Stephen Hawking joins academic boycott of Israel

Post Reply New Topic

I bet Israel sucks even for the jews that live there.....isn't military service mandatory? and given all the violence that takes place it pretty much ensures all the young people are exposed to violence and killing people. I get the impression its a very militaristic nation which I simply do not support regardless of what race/ethnicity the people there are.

Then there is that bit about the unjust way modern day Israel came about, usually there are hard feelings when a group of people decides to declare other peoples land their own and throw them out regardless of why. Just not sure how people can argue that there was nothing at all wrong with the way modern day Israel came about. I also don't see how it is 'anti--Semitic' to point out that it was a little bit messed up.

Military service is de-jure mandatory in many democratic countries--but it's easy to get away from it if you want to. Many countries are far more militaristic than Israel; even though their military arsenal per capita is larger than the American militiary, their military culture is completely different.



Israel belonged to the jews long before the Romans, the Arabs and the Brits started fighting over it. Furthermore, the 1940's were a special case because millions of jews were forcefully removed from their homes in Arab countries.

It is, but it's considered part of the national defence of Israel in its culture. Not all people go to the front line, but everyone - apart from most Arabs - is expected to help.

Israel needs to be quite defensively militaristic because of the numerous threats it faces from those who would annihilate it.



No, it doesn't.



The option for the Israelis is this: be "militaristic" in a defensive sense or be wiped out.



The way Israel came about was far more just than the country you live in. Remember that the Americans had to butcher, murder and enslave their way. The U.S. is not unique, though. Slavery is a worldwide phenomenon, and still actually happens in many places in the world.



You do know that the Palestinians have never had their own land, don't you? The Mandate for Palestine was British-controlled, then the territory was under the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire.

The Palestinian identity didn't even come into existence until the mid-1960s. In 1948, the nascent Jewish state, Israel defended itself against the might of numerous Arab armies hellbent on Israel's annihilation. When Israelis triumphed, Jews across the Arab and Muslim world were forced to flee. I accept that a lot of people did leave the Israeli state - often because of the fighting, but Jewish leaders pleaded with them to stay.



You know about the huge historical connection to the land and, furthermore, the Balfour Declaration and the attempts to mediate peace between Arabs and Jews in the decades before Israel was born?

This is silly. Even granting your assumption that Jews circa 1920 were the legitimate inheritors of the territory once occupied by the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, so what? Most historians also agree that the Cherokee did indeed exist in separate and discreet territories in the US prior to their lands being seized in a grotesque fashion by the United States. And much more recently in time, as well, than the Romans "seized" Israel. So...shouldn't much of North & South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and I believe Alabama be returned to the Cherokee, to apply your curious "logic" more widely?

And how many Jews of the sort eligible for automatic Israeli citizenship via the "Law of Return" were actually in Israel prior to its seizure by the Ottomans? Who took over, as best I recall, when the Baghdad Caliphate collapsed, though I'm probably forgetting an interim of rule by some savage thug or other. Or for that matter in 1917 when the British seized the land -- not from Jews, but from Ottoman Turks.

And finally, weren't there OTHER groups on the land before the 12 Tribes showed up and did a dance of genocide upon them, presuming the Book of Joshua to be anything other than a crude fable, of course. Which it probably is, but no matter, since it seems to be what everyone points to as defining the proper boundaries of Israel. Shouldn't the descendents of these Moabites, Ediomites, etc., if identifiable, ALSO be clamoring for a piece of the territory that is Israel. After all, don't most historians think they ALSO existed, in some form or another?




And when exactly did Israeli "nationalism" get its start? Since nationalism as we know it is a relatively recent historical phenomenon, I'd be surprised if there's much in the way of this prior to the 1860s or so. And since no American nationalism -- if we could even call it that -- existed in any way shape or form prior to, oh 1750 or so, wouldn't that then have made the gang that cobbled together the Declaration of Independence in 1776 illegitimate at the time they did what they did? After all, there'd been no American nationalism until a mere 25 years or so before they got together. Shame on them! How deluded they were!

