Scientists rally behind museum's 'Israel Day'
Lord Winston and 100 top academics reject 'pernicious' protest over Science Museum
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More than 100 academics including some of the nation's most senior scientists have written a letter in response to "pernicious" calls for the Science Museum to cancel its Israel Science Day event today.
The strongly worded letter, signed by Professor Robert Winston and Baroness Susan Greenfield among others, accused those campaigning against the event of "preventing British schoolchildren from being inspired by scientific discovery and innovation".
More than 400 campaigners are opposing the celebration of Israeli science on the grounds that it promotes Israeli universities whose research was complicit with the military campaign in Gaza. The letter, sent to The Independent, says: "Science crosses borders, builds bridges and transcends national and political divides. It can unite people but the protesters seek only to divide and exclude. At a time of high community tensions, these boycotts are especially pernicious."
Signatories of the letter include Lord Winston, chair of the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology, Professor Susan Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution, and Professor Ruth Deech, a former chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. They welcomed the museum's refusal to cancel the event which is to take place today amid enhanced security and picketers.
The educational workshops and seminars being held by Israeli scientists are not being hosted or sponsored by the museum but are organised as a corporate event by the Zionist Federation. The letter, signed by 104 academics, was organised by "Stop the Boycott", a group set up in 2007 to oppose a planned University and College Union boycott of Israeli universities.
Speaking out against the protest, Baroness Deech said: "This is a counter-productive and anti-intellectual gesture. Regardless of the reasons given, this looks and feels like a racist statement. Far from helping the Palestinians, it does nothing but discredit the protesters. Why are the political activists singling out Israel and not taking similar positions on so many other conflicts around the world?
"There is a global principle of scientific enquiry and this runs totally counter to that. Two years ago, there was an ugly attempt to boycott all Israeli academics. This time, the scientists are the target and it is no less unpleasant."
Baroness Greenfield added: "Boycotting science is a lose-lose strategy. Nobody wins. On the other hand promoting science, especially in young people, is the real hope for the 21st century."
Stephen Ladyman, MP for South Thanet, said he was "disgusted" by the protest petition signatories. "I'm pretty disgusted that scientists, academics and people I would greatly respect have been so narrow-minded to try and encourage a boycott of science. Academic freedom has to be protected as ferociously as we can," he added.
The critics accuse the museums of promoting scientists who are "complicit in the Israeli occupation and in the policies and weaponry deployed to such disastrous effect in Gaza".
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Comments
Israel is a murderous state and must be stopped. Israeli Science Day is no more innocent than having a Hamas Science Day or Palestinian Science Day and if Hamas did try to have a Science Day the Israeli-Zionists would be protesting as well. What Israeli Science Day is trying to do is put an innocent harmless spin on what is actually a ruthless fascist policy of denying basic human rights and conditions to Gaza and the West Bank. The Zionist fascist tentacles reach all over--we have seen Mosad operate in Africa and we have seen USA Senator Joseph Lieberman (also a Mosad agent) take hostage the Democratic party during the Bush years. It is just as evident that the Zionists are putting spin on how innocent Israelis are with "Science Day", when they are actually guilty of genocide against Palestinians.
I used to pity those Holocaust survivors. Now they have no moral upper hand, no respect. You cannot claim to be a victim of a camp and then turn around and do the same to the Palestinians. Is Gaza not Auschwitz but instead of ovens the Nazis used, the Israelis are using American F-16 jets, phosphorus, cluster bombs and such to achieve the same ends as the Nazis. Hitler is smirking.
The Israeli murderous policy against the Palestinians must be stopped and protested against and one excellent way of doing it is to flag the Israeli Science Day as the sham that it is.
For a people who claim to suffered so much, they are now emulating the Nazi and dishing it out to others.
Do humans not learn anything from history?
Delighted that the top academics have not listened to a bunch of rascists but have voiced their opinion loud and clear. Such a little country as Israel yet such backbone. I admire them for their stance.
This is about science not politics - for some reason people think that the rules are different in this case
You are suggesting that one should always look to the injustices of antiquity to justify the current abuse of the Palestinians by Israel.
yet hundreds of thousands of palestinian students are prevented from receiving their education by the occupying forces of israel. why not try inspiring palestinian children instead of killing them, stealing their land, demolishing their homes, humiliating them, starving them, destroying their infrastructure, preventing economic growth, humiliating, imprisoning and torturing them?
Academic freedom for Stephen seems to mean Israeli academic freedom with a blind eye turned to their suppression of other's academic freedom.
His Israeli trip expences seem to have been a good investment by the Israeli government.
This is the nub of the whole matter-- why in the name of Israel? with its glorificatiuon of yet another fundementalistic view of the world.
All this in the name of science I believe is a scrabbling for a a squeaky clean bill of health in the name of Israel; glossing over the dire events of Gaza. Nothing will convince me its anything more than this.
It is not only pitiful, but cowardly to stop a Science Conference wich will not only show Israeli Science, but demonstrate that Science crosses all borders ,all ideologies,all religios superstition.
In a world where the true forces of darkness,namely religious superstition,authoritarian ideology,violence and "political correctness" is spreading we need science and enlightenment more than ever.
As a collegue of mine said:"while the Muslims and others prepare for the next Suicide bomb,Israelis, Japanese , Americans and others prepare for the next Nobel Prize!"
My best wishes for the Conference!
Cordially
Terje Bye Fjeldheim.
Professor.(ret)
Sarpsborg.
Norway.
