Israel Matzav

#Tomorrow13 A call for consistency from Stephen Hawking

A reminder again that I am in Chicago, and not in Israel, so I am posting much later today than would otherwise be the case.

This comment by Douglas Murray of the Henry Jackson Society is one of the best I've seen about Cambridge Professor Stephen Hawking's decision to boycott Israel (Hat Tip: Alan M).

When these people claim that their attack on the Jewish state is not in any way bigoted or anti-Semitic, you have to start asking them questions. When was the last time Israel beheaded or crucified criminals? Any time recently? No, of course not. Saudi Arabia did so only last month.

These academics of the Left like to claim they are in favour of minority rights. Yet Israel is home to the only open and thriving gay community in the Middle East, while in Iran gays are hanged from cranes.

All Israeli women have the same rights as women in any Western country. In each neighbouring country they are second-class citizens and in a number of them can be stoned for alleged ‘adultery’.

But where are the academic boycotts of Saudi, Iran, Yemen, Egypt, Syria and everywhere else?

But apart from all this, academic boycotts are utterly self-defeating.

Israeli research institutions lead the world in breakthrough technologies. They benefit all of us who rely on computers and mobile phone technology.

They also lead the world in medical advances, and have more scientists per capita than any other state in the world. Every patient who has benefited from the latest surgery techniques — or hopes to benefit from the cutting-edge research into Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and many more diseases — will rely on discoveries made in Israeli research facilities.

Universities and research institutions in particular shouldn’t be boycotting Israel. They should be thanking the country, for they rely on it.

If these academics want to make a truly principled boycott, they should tear out their Israeli-developed pacemakers and smash up their computers and mobile phones which will, invariably, have Israeli technology in them.

They should forbid their family members from getting access to Israeli-created vaccines for countless viruses and make sure their children and elderly relatives never benefit from the technologies created in Israel to relieve and heal some of the most terrible conditions mankind faces.

But they won’t. Just as Professor Hawking won’t give up the Israeli technology he relies on.

For with supreme irony, the speech device which enables Hawking to communicate with the world and relate his fascinating thoughts to us is a computer Intel Core i7-based communication system. Which runs on a chip designed by Israel.

Perhaps Professor Hawking should reflect on what it would mean if he truly committed himself to a boycott of Israel.

Okay, so Hawking lacks what we Jews refer to as hakarat ha'tov (acknowledging the good that someone else does for you.

But even if Israel's weren't a bunch of technology whizzes, the fact of the matter is that the world's greatly disproportionate interest in our dispute with the 'Palestinians' as compared with any other dispute in the world is pure anti-Semitism.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: anti-Semitism, Israeli high tech, President's Conference

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:42 AM