Noam Chomsky helped lobby Stephen Hawking to stage Israel boycott | World news

Noam Chomsky helped lobby Stephen Hawking to stage Israel boycott | World news | The Guardian
▻http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/10/noam-chomsky-stephen-hawking-israel-boycott?CMP=twt_gu

Robert Booth and Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem
The Guardian, Friday 10 May 2013 19.47 BST

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.

The letter to Hawking declared: “Israel systematically discriminates against the Palestinians who make up 20% of its population in ways that would be illegal in Britain”, its treatment of the people of Gaza amounts to “collective punishment”, the construction of Jewish settlements breaches the Geneva convention and “Israel places multiple roadblocks, physical, financial and legal, in the way of higher education, both for its own Palestinian citizens and those under occupation”.

The letter continued: “Israel has a name for the promotion of its cultural and scientific standing: ’Brand Israel’. This is a deliberate policy of camouflaging its oppressive acts behind a cultured veneer.”

Professor Malcolm Levitt, a fellow of the Royal Society and an expert in magnetic resonance at Southampton University, who signed the letter, said: “Israel has a totally explicit policy of making life impossible for the non-Jewish population and I find it totally unacceptable. As a scientist, the tool I have available to prevent the normalisation of that situation is boycott. It is a tough choice because Israel is full of brilliant scientists and they are our colleagues.”