Tell me, does that religious superstition to which your refer also include the idea that only one group of people have a God-given right to the land of Israel and any other group should be marginalized, deprived, squeezed into ghettos, have their land occupied and illegally settled on?
It appears to me that Israel is being singled out in a racist manner. If this was not the case then we would see many more countries on the list beside Israel.
Furthermore, it seems hypocritical that Israel is blamed for Palestinian death while Hammas is allowed to kill Palestinians at will. Hammas' murder of Palestinians innocents is conventiently forgotten when everyone has the name 'Israel' on their lips.
If you are going to blame a country for wrongdoing (and quite rightly so) then blame everyone.
Shall we expect an American Science Fair to be under attack because of the H-bomb and its rise to riches by the blood of black slaves? What about a Chinese Science fair? They have used their science in the torture of Tibetians monks, nuns and civilians - yet the world happily and silently traded with China - why is Israel different? Or how about closing down the British Museum and returning all the stolen artifacts? What about the blood on the hands of the British Empire - slavery, raping, pilaging, murder...the list goes on.
They are drunk on arrogance
Thue don't allow Palestinians to travel to study, to recieve medical treatment, to find jobs, to get the basics of life... 12, 00 Palestinians are in IsraeLi jails, some of them women and children, with no rigth to represenation..or a fair trial. They can't even use the same roads as the settlers whose settlements are illegal by international law. Theyare bombed, they have whote phosphorpus thrown at them, they have no medical supplies, no clean wter, no sewage plant.. and you still call Israel gutsy ?
yOu must have a really skewed mind set to call this gutsy
The Jews are within their right to protect themselves from Hamas. END OFF
F16S, dIME, FLECHETTES, Apache helicopters, Caterpillar tanks - and all the rest of the stuff made at arts and crafts fairs in jeruslaem, cluster bombs , TOO
oh, just to finish it off.. the mutilated limbs of children targetted with wHite phosphorous . with all the rotting flesh coming off the bone
Please contempalte that next time you're on the WC
As for illegally holding people, what evidence is there? There have been rumours but no evidence. In reality, all prisoners have full access to the law and medical attention and you can hardly accuse Hamas of that. They still hold Gilad Shalit and have done for 3 years and refused the Red Cross access. I assume that this means that he is dead and that they will hold his body for ransom to get back Hamas soldiers.
People post a lot of hatred without facts or figures, they should do some research before posting nebulous propaganda. All this does is help Hamas believe that they can continue to use and abuse their own people and when we try to bring this to the world's attention, are ignored. Hamas is a terrorist organisation that hides in with the Palestinians and has their bomb factories there. They shell Israel. Would you like to be shelled for 6 years from the nest county without your government doing anything? No, then why should Israel put up with it if you won't?
The simple truth is that only a boycott will be able to stop the madness in the middle-east. All that talk about peace is just a pretext. Meanwhile, they kill as much palestinians as they can and they grap as much land as possible.
winston:
http://www.jwol.org.uk/index.php?id=win
greenfield:
she worked on a kibbuts
http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e1
deech:
deech is is a member of the Jewish Leadership Council, a staunch Zionist / supporter of the State of Israel, and a strong critic of the British media coverage of Israel
http://www.fpp.co.uk/BoD/origins/Ruth_D
would you have been against a boycott that only targetted nazi germany (and not, f.i., italy)?
would you have been against a boycott of south-africa because it didn't include chili?
The answer is more likely to be no becuase they missed the plane becuase of the 600 checkpoints thye have to go through, and the mud tracks they have to use because only the settlers can use the big proper roads
Scientists living in gaza may not be physically fit to go.. with little food and aid coming in.. and oh, let us not forget.. thier universitites were bombed..
Until israel treats the Palestinians like human beings.. than I shall protest and protest until my dying day
I personally think it's pointless to boycott those scientists. Who knows which researchers are secretly consulted/contracted whether in the Middle East or in any other part of the world for whatever cause.
Perhaps after this all-inclusive science event, the museum could promote science education curricula in schools in war-ravaged and developing countries.
inevitably history ensures a high proportion of israeli bullies ( because bullies are usually people who have been bullied) - and this has been extrapolated to today's lethal doomsday proportions by fanatical religious masochists on all sides throughout the middle east with even less questioning let alone opposition than nazism ever had- WHY?
Next point - Weapons are mostly the product of the Engineering discipline, where widely understood scientific concepts are applied to mundane tasks.
And another point - Israeli science drives new advances in Medicine (which then save lives irrespective of whether these are Israeli lives, Palestinian lives, or the lives of citizens of the UK), Computing (for those using newest Intel CPUs - just a reminder they were developed in Israel), Space exploration etc.
As for the protesters - lobby your local organisation of choice to fund a Science Day. I'd love to see a Russian Science Day or a Chinese Science Day etc.
Protesting against Science is an ignoble undertaking.
The land belongs to theJews THE END
Do you lot know how silly you sound when you wish to ban such scientific discoveries in your country? You certainly had better hang up your computer, give away your mobile phone with it's camera, refuse to use instant messaging and most medical treatment. All these things are Israeli inventions and by your own statements, you don't wish to use them! Enjoy!!
Science as as the glorous force for good it has the potential to be has been polluted by this, I for one do not support it as a scientist and a human being.
The many rockets fired into Israel for the last year has been ignored by western media, and the so-called "world community": not so the Israeli response. The recent UN proposal to forbid any criticism of Islam highlights the double standard on these issues.
Mark
buy to let mortgage