Deseret PeaceWhat is clear today is that his action has forced Israelis – and the rest of the world – to understand that the status quo has a price. Israel cannot continue to pretend that it is a country of culture, technology and enlightenment while millions of Palestinians live invisibly under the brutal rule of bullets, bulldozers and armed settlers.
Stephen Hawking’s support for the boycott of Israel is a turning point
Boycotting Israel as a stance for justice is going mainstream – Israelis can no longer pretend theirs is in an enlightened country. Ali Abunimah
A standard objection to the Palestinian campaign for the boycott of Israel is that it would cut off “dialogue” and hurt the chances of peace. We’ve heard this again in the wake of Professor Stephen Hawking’s laudable decision to withdraw from Israel’s Presidential Conference in response to requests from Palestinian academics – but it would be hard to think of a more unconvincing position as far as Palestinians are concerned.
One of the most deceptive aspects of the so-called peace process is the pretence that Palestinians and Israelis are two equal sides, equally at fault, equally responsible – thus erasing from view the brutal reality that Palestinians are an occupied, colonised people, dispossessed at the hands of one of the most powerful militaries on earth.
For more than two decades, under the cover of this fiction, Palestinians have engaged in internationally-sponsored “peace talks” and other forms of dialogue, only to watch as Israel has continued to occupy, steal and settle their land, and to kill and maim thousands of people with impunity.
While there are a handful of courageous dissenting Israeli voices, major Israeli institutions, especially the universities, have been complicit in this oppression by, for example, engaging in research and training partnerships with the Israeli army. Israel’s government has actively engaged academics, artists and other cultural figures in international “Brand Israel” campaigns to prettify the country’s image and distract attention from the oppression of Palestinians.
The vast majority of Palestinians, meanwhile, have been disenfranchised by the official peace process as their fate has been placed in the hands of venal and comprised envoys such as Tony Blair, and US and EU governments that only seem to find the courage to implement international law and protect human rights when it comes to the transgressions of African or Arab states.
When it comes to Israel’s abuses, governments around the world have offered nothing but lip service; while dozens of countries face US, EU or UN sanctions for far lesser transgressions, it has taken years for EU governments to even discuss timid steps such as labelling goods from illegal Israeli settlements, let alone actually banning them. Yet the peace process train trundles on – now with a new conductor in the form of John Kerry, the US secretary of state – but with no greater prospects of ever reaching its destination. So, enough talk already.
The Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) aims to change this dynamic. It puts the initiative back in the hands of Palestinians. The goal is to build pressure on Israel to respect the rights of all Palestinians by ending its occupation and blockade of the West Bank and Gaza Strip; respecting the rights of Palestinian refugees who are currently excluded from returning to their homes just because they are not Jews; and abolishing all forms of discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel.
These demands are in line with universal human rights principles and would be unremarkable and uncontroversial in any other context, which is precisely why support for them is growing.
BDS builds on a long tradition of popular resistance around the world: from within Palestine itself to the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Historically, boycotts work.
During the 1980s opponents of sanctions against apartheid South Africa – including, notoriously, the late Margaret Thatcher – argued instead for “constructive engagement”. They were on the wrong side of history. Today, Palestinians are lectured to drop BDS and return to empty talks that are the present-day equivalent of constructive engagement.
But there can be no going back to the days when Palestinians were silenced and only the strong were given a voice. There can be no going back to endless “dialogue” and fuzzy and toothless talk about “peace” that provides a cover for Israel to entrench its colonisation.
When we look back in a few years, Hawking’s decision to respect BDS may be seen as a turning point – the moment when boycotting Israel as a stance for justice went mainstream.
What is clear today is that his action has forced Israelis – and the rest of the world – to understand that the status quo has a price. Israel cannot continue to pretend that it is a country of culture, technology and enlightenment while millions of Palestinians live invisibly under the brutal rule of bullets, bulldozers and armed settlers.
http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/why-is-israel-so-afraid-of-stephen-hawking/
Ain’t it a sad indictment on the simplicity of the phleps that it’s not the real truth unless some theoretically accepted smartarse says so. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see that israel is doing the work of an anti-christ and that the beasts of commerce and corporation are slaves in that endevour; even as we are held as slaves to those same beasts who have no morality or concept thereof, greed being their only god.
But on the bright side who better to slay the eternally wimped out victims than one who is the very picture of victimhood.
Stephen Hawking has the balls to state the obvious in the face of ramifications unknown. I commend him with his stance as it is undeniable. The Zionist agenda finally being exposed is the one weapon they have no defense against. They can’t handle the truth!
OUTSTANDING!!
But unless he’s ‘jewish’ (so-called), the ‘chosen ones’ will undoubtedly use that tired, worn-out, pitifully obvious, old ANTI-SEMITISM card that is the best their sorry Satanic @sses can come up with.
King Solomon said it best: nothing new under the sun.
And they’re determined to prove him right.
Even if Stephen Hawking was Jewish, the leaders of Israel would claim that he is a ‘self-hating’ Jew, mentally deranged, or both. Israel will do or claim anything to hide the truth.
Truth is something they can ill afford.
Check the Bible and the deed that God gave the Jews…. It gives the area. Why would a postage size stamp of a country cause so much trouble all through History? Because God said so.
Check your Bible again. This is what mine says about those lying Zionist sons of Satan:
“I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty,(but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of THEM WHICH SAY THEY ARE JEWS, AND ARE NOT, BUT ARE OF THE SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN.” Rev. 2:9 KJV (emphasis mine).
“Behold, I will make THEM OF THE SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN, WHICH SAY THEY ARE JEWS, AND ARE NOT, BUT DO LIE; behold, I will make them to come, and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee.” Rev. 3:9 KJV (emphasis mine)
Now, if God said it not once, but twice, He must have had a very good reason for doing so, ya think?
Any questions?