Israeli activists tell Hawking to yank his Intel chips over Palestine Professor Stephen Hawking has been accused of hypocrisy by an Israeli activist group after he declined an invitation to speak at an important conference in Jerusalem this June, announcing instead that he's joining a growing academic boycott of Israel in protest of its policies towards Palestine. "Hawking's decision to join the …
"The Roman, Ottomans and the British never held elections." Look again, Matt, I never said elections. "Election" being a formal and organized process of electing somebody to something. I said "electorate", those people qualified to vote and elect somebody IF and WHEN there's election. The Arabs living in the Mandate after 1922 were so qualified. However, the self-interested British only allowed the people to vote in plebiscites for monarchs the Brits had nominated.
"At the Cairo Conference of 1921, the British set the parameters for Iraqi political life that were to continue until the 1958 revolution; they chose Faisal as Iraq's first King; they established an indigenous Iraqi army; and they proposed a new treaty. To confirm Faisal as Iraq's first monarch, a one-question plebiscite was carefully arranged that had a return of 96 percent in his favor. The British saw in Faisal a leader who possessed sufficient nationalist and Islamic credentials to have broad appeal, but who also was vulnerable enough to remain dependent on their support."
And as for you previous contention that oil was unknown to the region until 1933, look at this:
"Before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the British- controlled Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC) had held concessionary rights to the Mosul wilayah. Under the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement--an agreement in 1916 between Britain and France that delineated future control of the Middle East--the area would have fallen under French influence. In 1919, however, the French relinquished their claims to Mosul under the terms of the Long- Berenger Agreement. The 1919 agreement granted the French a 25 percent share in the TPC as compensation."
"Beginning in 1923, British and Iraqi negotiators held acrimonious discussions over the new oil concession. The major obstacle was Iraq's insistence on a 20 percent equity participation in the company; this figure had been included in the original TPC concession to the Turks and had been agreed upon at San Remo for the Iraqis. In the end, despite strong nationalist sentiments against the concession agreement, the Iraqi negotiators acquiesced to it. The League of Nations was soon to vote on the disposition of Mosul, and the Iraqis feared that, without British support, Iraq would lose the area to Turkey. In March 1925, an agreement was concluded that contained none of the Iraqi demands. The TPC, now renamed the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), was granted a concession for a period of seventy-five years."
You remember "Heisenberg's Certainty Principle?" If one of your neighbors has oil underneath his country, you can be almost certain there's oil under yours.
"you could look at the long list of Jewish Nobel Prize Winners"
Why would I do that? All I have to do is turn on cable tv and somewhere on the 250 channels there is a Jewish talking head reciting them. Like the Jewish prayer for the dead until the body is buried, someone in some language is receiting the names of Jewish Nobel Prize Winners. In perpetuity or the sun becomes a red giant. Which ever comes first.
".... I never said elections. "Election" being a formal and organized process of electing somebody to something. I said "electorate", those people qualified to vote and elect somebody IF and WHEN there's election...." Wriggle, wriggle, wriggle! Just man up and admit you were wrong, your evasions are simply tiresomely boring.
".....The Arabs living in the Mandate after 1922 were so qualified. However, the self-interested British only allowed the people to vote in plebiscites for monarchs the Brits had nominated. "At the Cairo Conference of 1921, the British set the parameters for Iraqi political life"...." Iraq was not part of the Palestine Mandate territories, it was under a separate Mandate of Mesopotamia (also sometimes known as the British Mandate of Iraq). You are so desperate to avoid admitting you were wrong you are trying to apply British measures from a completely different area to your vacuous denials of history.
"....And as for you previous contention that oil was unknown to the region until 1933...." Once again, you are applying the history of a completely different area - Iraq - to that of the Palestine Mandate! You stated that oil in Palestine was a prime consideration of your claimed British backing of the Jewish homeland in the Partition Plan, yet have failed to show any record of such, instead taking examples of oil in Saudi and Iraq and trying to make out they apply to the Palestine Mandate territories. Fail, fail, fail!
