Stephen Hawking joins academic boycott of Israel

Just more evidence he is a very smart man.

IIRC Albert Einstein thought it was not a good idea for European Jews to create a homeland in Palestine.

 

IIRC, he was one of Israel's biggest advocates.

 

For the record, there was not a country called Palestine. The British revived an ancient term by carving an area with something called The Palestine Mandate after defeating the Ottoman Empire. Both Arabs and Jews occupied the area at the time with Jews as the majority hence the reason the UN recognized it as Israel after a nationalist movement.

(I'm sure I didn't get all that perfect. But the claim the Jews stole the land from Arabs isn't quite factual).

 

I think you're wrong about Einstein, in the sum of his life's statements and acts.

(He did change his mind quite a bit, so it may be possible to find one quote supporting a given position.)

Overall, I'm not a big fan of equating science smarts with political smarts.

I care what scientists think about Israel about as much as I care what NBA players think about presidential elections.

 

Bold part is flat out incorrect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Palestine
1920 League of Nation's Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine

There are now in the whole of Palestine hardly 700,000 people, a population much less than that of the province of Gallilee alone in the time of Christ. Of these 235,000 live in the larger towns, 465,000 in the smaller towns and villages. Four-fifths of the whole population are Moslems. A small proportion of these are Bedouin Arabs; the remainder, although they speak Arabic and are termed Arabs, are largely of mixed race. Some 77,000 of the population are Christians, in large majority belonging to the Orthodox Church, and speaking Arabic. The minority are members of the Latin or of the Uniate Greek Catholic Church, or--a small number--are Protestants. The Jewish element of the population numbers 76,000. Almost all have entered Palestine during the last 40 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1931_census_of_Palestine
The total population reported was 1,035,821 (1,033,314 excluding the numbers of H.M. Forces) – an increase of 36.8% since 1922, of which the Jewish population increased by 108.4%.
The population was divided by religion as follows: 759,717 Muslims, 174,610 Jews, 91,398 Christians, 9,148 Druzes, 350 Bahais, 182 Samaritans, and 421 "no religion".

By 1948, the population had risen to 1,900,000, of whom 68% were Arabs, and 32% were Jews (UNSCOP report, including bedouin).

Massive illegal immigration into Palestine is the only reason there was even a sizable population of Jewish people.

How would you feel if illegal immigration into Texas from Mexico increased tremendously and resulted in 30%+ of the population being illegal immigrants? Then how would you feel if that 30% demanded that Texas be split into two so they can have their own state/country?

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Waiting to hear whether Stephen Hawking will be boycotting China because of its occupation of Tibet. <a href="http://t.co/blirBg1YMN" title="http://www.china.org.cn/english/scitech/172341.htm">china.org.cn/english/scitec…</a></p>&mdash; Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) <a href="https://twitter.com/JeffreyGoldberg/status/332242416146980864" data-datetime="2013-05-00T21:15:39+00:00">May 0, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

I stand corrected regarding the %'s.

That said, you represented about the illegal immigration.
1. There was no formal government to track census.
2. When the immigration occurred from Europe it was during/after WWII ...you know, when the Jews were being systematically exterminated in their homelands.
3. England helped facilitate the migration and it was in control of that land at the time.

So to equate the immigrants to Mexican's is not a very good analogy.

 

More anti-Israel propaganda from known Islamists Mathloom and Hydhypedplaya, as well as known anti-Semite glynch.

Nothing new there.

 

Idiot.

That's all I came here to say.

 

Ah, the third known Islamist is joining the chorus.

 

Why do I give a damn about Stephen Hawking's opinion of Israel? Oh yeah, I don't.

There's too many sheeple out there who just follow others because they think they're smart or because they share a position on another topic or because they're half-black or whatever stupid reason.

Think for yourself, people!

 

This right here.

 

It really makes no sense. It's an extreme day when I agree with a cut-n-paste from Commodore, but why aren't the same scientists going to boycott the enormous throng of active scientists in China?

Or hell, Amnesty International has some pretty good points of complaint against the US. Maybe a whole bunch of countries should boycott the science of one another.

In the end, a bunch of scientists boycotting scientists in Israel only hurts scientists and students in Israel and the process of science itself. The Israeli government will not care one bit.

The scientists need to look carefully at the history of such actions in WWI, which were all regretted, without exception, and all useless, without exception, and all embarrassing, without exception.

I mean, if Hawking and others want to march in a protest or write letters, etc, fine. But that should be totally separate from their work. Einstein was super active politically, for instance, but he never did these stupid boycott things (to the best of my knowledge), even with his former German colleagues. He would read and site their work and interact with them at meetings, etc.

 

i don't really agree with an academic boycott---

but to be honest, the whole point of a boycott is to focus ire on one cause---it isn't to express disapproval with everything. It's nonsensical for me to argue that if you do one boycott, you should boycott everything. It's a bit like arguing you can't just volunteer for one cause, you have to volunteer for ALL of the causes.

if you wanted to punish everyone for their sins, you wouldn't engage with anyone. Boycott America for double-tap drone strikes, boycott China for Tibet, boycott Canada for the oil sands etc. etc. etc.

 

I use to give a crap about what he thinks because I love me some science. In fact I use to give a crap about most people until they go political.

 

how do you decide which cause?

This is an interesting loophole to excuse hypocrisy. Situational ethics.