Posted on 05/08/2013 4:42:13 AM PDT by LibWhacker
Professor Stephen Hawking is backing the academic boycott of Israel by pulling out of a conference hosted by Israeli president Shimon Peres in Jerusalem as a protest at Israel's treatment of Palestinians.
Hawking, 71, the world-renowned theoretical physicist and former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, had accepted an invitation to headline the fifth annual president's conference, Facing Tomorrow, in June, which features major international personalities, attracts thousands of participants and this year will celebrate Peres's 90th birthday.
Hawking is in very poor health, but last week he wrote a brief letter to the Israeli president to say he had changed his mind. He has not announced his decision publicly, but a statement published by the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine with Hawking's approval described it as "his independent decision to respect the boycott, based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there".
Hawking's decision marks another victory in the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions targeting Israeli academic institutions.
In April the Teachers' Union of Ireland became the first lecturers' association in Europe to call for an academic boycott of Israel, and in the United States members of the Association for Asian American Studies voted to support a boycott, the first national academic group to do so.
In the four weeks since Hawking's participation in the Jerusalem event was announced, he has been bombarded with messages from Britain and abroad as part of an intense campaign by boycott supporters trying to persuade him to change his mind. In the end, Hawking told friends, he decided to follow the advice of Palestinian colleagues who unanimously agreed that he should not attend.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Freep him. Where does he think he would be if he’d been born in Egypt, huh?
Yeah I saw that and was very disappointed in Hawkings. He is nowhere near a sharp as he once was, not his fault he is just getting old, happens to all of us. So he appears to want to stay relivent but he is straying into areas of which he knows nothing as is just making himself look foolish.
So for all his posturing as an unbiased academic seeking the unvarnished truth, at heart he is just another pandering leftist jumping onboard the Political Correct Express.
He is just pissed that a plumper from Brooklyn NY proved him wrong about info never being able to escape a black hole.
Plumper? LOL spell check strikes again.
Ouch! And I heard this guy is/was some sort of genius. Guess not.
“BDS lied about Stephen Hawking joining anti-Israel academic boycott”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3017019/posts
It appears the article is an out and out lie. Hawking didn’t join the boycott.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3017019/posts
OOOPS!!! Never Mind!!!
Can we take the Israeli Intel chips out of his communicator, wheelchair, and respirator?
Or is he a selective boycotter?
Good!
Has anyone pointed out yet that this isn’t true?
HAHAHAHAHAHA. Crucify him!! Crucify him!! Ooooops. You can always count on our hebrew friends to crucify. Imagine the lament of Pontius Pilate when Rome sent him to govern in Judea.
And we are supposed to trust his thoughts regarding science?
Folks here do not realize the rest of the world doesn’t support Israel like here...they tend to see both sides or are more sympathetic to the Palis and see Israel as the originator of the conflict
We have the perfect storm (for Israel) of sympathetic media for a variety of highly inflammatory reasons
and as important...hard as it is to still believe..a somewhat Christian nation that still sees modern days Jews everywhere as brethren of the book surrounded by foes and a big player in end times
I myself support Israel simply because I think they are more culturally western and civilized and I like the ones I’ve known...much more so than their kin here as a rule.
But I disagree with folks here that being sympathetic to Pali plight makes one by default a Neo Nazi or anti Semite
this whole “arrangement” is really a sad comedy where we are frequently played by progressives who don’t like us or a strong Israel
Well said.
Leftist press release picked up by press. False story
http://zioncon.blogspot.com/2013/05/correction-hawking-bds-story-was-hoax.html
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