".....You remember "Heisenberg's Certainty Principle?" If one of your neighbors has oil underneath his country, you can be almost certain there's oil under yours....." Firstly, it is Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Secondly, it is a rule of quantum physics, not geology. If you are going to make pseudo-scientific statements please at least try and stay within the correct field. So Heisenberg's principle does not apply, but geology most certainly does, and the geologies of the Palestine Mandate and Iraq areas are so different as to make the likelihood of oil in the Palestine Mandate very unlikely. Indeed, modern oil discovery techniques have found very little oil in either Israel, the West Bank or Jordan, and certainly nothing to compare to the Kirkuk oilfield discovered in Iraq in 1927. To give you an inkling of how stupid your "if one of your neighbours has oil" non-argument is, you may want to consider that California has six oilfields with deposits of over a billion barrels, but neighbouring Nevada has none, because the geology of the two states is completely different. Please add basic geology to your reading list. And please do try and think a lot harder before your next post involving science, otherwise you will come off Constantly looking like a complete Planck (badoom-doom-tish!).
"....Why would I do that?...." I know, you have made fact avoidance a staple of your life. Anything that might upset your carefully constructed fantasy view of reality must be avoided, right? I have news for you - denial is not a river in Egypt, before or after the British Protectorate. Enjoy!
"You, Sir, are a humorless idiot....." On the contrary, I often have a pitying laugh at your posts. And did you miss the Planck joke? Sorry, I suppose only someone with some education higher than junior school physics would get the joke of exposing your Heisenberg error and then adding in a dig with Planck's Constant. At least I suppose you can take comfort in knowing you will never be accused of being a geek or nerd, you're obviously too intellectually limited. But I think it would be far too much to ask you to also add quantum physics to your remedial reading list, seeing as you are already so far behind on geography, history, religion, politics and geology. Don't worry, I'm sure there is someone somewhere that still hopes you may, one day, be able to make a relevant and constructive post.
".....There's little uncertainty about that......" Ah, there's no-one more certain than a fool! In the words of Norman Macdonald (and I know you love a quote, seeing as you seem to realise your one chance of passing off as having the vague semblance of an intelligent thought is to ape the works of others): "They that are fated to be fools, have one consolation, that they are fated also to be ignorant of it." I apologise most insincerely for repeatedly posting evidence that might force you to realise the extent of your own ignorance of your ignorance.
"....The only relevant and constructive post I could make is the one we all want to tie you to before setting fire to the straw at your feet." Well, at least Local Dupe echoes the sentiment of the terrorists he so espouses - when you have lost the argument, threaten violence. Such a shame he is so outclassed in any form of verbal combat, probably even by a five-year-old. I have to wonder if the "we" is a reference to the voices in his head.
Meanwhile, Naom Chomskey, veteran ivory tower anarchist nutjob, has been exposed as the "Palestinian scientist" behind Hawking's decision (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/10/noam-chomsky-stephen-hawking-israel-boycott). You have to ask where was Chomsky's objection when Hawking was jetting off to conferences in China and Iran? After all, Chomsky was an early critic of Indonesia’s annexation of East Timor in 1975. A blind hypocrit leading one just as blind?
".....and was GERMANE to the topic." Sorry, it is unknown for you to post anything even remotely germane in any thread, so I'll have to regretfully decline to believe you. BTW, whilst we're on the topic of German physicists, have you heard of that guy called Albert Einstein? You probably haven't seeing as he was a Jew, once being offered the Presidency of Israel, and was a supporter of Israel right up to his death. Now, I wonder which Hawking would have listened to given the chance, Einstein or Chomsky?
"That would depend on whether or not Einstein read the papers after he died in 1955?" Why? There were just as many vitriolic hate-pieces in circulation then as now. Where do you think the current generation of anti-Semites got their diseased views from if not from the previous generation of haters?
Save your pitiful tales for Oprah, she might feign interest.
I'm more interested in Hawking's support of anti-semitism, given his acceptance of Iran, and where he might have got it from. Maybe it goes back to when Israeli physics student Jacob Bekenstein successfully expanded on Hawking's second law of black hole dynamics before Hawking could, showing that Hawking was actually wrong and that black holes do decay. An ego like Hawking's probably found that hard to handle.
