Stephen Hawking gets Hasbara’ed

Stephen Hawking’s much vaunted presence at a scientific conference in Israel, hosted by Shimon Peres, would have added much needed sheen to the rogue state’s tarnished image. The esteemed physicist’s keynote address to his colleagues, and in particular, his host nation, would have branded Israel in the eyes of the world as a regional epicenter for cultural and intellectual pursuits, and bestowed it with the legitimacy it lacks as an international lawbreaker, operating the world’s largest open air prison. If the brainiest guy in the world saw fit to ignore a boycott, who was Elvis Costello, Stevie Wonder, Julianne Moore, Emma Thompson, Viggo Mortenson, Salma Hayek etc to take a moral stand against ‘The Only Democracy in the Middle East’? Who needs a bunch of “uppity has been” celebrities, when you’ve got Stephen Hawkings (and Justin Bieber!) on your side? “I’ll raise you one Gaga for your Tutu. Take that, H8terz”, seems to be Israel’s official response to growing international condemnation for its apartheid regime. It’s one thing to lose Lollapalooza, quite another to be publicly stood up by the most eminent intellectual on the planet. Perhaps confirmed attendees Barbra Streisand and Prince Albert of Monaco will step up to the vacant podium and share their thoughts on quantum physics.

Organizers of the now lackluster event were ecstatic to have someone of Hawking’s calibre to bolster a state-sponsored Science Fair, falling all over themselves to praise the renowned physicist. “Look at what we bagged”, these Hasbara trophy hunters were bragging just hours before Professor Hawkings cancelled his scheduled appearance at the conference, citing his conscience as the reason for bowing out.

“I accepted the invitation to the Presidential Conference with the intention that this would not only allow me to express my opinion on the prospects for a peace settlement but also because it would allow me to lecture on the West Bank. However, I have received a number of emails from Palestinian academics. They are unanimous that I should respect the boycott. In view of this, I must withdraw from the conference. Had I attended, I would have stated my opinion that the policy of the present Israeli government is likely to lead to disaster.”

And suddenly the soon-to-be fawned-over celebrity became a pariah within the pariah state when Israeli spin doctors were unable to excise politics from Professor Hawking’s statement – even going as far as releasing a statement on his behalf, citing non-existent “health concerns” as a reason for his very public no-show. Israeli bloggers and commenters, no longer restrained by state-sanctioned civility towards useful idiots (oops, I mean “visiting scholars”) in order to conceal the real face of their brutal military occupation of Palestinian land, gave themselves free rein to rage against Professor Hawkings and even the machines that keep him alive. Israel’s fearsome warriors trained in the deadly art of typo-riddled message board missives suddenly saw fit to mock his disability and his appearance, calling his intellect into question, while denouncing him as . . . wait for it . . . “anti-Semitic”.

Israel’s butt-hurt response to people who point out its failures is reminiscent of those guys who are involuntarily featured on the now defunct Tumblr called “The ‘Nice Guys’ of Craig’s List” where users could upload the profiles of self-described “nice guys” looking for women on free dating sites. Here you could read the screen grabs of conversations between “nice guys” and the women who “rejected” them. Should a date seeker decline a suitor’s offer to be “treated like a queen” she can expect a litany of threats and obscenities to follow her into a cat-filled, self-imposed, penis-free spinsterhood. This is Israel in a nutshell. It’s a nation dominated by “nice guys”. And by “nice guys”, I mean entitled, hypocritical, opportunistic, rageaholic predators with persecution complexes.

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