of Cambridge officials say they erroneously understood Hawking's decision to boycott Israeli Presidential Conference was based solely on health concerns.
By The Associated Press | May.08, 2013 | 6:39 PM | 26
British physicist Stephen Hawking has dropped plans to attend a major international conference in Israel in June, citing his belief that he should respect a Palestinian call to boycott contacts with Israeli academics.

The University of Cambridge released a statement Wednesday indicating that Hawking had told the Israelis last week that he would not be attending "based on advice from Palestinian academics that he should respect the boycott."

University officials said they had "previously understood" that Hawking's decision was based solely on health concerns — he is 71 and has severe disabilities — but had now been told otherwise by Hawking's office.

The decision means that one of the world's most famous scientists has joined a boycott organized to protest Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

Hawking, who has ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, cannot move his body and uses a wheelchair. He communicates through a computerized voice system.

The conference, which is in its fifth year, gathers world leaders and intellectuals for public discussions on a variety of subjects.

Hawking last visited Israel in 2006 at the invitation of the British Embassy.

http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/west-of-ede...y-1.519980
and
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-de...e-1.519951
respectively

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(May 8, 2013 at 4:11 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: ...thereby joining the ranks of brilliant anti-Semites like Bobby Fischer. (IMO)

To blame all Jews for the on-going war crimes of Israel is the height of antisemitism.

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(May 8, 2013 at 4:34 pm)Gearbreak Wrote: I don't know what I'm supposed to take from Stephen Hawking not going to a conference to tell me. He seems to have been pressured into not going by his friends, so this tells me he might not be an expert in the issue. SO I don't know why his opinion matters to me.

I can't help but agree. However People are impressed by things like this. If a drugged out rock guitarist were to do it it would have an even greater impact.

BTW: Given what I have read Einstein would have done the same thing.

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(May 8, 2013 at 4:53 pm)ChadWooters Wrote:

(May 8, 2013 at 4:12 pm)frankiej Wrote: Being against Israel's policies makes one an anti-semite?

If you compare Israeli policy with apartheid South Africa, then I say yes. But I acknowledge that reasonable people can disagree with that assessment.

Transferring the occupying countries population into occupied territory is a war crime and the penalty is hanging. Israel has nearly a million such war criminals.

Annexing territory conquered in war is a war crime. Israel has annexed East Jerusalem. Same penalty as above.

Occupied territory must be administered solely for the benefit of the occupied people save in matters of military necessity. Examples too numerous the list in this post. Penalty ditto.

See the Nuremberg trials for details.

There is much more.

(May 8, 2013 at 4:11 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: ...thereby joining the ranks of brilliant anti-Semites like Bobby Fischer. (IMO)

So someone who opposes Israeli apartheid laws is an anti-semite, Chad?

(May 8, 2013 at 9:02 pm)Minimalist Wrote:

(May 8, 2013 at 4:11 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: ...thereby joining the ranks of brilliant anti-Semites like Bobby Fischer. (IMO)

So someone who opposes Israeli apartheid laws is an anti-semite, Chad?

Careful there. Even though Apartheid means separation and they have their separation wall built in occupied territory the words are in different languages and therefore Israel is not practicing Apartheid.

For more of these incredible contortions of reality read the Israeli arguments as to why they are not practicing Apartheid. In the above look for section 5 as an example. Sounds great if one ignores the Apartheid/Separation Wall.

Stephen Hawking accused of hypocrisy over Israel conference boycott

Scientist's critics say he should stop using Israeli technology in computer equipment that allows him to communicate

Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem
The Guardian, Wednesday 8 May 2013 13.12 EDT

Stephen Hawking
British physicist Stephen Hawking, whose decision to boycott a conference in Israel has been described as hypocritical. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Stephen Hawking's decision to boycott an Israeli conference in protest at the state's 46-year occupation of Palestine was derided as hypocritical by some, who pointed out that the celebrated scientist and author uses Israeli technology in the computer equipment that allows him to function.

Hawking, 71, has suffered from motor neurone disease for the past 50 years, and relies on a computer-based system to communicate.

According to Shurat HaDin, an Israel law centre which represents victims of terrorism, the equipment has been provided by the hi-tech firm, Intel, since 1997.

"Hawking's decision to join the boycott of Israel is quite hypocritical for an individual who prides himself on his whole intellectual accomplishment. His whole computer-based communications system runs on a chip designed by Israel's Intel team. I suggest if he truly wants to pull out of Israel he should also pull out his Intel Core i7 from his tablet," said Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of Shurat HaDin.

Intel could not be reached for comment, but their website quotes Justin Rattner, chief technology officer, as saying earlier this year: "We have a long-standing relationship with Professor Hawking." He added: "We are very pleased to continue to … work closely with Professor Hawking on improving his personal communication system."

Cambridge University declined to comment on allegations of hypocrisy regarding Hawking's communications system.

• This article was amended on 9 May 2013 to remove a reference to Intel being an Israeli firm. It is a US multinational with bases in Israel.

Stephen Hawking accused of hypocrisy over Israel conference boycott

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The Israeli ego knows no bounds. The Israeli team regarding Intel CPUs of which the iSeries is but one has always been limited to testing one aspect of the traffic control micro-code for inter-core communication. Nothing more than that. Here they claim the entire CPU.

The gap between Israeli fantasy and reality appears unbridgible. A while back I found some of them claiming the entire concept of Intel's multi-core computers which was the first time I bothered looking up the exact contribution, that part of the testing of part of the chip.

Before anyone tries to defend it. AMD released their first and thus the first multi-core CPU four months before Intel.

I have no problem with the use of the word apartheid for what the Israelis do to their own citizens of Palestinian descent. What they do to the Palestinians in the occupied territories is simply criminal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/opinio...equal.html

Quote:The failure of Israeli and American leaders to grapple with this nondemocratic reality is not helping. Even if a two-state solution were achieved, which seems fanciful at this point, a fundamental contradiction would remain: more than 35 laws in ostensibly democratic Israel discriminate against Palestinians who are Israeli citizens.