And though I think Hawking is being a nitwit here, these kind of attempts to give Israel some sort of historical legitimacy in this sense are simply false. I dislike this stuff every bit as much as I dislike the sort of moral relativism baaed by the sheep who are cheerfully willing to ignore every Arab on Arab crime, but are quite willing -- and seemingly happy -- to bounce up and down shrieking every time an Israeli Jew looks at an Arab cross-eyed.

Meh. About the only conclusion I've ever come to vis a vis the Middle East is that nothing ever gets truly solved, and that after oil the main export is and always has been rhetoric.

Are the native Americans still being repressed the way the jews were being repressed in the 1940's in the Arab states? Contrary to popular belief, the new settlers didn't fight with the indians--the cavalry did. Most native Americans belong to the same culture as the white Americans do, but to be fair, they should be getting a greater recognition of their cultural heritage.

To be fair, native Americans could be given pre-emption rights on commercial and industrial properties in the states you've mentioned.



Their ancestors were.



Nobody here claimed that the British were the rightful owners of the land. British imperialism is a dark chapter of the European history.



That would be the caananites; essentially people with the same ethnicity as the jews, before the Jewish culture arose.



What about them? Are they facing the same persecution as the jews were in the 1940's? Moab describes what's called Jordan today and the edomites themselves conquered their land from the caananites and were eventually merged with the jews.



Depends on what you define as nationalism. Zionism arose in the 19th century, but an Israeli identity existed before christ.



This is a false analogy. Palestinian nationalism arose 20 years after Israel was formed and was mainly fueled by terrorist organizations who sought to legitimize violence against israelis.

Quite frankly, many of the founding fathers were incredibly deluded (many of them were both white supremacists and slave owners to make matters worse). The entire reason why the declaration of independence was possible, was because the native American tribes weren't united as one country; thus the founding fathers saw America as one big uncharted and vacant area.

The Native Americans have different rights than the rest of us. There are some good things, naturally. They're actually exempt from federal taxes, for one, and sin laws (Why Indian tobacco is cheap and they have so many casinos.

However, you'd have to ask an Indian about repression. The Reservation system is still in place, effectively segregating the populations of most major tribes on some of the worst land. The poverty and lack of education on these reservations is staggering. The idea is that they are free to have their culture on the reservation, but a lot of developers have encroached on reservations, often with government support, in recent years. There's also the fact that when an "Indian Rights Movement" shows up, now and then, they get put down, sometimes violently, by the government.

We basically treat them as second class.



You're arguing that ethnicity is the important thing here? There are very, very few ethnic Hebrews left in the world. Most are German, Eastern-European, Russian, or Spanish. The ethnic difference between the Arabs and the Hebrews is very, very slim. Both were fringe groups of the Amorite Babylonians. Yahweh was a Babylonian cult that happened to push the others out in that region. That's why we call both groups Semites.

We can keep going further and further back. After all, it was Sumerians who colonized the region long before the Amorites inherited it after conquering Sumer.



Just about every ethnic group on Earth has suffered genocide. Do we have a right to demand that all Mestizos and Europeans leave South America and return to Spain? No. We do, however, have a duty to encourage them to treat Indigenous South Americans as equals. Likewise, if the Indigenous were dominant and oppressing the Mestizos and Europeans, we have the same duty.

Second, it was the Germans who treated the Jews that way, not the Palestinians. There's no love lost there, of course, but the fact is, using that argument, why not give Munich to the Jews? After all, that's where Hitler got started.

See, this is the scary phenomenon that I was referring to as "Einstein quotes syndrome". Why exactly do you think Stephen Hawking would be a good political leader?

You're asking the wrong question. I don't necessarilly think there should be a centralised 'political authority'.

What makes you think politicians have great insight into managing industry, health, education or the scientific sectors?

Each specific discipline should be governed by those that have expertise in those specific fields.

Thomas81, is this related to the "energy accounting" concepts that you've previously referenced here in PPR?

That is the economic side, yes. The social side is the technate design.