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Prof. Stephen Weinberg (photo: UT website)
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| By israelinsider staff May 25, 2007 |
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The Guardian reports that Nobel laureate Stephen Weinberg has cancelled a planned visit to a London university because of what he considers "a widespread anti-Israel and anti-semitic current in British opinion". Weinberg, a professor at the University of Texas who won the Nobel for physics in 1979, had been invited to Imperial College in July to speak in honour of a Pakistani physicist, Abdus Salam, and to deliver a talk at a conference on particle physics.
But in a letter to his prospective host at Imperial, Michael Duff, Professor Weinberg said he was withdrawing from the trip, due to the decision by the National Union of Journalists at its national conference to boycott Israeli products. He wrote: "I know that some will say that these boycotts are directed only against Israel, rather than generally against Jews. But given the history of the attacks on Israel and the oppressiveness and aggressiveness of other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere, boycotting Israel indicated a moral blindness for which it is hard to find any explanation other than anti-semitism."
Weinberg said the only other reason he could imagine for the boycott was the NUJ's "desire to pander to the growing Muslim minority in Britain".
"I'm not calling on anyone else not to go to Britain," Weinberg told Haaretz. "I don't want to say I'm cutting ties with the U. K. I love England. I just feel personally uncomfortable going with the atmosphere there at the moment. It's increasingly hostile to Israel, especially in the intellectual world."
"I just felt this was too disgusting and I didn't want to go there this summer," Weinberg said. "I see in the British press and the BBC signs of a very strong anti-Israel bias -- a kind of blind hostility that whatever Israel does, it is always in the wrong -- so this is not an isolated action of a small group of anti-Semitic conspirators. This represents a widespread feeling among British journalists."
This is the second time Weinberg has cancelled a visit to a UK university because of Israeli boycotts. In 2006 he called off a trip to a conference at the University of Durham following what he saw as a boycott of Israeli academics by the lecturers' union NATFHE.
Weinberg said he is against boycotts, and specifically boycotts of Israel: "To boycott Israel today would be like boycotting Czechoslovakia in 1938 when Hilter was complaining the Czechs were being unpleasant to the Germans in the Sudetenland."
More UK anti-Israel, anti-Semitic boycotts coming?
Professor Weinberg's decision comes a week before members of the University and College Union are to call for an academic boycott of Israel at their inaugural annual conference. Academics are also expected to debate whether anti-semitism has become acceptable on UK campuses and whether members should be balloted before any decisions are taken on academic freedom.
The motion calling for an Israeli boycott has been laid down jointly by the University of Brighton and the University of East London, the Guardian reported. It condemns the "complicity of Israeli academia in the [Palestinian] occupation, which has provoked a call from the Palestinian trade unions for a comprehensive and consistent international boycott of all Israeli academic institutions".
The union is being urged to agree that "passivity or neutrality is unacceptable and criticism of Israel cannot be construed as anti-semitic". Anticipating objections of discrimination, the motion calls on members to consider the "moral implications of existing proposed links with Israeli academic institutions".
Weinberg told Haaretz that he made his decision and wrote his letter before he knew of the new boycott threat.
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