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Anti-Israel Prof. Noam Chomsky helped BDS get to Stephen Hawking

Anti-Israel Prof. Noam Chomsky helped BDS get to Stephen Hawking

If you think Stephen Hawking’s decision not to attend a conference in Israel was a principled stand for academic or other freedoms, you can drop that notion.

Hawking, as many have pointed out in the past few days, has attended conferences in the past several years in such beacons of academic freedom and national tolerance as Iran and China.

What’s becoming very clear is that Hawking was targeted with a concerted pressure effort to bully the aging, seriously ill scientist into lending his name to the demonization of Israel.

We already knew that Hawking was pressured by Palestinian academics, but The Guardian reports the vile anti-Israel U.S. Professor Noam Chomsky spearheaded the effort to pressure Hawking as well, Noam Chomsky helped lobby Stephen Hawking to stage Israel boycott:

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….

Chomsky, who has backed “boycott and divestment of firms that are carrying out operations in the occupied territories”,  agreed to add his considerable weight to the pressure on Hawking after email correspondence with the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine campaign group (Bricup), said its chair, Jonathan Rosenhead.

None of this really is surprising.  But it is how Hawking will be remembered, not for his achievements, but for the fact that he gave in to pressure from some of the worst elements in society who stand against the freedoms Hawking claimed to be supporting.

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Comments

LibraryGryffon | May 11, 2013 at 12:37 pm

I had read about this in the last day or so, but according to that article, Hawking’s people were saying that his decision not to go was purely a medical one; his doctors didn’t want him flying at this time. He is 71 and not in the best of health to begin with.

However, I can certainly see Chomsky and the -ites using any excuse to claim that someone is boycotting Israel, no matter the truth of the matter.

Professor Hawking showed us the rationality of thought. The finest physicist since Einstein. I believe Dr. Hawking is so disabled that handlers are taking over unless it is something like Alzheimer as well as ALS. ALS does affect the mind. At age 71 he should be out of the spotlight and cared for by his family not USED by demonic antisemites.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/167843#.UY52PzfmyZZ “…British physicist Prof. Stephen Hawking’s decision to support the academic boycott of the state of Israel is “quite hypocritical for an individual who prides himself on his own intellectual accomplishment,” asserted Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center.

“His whole computer-based communication system runs on a chip designed by Israel’s Intel team. I suggest that if he truly wants to pull out of Israel he should also pull out his Intel Core i7 from his tablet,” said Darshan Leitner…
Shurat HaDin noted that Hawking, who has ALS and is wheelchair bound, depends on a computerized voice system for communication. Since 1997, this communication system has been sponsored and provided by Intel. His latest computer is based on an Intel Core i7 Processor. The Core micro architecture was designed by Israel’s Intel team that previously designed the Pentium M mobile processor.

The first mobile processor that used the Israeli designed chip was codenamed “Merom.” Merom is the Hebrew word for a higher plane of existence or a level of heaven, and was a name chosen by the team in Haifa, Israel…”

Juba Doobai! | May 11, 2013 at 1:17 pm

Hawking will go down in history as the guy who didnt know what was for his own good, the great intellect who boycotted the country that made it possible for him to communicate with the world.

This is not the first time that somebody has abused Hawking.

    AbeBird in reply to Juba Doobai!. | May 12, 2013 at 1:32 am

    Amazing! It reminds me that the Hamas uses to shoot on Hospitals – ‘Barzlai’ in Ashkelon and ‘Soroka’ in Beer Sheba that host Gazans patients too, and on the electricity power station near Ashkelon that supply 70% of Gazan’s electricity need. It is much amazing how such non-thinking people can damage their own well just because some dark low hatred to Jews or Israel.

      Juba Doobai! in reply to AbeBird. | May 12, 2013 at 11:14 am

      AbeBird, it is not amazing at all. When the Arabs carry out these self-destructive acts, they blame Israel. Every act of destruction is a bit of Arabwood (I don’t call Arabs “Palestinians” so I’ve decided to jettison “Pallywood”). Every Arab killed in a Jewish hospital is an Arab “killed” by the IDF. Besides, the Arabs don’t care about life. They love death, and every one of them killed is a BS accusation that Israel is to blame.

      So, there is no amazement, no astonishment, no anything except disdain and sorrow at what they do and how the world believes these liars with a proven track record of blood libels.

LukeHandCool | May 11, 2013 at 1:21 pm

If I were Jewish, I think the Jewish B.D.S. Chomsky et al could transform me into a terrorist.