The only observation about black holes I've made, concerns the ginormous one between your ears. If you wake up in the middle of the night and Jacob Bekenstein is sitting on your face, he's just doing a black hole dynamic while Hawking gets even more jealous
As expected, your reply is of note for its extensive and complete appraisal of the historical and political situation, and provides a new and enlightening viewpoint. Oh, no it doesn't, it's just the typical gormless insults shrieked by the sheeple when they can't handle an argument containing facts. This is my surprised face, honest. I'm not even going to accuse you of being an anti-semitic bigot (or homophobe, going by your post) as I suspect your unquestioning following of the herd is more due to an overwhelming desire to belong to the "in crowd" rather than any ability to actually formulate a reason to hate. If anything I just pity you.
"Ah, there's no-one more certain than a fool!"
""They that are fated to be fools, have one consolation, that they are fated also to be ignorant of it."
In the known Universe, only you and Rush Limbaugh meet those qualifications. And it's for this reason we pretend to tremble before your ridiculous opinions.
Matt, you will go down in history as the first Blog Jester.
(At this point an old General wearing a French uniform approaches you, kisses you on both cheeks and pins a lollipop to your smock.)
".....only you and Rush Limbaugh....your ridiculous opinions....." This from the cretin that got caught rebleating Keith Olbermann's hysterical accusation that Anna Ardin was a CIA spy (http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2013/04/19/assange_meets_schmidt/)! A critique of that accusation here (http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/07/olbermann-assange-and-the-holo). But then I suspect you didn't get it from Olbermann but direct from Israel Shamir's Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying website, or maybe just from Stormfront again.
Hey, look! I managed to expose your anti-Semite sillyness in two topics at once!
"Yes, many innocent Palestinians are suffering from injustice, but in general, the idea that Israel is bad and their foes are good seems to me to be an obvious moral inversion."
Ah! The old, 'you think Israel's actions are bad therefore you MUST think the Palestinian's actions are good." argument.
Actually a lot of us think both sides are as bad as each other, but the pro-Israel side can't acknowledge that fact as it strengthens our argument too much.
If you paint us as nazi-loving anti-semites you don't have to take any notice of what we say - do you?
"It's called Jordon."
Jordan is a country that is often overlooked. By far the most competent, British trained, force during the Arab-Israeli wars - and a player in the peaceful co-operation efforts. They are still edging towards a full western-style democracy.
A political faction in the Palestinian refugees in Jordan tried to usurp power there many years ago. It was a nasty shock to those Jordanians who had offered a temporary safe haven to them. One factor was Jordan's peace agreement with Israel.
Jordan is now taking a massive number of refugees from Syria - and nervously wondering about the long term effects on their own country.
We need to look at history to see what's wrong here. The state of Israel is a modern concept and has no historical (as in before 1940s) context. Same for the 'state' of Palestine, which never actually existed. Palestine has never been more than a protectorate. In reality, looking back into history (hundreds of years), both these 'peoples' have lived on this land at various times, sometimes even side by side!! They are actually closer genetically in many ways than we are to them!!
This shouldn't really be about religion either, as there are Christian Palestinians and Muslim Israelis. So, whilst the majority may be Jewish to Muslim etc., both sides have significant populations of other religions. The vast majority of both populations simply want to live in peace and have meaningful lives. The majority want nothing to do with this conflict and given some time, could probably learn to live alongside each other.
So, what's causing it? Politics!! Pure and simple. The Palestinians are being used by a lot of Arab nations and Israel is being used by a lot of Western nations. Each side is being 'sponsored' by someone. In essence, multiple countries are vying for power in the area and are sponsoring one side or the other to try and get the upper hand. Both Israel and those surrounding it (in quite a wide area) have very dubious histories, including politicians who have controlled mass killings etc. The only reason why Israel currently has the Golan Heights, West Bank etc. is because Arab nations joined together and were going to attack it. Yes, I know Israel fired the first shot, but clearly the Arab nations were going to attack.
Israel has made settlements with Egypt (for instance) and handed back land (Sinai). So, Israel is willing to do deals sometimes. Equally, the various Palestinian organisations have done deals as well. One of the big issues there, is that the Palestinian side if pretty fragmented. At least with Israel you have a single entity to deal with (the government). Even if you get some of the Palestinian bodies to agree, there's always another that won't. So, there's an issue of who can negotiate, which has also happened in Northern Ireland.
