1/4/22, 10:49 PM Stephen Hawking's boycott hits Israel where it hurts: science | Stephen Hawking | The Guardian

Political science
Stephen Hawking's boycott hits Israel where it hurts:
science
What really winds up Israel is that this rejection comes from a
famous scientist, and it is science that drives its economy, prestige
and military strength

Hilary Rose and Steven Rose

Mon 13 May 2013 15.46 BST

Stephen Hawking's decision to boycott the Israeli president's conference has gone
viral. Over 100,000 Facebook shares of the Guardian report at last count. Whatever
the subsequent fuss, Hawking's letter is unequivocal. His refusal was made because
of requests from Palestinian academics.

Witness the speed with which the pro-Israel lobby seized on Cambridge University's
initial false claim that he had withdrawn on health grounds to denounce the boycott
movement, and their embarrassment when within a few hours the university
shamefacedly corrected itself. Hawking also made it clear that if he had gone he
would have used the occasion to criticise Israel's policies towards the Palestinians.

While journalists named him "the poster boy of the academic boycott" and
supporters of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement celebrated,
Ha'aretz, the most progressive of the Israeli press, drew attention to the

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inflammatory language used by the conference organisers, who described

themselves as "outraged" rather than that they "regretted" Hawking's decision.

That the world's most famous scientist had recognised the justice of the Palestinian
cause is potentially a turning point for the BDS campaign. And that his stand was
approved by a majority of two to one in the Guardian poll that followed his
announcement shows just how far public opinion has turned against Israel's
relentless land-grabbing and oppression.

Hawking's public refusal follows that of prominent singers, artists and writers, from
Brian Eno to Mike Leigh, Alice Walker and Adrienne Rich, all of whom have publicly
rejected invitations to perform in Israel. But what winds Israel up is the fact that this
rejection is by a famous scientist and that science and technology drive its economy.
Hawking's decision threatens to open a floodgate with more and more scientists
coming to regard Israel as a pariah state. Its research ties with European and
American scientists must be protected.

That Israel, a Middle East country, has managed to secure membership of the
European Research Area and the many collaborative links with European labs
underlines the importance of these links. When European parliamentarians
challenged its membership on the grounds of Israel's numerous breaches of UN
resolutions and of the European Human Rights conventions, the European
Commission responded to the effect that research trumped human rights.

Israel's science and technology are not just a source of prestige and technological
innovation, but underpin its military strength. It was an Israeli engineer who
developed the drones that the US now employs in quantity. Israeli home-produced
chemical weapons minimally match those of Syria, and Israeli universities amply
supply the Israel Defence Forces with the sociological, psychological and
technological methods it employs to suppress Palestinian protests against the
occupation.

The complicity of Israeli academia in Israeli state policy is incontrovertible.

However, this is the first time that a scientist of Hawking's status has taken so public
a stand – and the hyperventilating response of the Jerusalem conference organisers
(it is worth noting that the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where the conference
Hawking refused to attend was to be held, is built on illegally annexed Palestinian
land) has only added to its public impact.

Lastly it has been the very public debates over the rights and wrongs of an academic
boycott that have drawn attention to the subservience of the Israeli universities to
the state. Until the boycott began internal critics were few and far between, and
some of the sharpest such as Ilan Pappé were forced out. However, this
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subservience is beginning to yield. When in 2012 the education minister attempted

to close the politics department at Ben Gurion on "academic grounds", it was
immediately recognised as a political attack on one of the very few departments
where academics were willing to name Israel as an apartheid state. Prof Gilad Haran
from the Weizmann Institute launched a petition stating "We sense that academic
freedom in Israel's higher education system is in severe danger." The department
remains open – one small victory.

Hilary Rose is a feminist sociologist of science and emerita professor at Bradford

University. Steven Rose is emeritus professor of neuroscience at the Open University.
They recently co-authored Genes, Cells and Brains: the Promethean promises of the
new biology, and were among the co-founders of BRICUP, the British Committee for
the Universities of Palestine

We are combining the comment threads of this article and another on the same subject,
published earlier on Monday. Please leave any comments there

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