The Real Noam Chomsky? II

Sheesh! Where does Noam Chomsky stand on boycotting Israel?  I just can't keep up with him.  One of my co-bloggers, Gabriel Ash, wrote a piece back in 2009 taking Chomsky to task for bad reasoning over his opposition to BDS.  More recently, last year, I wrote a piece expressing surprise that Chomsky was supporting BDS.  And I remember when Chomsky was barred from visiting the West Bank and/or Gaza and thereby preventing from addressing academics there, Chomsky said how the Israeli authorities seemed to take umbrage at him not addressing Israeli academic institutions.  He said then (though I can't remember when exactly) that he had no objection to addressing Israeli academic institutions.

Well now, according to The Guardian, it turns out that Chomsky was one of many academics who persuaded Stephen Hawking to blank the Shimon Peres shindig:

Noam Chomsky was among 20 academics who privately lobbied Professor Stephen Hawking to boycott a major Israeli conference, it has emerged.

Chomsky, a US professor and well-known supporter of the Palestinian cause, joined British academics from the universities of Cambridge, London, Leeds, Southampton, Warwick, Newcastle, York and the Open University to tell Hawking they were "surprised and deeply disappointed" that he had accepted the invitation to speak at next month's presidential conference in Jerusalem, which will chaired by Shimon Peres and attended by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.

Hawking pulled out this week in protest at Israel's treatment of Palestinians, in the wake of receiving the letter and soundings from Palestinian colleagues. The 71-year-old theoretical physicist's decision has been warmly welcomed by Palestinian academics, with one describing it as "of cosmic proportions", but was attacked in Israel.

"Cosmic proportions" I wish I thought of that.

But look what this "liberal (read zionist) academic" had to say:

On Friday the liberal academic David Newman, dean of the faculty of humanities and social sciences at Ben Gurion University in Israel, warned that an academic boycott "just destroys one of the very few spaces left where Israelis and Palestinians actually do come together".

If that's the case, that people in the same country cannot come together based on their ethnicity then that is a clear admission that Israel is indeed an apartheid state and boycott, divestment and sanctions is the most appropriate tactic against it.

Anyway, welcome aboard Noam Chomsky.  Stick around!

A Brief History of My Previous Headline

Did you see my previous headline?  It was A Brief History of Stephen Hawking.  I tweeted the post thus:

We're on the move now like an idea whose Brief History of Time has come. Stephen Hawking joins academic boycott #BDS jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/a-brie…
— Jews Sans Frontieres (@jewssf) May 8, 2013

Later on I saw some tweets touting a Daily Beast article on the Stephen Hawking affair.  Look at the headline: A Brief History of Hawking’s Boycott.  I must say it's a very interesting article by Matthew Kalman which was posted to the Beast site at 3 pm.  Mine was posted at 2:33 pm and my tweet was at 2:42.  Coincidence? Probably. I just don't want anyone thinking I copied the Daily Beast, that's all.

A Brief History of Stephen Hawking

It's big news that Stephen Hawking is boycotting some shindig in Jerusalem hosted by Israeli President and war criminal Shimon Peres.  Here's The Guardian:

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".

Well that's not the history bit. This is:

Hawking has visited Israel four times in the past. Most recently, in 2006, he delivered public lectures at Israeli and Palestinian universities as the guest of the British embassy in Tel Aviv. At the time, he said he was "looking forward to coming out to Israel and the Palestinian territoriesand excited about meeting both Israeli and Palestinian scientists".

Since then, his attitude to Israel appears to have hardened. In 2009, Hawking denounced Israel's three-week attack on Gaza, telling Riz Khan on Al-Jazeera 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."

Wonderful stuff.  As Dr Martin Luther King might have said, "we're on the move now, like an idea whose Brief History of Time has come".