Ultimately, the solution has to be political and the first step is for people to get real. Israel needs to stop some of its actions. Hamas etc. need to realise they will never destroy Israel (it will never be allowed) and therefore stop saying that's their aim. All sides need to moderate their language and 'demands' and realise that sometimes you can't have what you desire. Insisting on the destruction of Israel is just stupid, just as expecting the Palestinians to continue in the West Bank and Gaza is stupid. The 'people' need to get the extremists out and get people willing to compromise in place. On both sides. Otherwise, it will just continue and most lives will be destroyed and damaged.
As to the academic boycott. Well, someone as intelligent as SH should look back in history. Did Rhodesia and South Africa get resolved by this? No. Did NI? No. Boycotts (at a country level) have never worked. The reasons is simple. It makes the population feel like they're under attack and makes them more extreme and more determined to survive because of it. SH time and efforts would be much better spent on trying to bring the academics together and talking sensibly rather than spitting bile at each other. The more talking between the various parties, the more understanding of the others perspective and then hopefully, some compromise can occur. It's the only way. Just refusing to deal with someone or another doesn't work; just look at NI as an example. We spent decades fighting the IRA etc., but it was only when we sat down and talked with Sinn Fein that things starting progressing. May well not be perfect yet and god knows there are still issues. But, it's a hell of a lot better than it was.
"The state of Israel is a modern concept and has no historical (as in before 1940s) context."
That is true for much of the Middle East. It was only after 1919 that most of their modern borders, and countries, were defined or even created.
It was slightly before this time that young European Jews - with a very liberal social agenda - started to buy poor agricultural land in what was to become Palestine from the legal Turkish owners. Hydroponics, and draining malarial swamps, were the only way these tracts were eventually made agriculturally viable.
The 1916 secret Sykes-Picot agreement carved up that part of the Ottoman Empire into British and French influences. After 1919 the Allies created many brand new countries by dividing the territory between various factions/ tribes. Generally they assigned them to traditional Arab rulers - although not necessarily one with a strong local following in their allocated area.
Unfortunately many like Iraq were artificially composed from amalgamating several tribal groups who were unlikely to forget their historical conflicts. The same thing happened in colonial Africa - where internal, and external, wars going back several hundred years are still being fought.
It is easy to forget that many European countries, or colonies, were only created in the last 400 years by similar processes of conquer, rule, amalgamation, and secession. Germany, Italy, and Belgium were all created as single entities in the 19th Century - and their internal fracture lines are still visible.
"Yes, I know Israel fired the first shot, but clearly the Arab nations were going to attack."
Two more significant events:
In the 1973 war Israel could not afford politically to make another pre-emptive strike. That meant a more protracted conflict when Egypt and Syria mounted a surprise attack - with Iraqi support later. This time Jordan stayed neutral.
Syria started with a massive blitzkrieg across the Golan Heights - bypassing the UN observers on the 1967 cease-fire line. The objective was to regain the strategic precipitous edge that gave a commanding view over Israel all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. The result was reputed to be the largest running tank battle ever. The successful counter-attack penetrated well into Syria - threatening Damascus before the UN cease fire. After negotiations Israel eventually withdrew to the 1967 UN cease-fire line.
Israel unilaterally pulled out of Gaza occupation in 2005. The Israeli army forcibly ejected recalcitrant Jewish settlers - and left all the settlers' buildings and farms intact These economically useful facilities were subsequently looted and destroyed by people in Gaza. Then the continuing rocket attacks on Israeli civilian populations were launched from those areas. The results of this episode influenced Israeli public opinion against any similar unilateral disengagement from occupied territories.
It was once said of the Palestinian leadership that they "grab defeat from the jaws of victory".
Absolutely true AC.
Anyone seeing this as a one sided question is completely missing the point and does not understand history. Both sides are responsible and both sides have the key to the answer. They have to work together. Both sides have done good and bad. You can argue till the cows come home about who is 'most bad', but it's irrelevant to fixing the problem.
If the various groups stopped firing rockets at Israel and carrying out suicide bombings etc., Israel would leave them alone. If Israel left them alone and ignored the attacks, eventually the attacks would hopefully stop. However, neither side is willing to act without the other. Also, the Palestinians simply can't act as one. This causes an immense number of problems which results in loads of agreements failing.
