The Guardian UK reported on Tuesday:
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 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".
Yesterday, there was some confusion as to whether Hawking was making his decision in solidarity with the Palestinians, or because he is in poor health. But Tom Holt, media director at the University of Cambridge issued the following statement yesterday:
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.
Omar Barghouti, a founding member of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement,
welcomed the news:
Palestinians deeply appreciate Stephen Hawking's support for an academic boycott of Israel. We think this will rekindle the kind of interest among international academics in academic boycotts that was present in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.
Hawking had
previously criticized Israel for Operation Cast Lead, during which 1400 Palestinians were killed. In a 2009 interview with Al Jazeera, Hawking said that Israel's response to rocket fire from Gaza was "plain out of proportion … The situation is like that of South Africa before 1990 and cannot continue."
Response to Hawking's decision from the pro-status quo contingent was predictable if odd. According to the Israeli ambassador in London, Hawking, who was the first to describe a cosmology that unified the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, "caved into pressure from political extremists." Another opinionator concludes that Hawkins "displays a certain blindness to the complexity of real life in the region." Hawking joins other fuzzy thinkers and kooks such as Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter in the "You're Dead to Me" column.
BDS is a non-violent movement initiated by Palestinian civil society in 2005. Omar Barghouti explains:
The premise of the BDS movement is that given the international community's complicity with Israel's occupation and its denial of Palestinian rights, Palestinians cannot achieve our basic rights under international law without the mobilization of international civil society organizations. The basic tactic--which was also employed by the South African anti-apartheid movement--is to cut off links with Israel and institutions that maintain Israel's occupation and apartheid.
The BDS call specifically works toward achieving three basic Palestinian rights: one, ending the occupation of the 1967 territories (including the illegal colonies, the illegal wall, and so on); two, two, ending Israel’s system of racial discrimination against the indigenous Palestinian citizens of Israel, granting them full equality; and three, establishing the right of return for Palestinian refugees who were expelled and ethnically cleansed from their homeland in 1948 and ever since. This right of return is guaranteed under international law.
HERE ARE OTHER BDS ACHIEVEMENTS FROM THIS SPRING:
- March 9th, 2013 - The Netherlands calls on Retailers to Distinguish Between Israeli Produce and Produce Grown in Illegal Settlements
- March 14th, 2013 - UC San Diego Students Vote to Divest (non-binding)
- March 16th, 2013 - Mennonites Divest From Israeli Occupation
- March 21, 2013 - Canada's York University Student Union Votes to Divest (non-binding)
- May 7th, 2013 - Oberlin College Student Senate endorses divestment resolution
RESOURCES FOR LEARNING MORE ABOUT BDS: