PAUL JAY: Welcome to The Real News Network.
I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore.
And welcome to this edition of The Bennis
Report with Phyllis Bennis, who now joins
us from Washington, D.C.
Phyllis is a fellow and the director of the
New Internationalism Project at the Institute
for Policy Studies in Washington.
She's the author of the books Before and After:
U.S. Foreign Policy and the War on Terrorism
and Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli
Conflict: A Primer.
Thanks for joining us again, Phyllis.
PHYLLIS BENNIS: Great to be with you, Paul.
JAY: So Stephen Hawking's announced he will
not attend a conference in Israel.
What's that about?
And how significant is that?
BENNIS: This is an extraordinary move on his
part.
This is probably the highest profile participant
in the longstanding academic and cultural
boycott that's part of the global movement
for what is known as BDS, boycott, divestment,
and sanctions, a Palestinian civil society
call that came out in 2005 urging people to
bring nonviolent economic and social and cultural
pressure to bear on Israel until it stops
its violations of international law and human
rights.
For someone of Stephen Hawking's stature to
make a decision like this and be very clear
that this was not because of ill health, it
was specifically because of, as he put it
in a statement, what he knows about Palestine
and the recommendations that he sought from
his Palestinian academic colleagues, this
is huge.
This was not really an academic conference.
JAY: Phyllis, just one sec.
I'll just jump in with a quote from The Guardian
which I've just seen, where this apparently
is an article that was written about this
and approved by Hawking.
This is what he said.
It describes the cancellation as, quote, "his
independent decision to respect the boycott,
based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and
on the unanimous advice of his own academic
contacts there".
BENNIS: It's an amazing thing to not only
decide not to participate--and, again, this
was not an academic conference per se; this
was a thoroughly political conference.
It's the annual president's conference that
they hold in Israel every year under the auspices
of now Israeli President Shimon Peres.
And he was to be the keynote speaker.
It always brings together global famous people
of all different kinds--cultural workers,
scientists, writers, artists, etc.
And for someone of Hawking's stature to make
this decision and make that statement that
he's doing it independently in respect of
the boycott, that's huge.
This is going to be a huge move forward for
the boycott movement overall, and I think
it's going to move very close to making Israeli
people, ordinary people, recognize the cost
that their occupation and their apartheid
policies are having on them.
It's not only something that happens to the
government.
You know, this is very similar, Paul, to the
period in the late '80s--sorry, the late '70s
and throughout the 1980s of the South Africa
anti-apartheid movement.
At the time when boycotts and divestment campaigns
were underway, much of them focused on the
banks and the corporations.
But it was the sports boycott that really
engaged white South Africans, because sports,
and particularly South Africa's role in the
international sporting world, was hugely important
for ordinary South Africans.
JAY: Well, this is what I was going to ask
you.
There's been some critique from especially,
you could say, left-of-center liberal Israeli
academics who themselves have been very critical
of the occupation.
But they've critiqued the cultural part of
the boycott.
They agree with the sort of commercial boycott,
but they say by the cultural boycott, and
especially boycotting universities, it isolates
many of the academics in Israel who are in
fact critical of the policy.
What do you make of that?
BENNIS: That's true.
As far as it goes, that's a true statement.
It does isolate to some degree those individual
academics.
The boycott is very clear.
The boycott call is not aimed at individual
academics.
It doesn't call for no one to talk to Palestinian
academics, for example, or--sorry.
It does not call for no one to talk to Israeli
academics or Israeli scientists.
The boycott aims at institutions, Israeli
government and academic institutions.
But there is no question that the pain of
the boycott will be felt by individual Israelis.
And the theory is--and this is, again, where
it comes very close to the models that we
saw during the South African era anti-apartheid
movement--when South African, ordinary South
African whites were affected by the sports
boycott, they began to finally reconsider
the cost to them of apartheid.
In the Israeli instance, it means that Israelis
who see Israeli culture and science and technology,
the great accomplishments of Israeli society
and what they're most proud of, perhaps, in
their society, that when that starts to be
affected by this global boycott, when you
have instances of people like Stephen Hawking
saying, I will not participate in an official
institutional Israeli [incompr.] because there
is a boycott designed to force Israel to stop
its violations of international law and human
rights, that's a huge reality.
JAY: Given how seriously Israel takes its
science and scientists, the fact that Hawking
and for--I assume most people know, but I
think we should mention for those who don't,
Hawking is one of the world's leading physicists
and cosmologists.
He's a serious brain.
BENNIS: And probably the most famous scientist
of any scientist in the world today, who's
alive today.
He's an extraordinary genius of a man.
And the stature of that kind of a decision
makes this inordinately important.
And I think it very much parallels how white
South Africans felt about the sports boycott.
It was like the end of their world as they
knew it.
When that starts to happen with ordinary Israelis,
when they start to realize that they are paying
a price for these Israeli policies, they will
begin to demand a change.
JAY: Alright.
Thanks for joining us, Phyllis.
BENNIS: Thank you.
JAY: Thank you for joining us on The Real
News Network.