So the reason that the current crop of Intel processor works well is not because of the work of the individuals involved in it's design and the great many others throughout history and from all corners of the world whose work contributed to the science underpinning them but is actually a direct product of the religious/political climate in force in the area that some of those individuals involved happen to live in at the time it came to market. Interesting.
Gaza War 2009, wiki (US based, using anything else would be biased, and Arabs can't count are too stupid to collect statics etc.)..
Israelis killed: 13 (4 by themselves)
Palestinians killed: 1,417
As a proportion of population, 1m Palestinians, 300m Americans, that's the equivalent of a 9/11 event that kills 450,000. A similar scaling was used by Fox news in it's 'Victims of terror' show that focused exclusively on Israeli victims and made a parallel that Israel is hit by the equivalent of a 9/11 event every so often, using the proportion of population killed as a measure.
One can add the previous four years of Palestinian home made rocket attacks, which killed less than 10 people, and add an indeterminate number of Palestinians, killed in targeted killings etc. which form a constant backdrop, and Israelis needing to avenge having these rockets fired at them.
Then argue about the number of children killed, the Palestinians lying about how many of the dead were armed, how many civilians, etc. ad nauseam. But, anyway anyone looks at it, that was 1417 human beings, very similar to most of us, two parents, maybe a sibling, maybe a partner, maybe some children too.
The only way to justify this is to reclassify them as sub-human, inhuman, violent, illiterate, etc. So we end up with a group of people who think that it's fine to murder that many people, because they are so evil (a certain R, Dawkins repeatedly declares their belief to be evil) , that they deserve to die in that sort of quantity, and so do their children. Clearly Professor Hawkins hasn't quite seen it this way.
But four years on, no one cares much, and most probably don't even remember, given a few more year, people will care even less, and fewer still will even remember. But those who suffered loss, will they forget so easily?
"But those who suffered loss, will they forget so easily?"
No - because the established Middle Eastern tribal culture still demands an "eye for an eye" - sometimes very literally. In conflicts it potentially creates a vicious cycle for perpetuity. Unfortunately martyrdom can always be manipulated as a recruiting campaign by those who wish to perpetuate a conflict.
In a similar way the Christian Churches indoctrinate their young to various degrees - by venerating their religious martyrs and displaying gory works of art of their tortures.
The Israeli governments are possibly politically going "non-European" due to cultural pressures from the diaspora from other Middle Eastern Jewish populations. Alternatively they may believe that an "eye for an eye" is the only attitude their opponents respect.
When the USA invaded Iraq they had obviously not heard the local saying along the lines - "I will support my brother against my cousin - I will support my cousin against my countryman - I will support my countryman against an invader". T.E Lawrence came to understand, and despair of, this philosophy when he was in the Middle East as "Lawrence of Arabia".
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The reason Israelis are not being killed on the same scale is Israel has defensive measures like the Iron Dome to stop rockets hitting them, and the rockets that are fired mainly land in the countryside not the city’s as they are just fired randomly in the direction of Israel.
The reason so many people in Gaza died is that while Israel has the weapons and tech to fire a guided missile accurate to a few feet it doesn’t matter when the rocket sites they are targeting are placed on top of hospitals and in residential tower blocks.
Israel doesn’t want to kill everyone in Gaza otherwise Gaza would have be completely levelled years ago.
The people firing the rockets know Israel will respond, so they put them in places to ensure the greatest amount of people can be ‘martyred’ for the cause, therefore showing how evil Israel is.
Terrorist tactics lesson number 1 – The human shield.
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“If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Israelis put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel'
As pointed out Israel has expanded after gaining land following wars with everyone around them, to say that Israel was the aggressor or the victim is trying to make things a bit to black and white, but it is true that Israel had a very good reason to be worried when every country around you vows to “wipe them off the map”.
Israel’s attacks have been on the back of the reason/excuse that they are being attacked almost every day, again while this is true the difference still remains that if Israel where no longer being attacked, they would not have an excuse, and would stop under international pressure.