No, no, no … heavens no! I don’t mean I’d thus be susceptible to their self-love-through-self-loathing, sociopathic sociopolitical, pathologically mother-of-all-neuroillogical clusterf**k world(Jew-conspiracy)view ramblings … in other words, Mad Pork crazy-prion infested brains (dem Jews got hold of some bad Trichinosis) …

I just mean if I were a normal, garden-variety, run-of-the-mill Jew trying to lead a good life as a good person … they’d make my head explode!

Even as a gentile I’m feeling pressure-cooker type throbbings in my forehead.

“Jews are like everybody else, only more so.”

Funny saying. Until you get to the leftist BDS Jews. Then that funny saying becomes really disturbing and sad.

Nuts. That’s what they are, in a nutshell. Only more so.

    AbeBird in reply to LukeHandCool. | May 12, 2013 at 1:38 am

    “B.D.S. Chomsky et al” are already intellectual terrorists of mind. Chomsky is much dependent on his Marxist early history that is checking facts by Politburo’s rules.

Weasel Zippers: “Fun fact: The equipment Hawking uses to communicate is Israeli made.”
Another FUN FACT: Israeli medical researchers are world leaders in motor neuron disease related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) – also known as “Hawking’s disease” !!!!!

LukeHandCool | May 11, 2013 at 1:29 pm

P.S. Why don’t anti-BDS academics fight fire with fire?

They should draw up a statement and lobby Stephen Hawking to sign off on it.

Something simple and clear, like:

“Dear BDS Crowd,

On second thought, go f**k yourselves.”

Sincerely,

Stephen Hawking (who, like everyone else, changes his mind at times)

Chomsky is one of the worst people in the world.

(See the period?)

He would willingly bring back the Collectivist regimes that have slaughtered millions.

But it would be “different” this time…

1. beloved2 | May 11, 2013 at 12:57 pm

Professor Hawking showed us the rationality of thought. The finest physicist since Einstein.

That Hawking is the finest physicist since Einstein seems to have escaped the people who award the Nobel Prize in Physics.

I believe Dr. Hawking is so disabled that handlers are taking over unless it is something like Alzheimer as well as ALS. ALS does affect the mind. At age 71 he should be out of the spotlight and cared for by his family not USED by demonic antisemites.

Wow, maybe Satan himself is personally supervising the demonic Hawking handlers.

2. Juba Doobai! | May 11, 2013 at 1:17 pm

Hawking will go down in history as the guy who didnt know what was for his own good, the great intellect who boycotted the country that made it possible for him to communicate with the world.

Is the claim that Hawking uses Israeli technology too good to check?

Here and here that claim is denied. The links, from a nonZionist Jewish site, offer specifics but unfortunately not citations to back them up. Afaic the issue is unresolved.

3. I logged in with the intention of blasting Hawking for using Israeli tech. I presumed that a cursory search would verify that he does so. I feel I’ve been played, and am not a happy camper.

    AbeBird in reply to gs. | May 12, 2013 at 2:00 am

    ps, Main “Inrel” departments of search and developements are located in Israel in 3 sites (Haifa, Petah-Tikvah and Kiryat-Gat). All Pentiums, Meroms and Core i7 where invented by Israelis in Israel (many Israelis working in Seattle either). It might be that the wheelchair itself was constructed in Seattle itself, as other main company’s components.

      gs in reply to AbeBird. | May 12, 2013 at 3:29 pm

      All Pentiums, Meroms and Core i7 where invented by Israelis in Israel…

      1. What chips were designed in Israel? My previous comment indicated the lack of definitive verification in the claims and counterclaims. In response, AbeBird makes an even more sweeping, completely unsupported claim.

      Memron. Correct. How Israel saved Intel.

      Pentium. Vinod Dham is called “the father of the Pentium chip”. He doesn’t look Israeli to me.

      i7. Ronak Singhal is cited as lead architect. He doesn’t look Israeli either.

      2. It takes considerably more effort to refute bullshit than to make it up. My ongoing suggestion to our host is to either police the comment section or close it.

        William A. Jacobson in reply to gs. | May 12, 2013 at 8:32 pm

        So I’m supposed to fact check every detail of very comment, including yours, and if not, close the comment section? That’s not the way comment sections work anywhere. One of the great things is that commenters can fact check each other.

        As to your hits on other commenters, I think that while they might not be precisely right about all Intel chips being designed/developed in Israel, it is pretty clear that Israelis are responsible for many of the major chip innovations and designs used by Intel, including microarchitecture and the Pentimum mobile chip as well as many others, this ZDnet article is a pretty good syummary, http://www.zdnet.com/israel-inside-a-history-of-intels-r-and-d-in-israel-7000003122/

        As to Hawking, this Scientific American article details the role Intel has played, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=intel-helps-hawking-communicate

        As to Hawking’s specific chip, this article indicates that Hawking’s voice system uses a tablet running on the Intel Core i7 chip (no surprise there, most newer laptops/tablets use those chips), http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/05/09/stephen-hawking-boycott-of-israeli-conference-%E2%80%98outrageous%E2%80%99-organizers-say/

        That chip is an Israeli design http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_(microarchitecture)

        So without pulling the chip out of Hawking’s tablet to check, it seems very, very likely that he is using a late-version Intel chip designed in Israel.

          1. As I noted at 2:08 pm, I initially took the claims about Hawking/Intel/Israel at face value. Afaic they do not survive scrutiny undamaged.

          2. IMO my comments give due credit to the major Israeli contribution to Intel. In particular, I acknowledged that Intel Israel may well have saved the parent company at one point.

          3. The fact remains that the “Father of Pentium” is Indian. As for the i7, here is an Intel video, with text introduction (boldface mine):

          On the Intel Core i7 Design Team
          Uploaded on Nov 4, 2008
          Sr. Principal Engineer Ronak Singhal share what it’s like working on Intel’s Oregon CPU architecture team designing the latest Intel Core i7 processor, codenamed “Nehalem.”

          4. You write:

          As to Hawking’s specific chip, this article indicates that Hawking’s voice system uses a tablet running on the Intel Core i7 chip (no surprise there, most newer laptops/tablets use those chips), http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/05/09/stephen-hawking-boycott-of-israeli-conference-%E2%80%98outrageous%E2%80%99-organizers-say/

          That chip is an Israeli design http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_(microarchitecture)

          That algemeiner article quotes an Israeli law firm. I find the Intel video more credible.

          5.

          So without pulling the chip out of Hawking’s tablet to check, it seems very, very likely that he is using a late-version Intel chip designed in Israel.

          The information I’ve seen to date makes me consider this unlikely.

          6. Afaic, unless more conclusive evidence emerges than has appeared to date, the computer-chip critique of Hawking is limited and open to undermining: an apparently flawed narrative which invites counterattack.

          7. However, the last paragraph of the algemeiner piece notes that Hawking accepted the Israeli Wolf Foundation’s prestigious Wolf Prize. His current behavior after that strikes me as a much more clearcut case of biting the hand that fed him than the computer-chip issue does. His publicizing his boycott is especially egregious.

          Will the Saudis or somebody make it worth his while? It wouldn’t surprise me.

          gs, You’re wrong again! Intel i7 was invented and developed in Israel base of Intel, and had continued its adjustment to Hawking’s wheelchair in Oregon, US, as many other Intel’s gadgets. In any case, Oregon is full of Israeli experts too.
          Intel Core i7 as an Intel brand name applies to several families of desktop and laptop 64-bit x86-64 processors using the Nehalem (Rivers in Hebrew), Westmere, Sandy Bridge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge , and Ivy Bridge microarchitectures. All developed primarily by the Israel branch of Intel, the codename was originally “Gesher” (meaning “bridge” in Hebrew). Intel introduced the Core i7 name with the Bloomfield Quad-core processor in late 2008. In 2009 new Core i7 models based on the Lynnfield desktop quad-core processor and the Clarksfield quad-core mobile were added,and models based on the Arrandale dual-core mobile processor were added in January 2010. All Cores series, including Core-i7, were invented in Israel by Israelis at Haifa’s Intel center.
          http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000616066&fid=1724

          • Intel Israel’s Haifa, Petah Tikva, Jerusalem and Kiryat Gat centers forms the major component of Intel’s global product pipeline. The Pentium 286 and 386 microprocessors… and most of the 486 were designed at Intel Israel. The MMX technology was launched by Intel in early 1997. The MMX chip was designed for speeding up multimedia applications such as audio, video, and communications. The Centrino Mobile Technology, launched in early 2003, which gives computers Wi-Fi access and greatly enhanced mobility, was designed in Intel-Israel. The Intel-Dual Core innovation for laptops drew upon expertise and experience garnered during the Israeli development of the Centrino processor. The Intel Core 2 Quad processor for desktop PCs, designed to handle massive computer and visualization workloads enabled by powerful multi-core technology, was developed by Intel-Israel. Intel’s Core7 was developed by Intel-Israel. Intel says it is a faster, intelligent, multi-core technology that applies processing power where it’s needed most. New Intel Core i7 processors deliver an incredible breakthrough in PC performance. Most of the Windows NT and XP operating systems were developed by Microsoft Israel.