The enemies of Israel however don’t use excuses, they don’t say ‘we are fighting an aggressor’ or we are protecting our people, they fire rockets from schools, hospitals, and large residential areas, so the retaliation causes as much damage and death as possible and they win the propaganda war.
We saw this in Iraq
when you come under fire from a mosque, you are not allowed to fire back because they are in a mosque.
When we did start to fire back (this came after a number of deaths) the argument is no longer they shot at us so we shot back, it is ‘look what they did to our mosque’.
The people shooting at us, the same with the people shooting at Israel do not care about how many people are ‘martyred’ in the fight against Israel, the more women and children die ,the worse Israel looks the better it is for them.
In the West we have a hard time grasping this mentality,
If Israel wanted to, Palestine would not exist; it would take them a matter of days, so what’s stopping them? Is it the strength of Palestine? No. are they worried about being hated by the Arab world? No. Is it because they care about the consequences? Yes.
I don’t like what Israel does, I don’t support it, or condone it, but the truth is Israel would stop aggression if it was not needed, or if thouse in charge of the places it gets attacked from were seen to be stopping, not supporting the attacks. the reverse is true for its enemies.
The Arab world uses Palistine as a reason to hate Israel, but they are to blame for the suffering of the people as much as Israel
@AC.
Very true. Other Arab countries are simply using the Palestinians as a battering ram against Israel. It's the old saying 'Your enemies enemy is your friend'. If they really liked the Palestinians and cared about them, they could have taken them in, or at least would stop using them. Instead, they're a handy battering ram that enables them to be at arms length and therefore avoid a lot of the criticism. Unfortunately, the Palestinians have never really realised or cared that this is the case and therefore believe these people are actually their supporters and do care.
As soon as external parties get involved, it all gets very political and very opaque. The same will occur in Syria. Under the covers, there are external countries and entities influencing things. You've got various anti-Israeli groups in the south fighting for the government in exchange for weapons etc. You've got Iran backing the regime, as they've always been close. With the 'rebels'? Well, you've got various allied groups to Al-Quaeda and to some extent some western countries. It's long ago ceased to be about what the population want.
"If they really liked the Palestinians and cared about them, they could have taken them in, or at least would stop using them."
Jordan and Lebanon both took in large numbers of Palestinian refugees. Then they had problems with Palestinian political factions trying to usurp power. Lebanon was dragged into conflicts with Israel - and civil war. Jordan is therefore very wary about all the Iraqi, and now Syrian, refugees flooding across their border.
The population of Gaza has something like 50% under the age of 14. There is little employment - whereas in the old days many worked daily in Israel - or traded goods. Sitting on a powder keg like that it is essential to find something to distract the young. Factions in Hamas seem intent on imposing "morality" laws with rough summary punishments for adopting the western fashions they see elsewhere. New UN play grounds for children were systematically destroyed because they catered for girls. To be fair - the Israeli Jewish Ultra-Orthodox communities would share their zeal.
"As pointed out Israel has expanded after gaining land following wars with everyone around them"
During the 1973 war the Israeli counter-attack advanced almost to Damascus before the UN cease-fire. After negotiations they withdrew in 1974 to the 1967 cease-fire line.
The strategic value of the Golan Heights is that the edge bordering Israel is a precipitous drop. From that point in Israel it is a fairly flat short distance to the Mediterranean Sea. The Syrian guns used that advantage to harass Israeli farmers and villages. It was considered an impregnable Syrian Maginot Line - and it cost Israel dearly to take it in 1967. It will only be returned if Syria can be hedged with watertight guarantees of peace.
The Golan Heights now has a long cease-fire line fence down the middle with UN observers. Both sides have extensive minefields and anti-tank defences. The old volcanic cones scattered over the relatively flat plateau have spiral tracks for mobile artillery. It is a stand-off - neither side has an obvious big advantage. Syria has a slight access terrain advantage in being able to deploy more tanks quickly as in 1973.
The UN observers man some gates - like the old main Damascus road at Queneitra. The only people who are allowed to use them are locals, split by the conflict, who travel to universities or family gatherings.
In 2005 Israel unilaterally, and sometimes forcibly, withdrew their settlers from Gaza and handed over the settlements intact to Gaza control. Subsequent events are widely interpreted as that being an error in negotiation judgement that was not reciprocated.
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