          1. I now consider it likely—at worst, more likely than not—that Hawking uses an Israeli-designed chip.

          2. Here is another Intel video about the making of the Nehalem chip. Israel is not mentioned in the list of Intel locations which contributed to the effort.

          3. However, that video was made in 2008. The Globes story cited by AbeBird is dated 2011; in fact, here, also dated 2011, is an Intel video of Shlomit Weiss.

          4. However, the successor to the Israeli-designed Sandy Bridge architecture is Haswell, designed in Oregon as was the predecessor.

          (Speaking of Oregon, to AbeBird’s remark that ‘Nehalem’ is Hebrew for ‘rivers’, I add that Oregon’s Nehalem Bay is within driving distance of Intel’s Holliston facility.)

          5. So, yeah, if Hawking upgrades regularly, his current chip is an Israeli design—but quite possibly not the previous and next ones.

          6. It sounds reasonable to me that Intel might maintain two or more design organizations which compete/collaborate/complement each other.

          7. AbeBird continues to ignore that the “Father of Pentium” is Indian. He does not note that his closing paragraph apparently is taken verbatim from his 2010 comment here, in which I learned, among other things, that the Google search algorithm is an Israeli contribution to humanity (?!).

          Come to think of it, I have learned two Hebrew words because of interacting with AbeBird: ‘nehalem’ and ‘hasbarah’. It has become less perplexing that Netanyahu came out of the election weakened.

          8. Nothing in the foregoing is intended to deprecate Israeli contributions to STEM. In particular—hey, why not set off another firestorm?—, I doubt that the USA’s crony-capitalist, pork-barrel, logrolling military-industrial complex could make missile defense work without Israeli assistance.

It’s become rather vogue of late to “critically” hate, especially as a gnomsky.

I think this shows that having a great scientific mind does not necessarily mean you can’t be wrong.

New dictionary entry:

hawk·ing
[haw-king]
noun
‘A person brilliant at solving a specific type of puzzle, otherwise void of any sense.’

great unknown | May 11, 2013 at 11:19 pm

Someone convinced him that boycotting Israel is his ticket to finally getting the Nobel Prize.

Never thought I would see apologists for Chomsky so active on these comment boards.

What’s with the nit-picking over one comment about Intel chips? You are doing the forest/trees thing.

The point is that Israel is a hot bed of advanced technology – this is not in dispute. Intel’s Israel division made major advances in chip design – not in dispute. Hawking uses advanced technology to communicate and stay alive – not in dispute.

Even if the *specific* chip mentioned is not 100% of Israeli origin, it has a strong Israeli heritage – even if one of the designer’s is an Indian who works at the Israeli plant. It’s not a plant in India, it’s in Israel.

The point was to show Hawking’s hypocrisy in attacking Israel – a country whose technology has overall benefited him. Let’s drop the micro-details over geeky-techno stuff.

Jacobson has already pointed out that Hawking has gone to meetings in Iran and China – hardly bastions of human rights, so if he was *really* concerned about human rights, why support China and Iran, but bash Israel? Hypocrisy.

I think Hawking’s illness has finally gotten to his mind – he is now easily manipulated by the Chomsky’s of the world, a useful idiot for the pro-muslim, anti-Semite crowd.

Sad.

[Also, given the fact that Gore, Arafat and Carter have won Nobel Prizes, I think we can safely say that the prestige and value of that prize has been diminished – the fact that Hawking has not won one is no reflection on the value of his work]

    gs in reply to sultanp. | May 13, 2013 at 2:27 pm

    Iirc the mechanism for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize is completely different from the science prizes. Different sets of people make the decisions.

    Iirc when the Nobel committee for the physics prize considers an award to a theorist, historically it has very strongly selected for theoretical work that predicts or explains important experiments. Hawking’s famous (and important) results on black hole radiation/evaporation do not meet that criterion at this time.

    The Israeli Wolf Prize is less strict and Hawking did win that. There are various new prizes which award considerable sums but I don’t know much about them or about Hawking’s status wrt them.