Stephen Hawking boycotts Israeli conference
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) World-renowned theoretical physicist Professor Stephen Hawking has joined the academic boycott of Israel and will not be attending the fifth annual Presidential Conference in Jerusalem in June, The Guardian reported Wednesday.
Hawking, 71, had agreed to headline the conference, titled “Facing Tomorrow,” alongside other major international personalities. But he informed Israeli President Shimon Peres last week that he would be withdrawing from the conference. Although Hawking had not announced his decision publicly, a statement by the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine, which was published with Hawking’s approval, described the move as Hawking’s “independent decision to respect the boycott, based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there.”
“This is an outrageous, wrongful decision,” Presidential Conference Steering Committee Chairman Israel Maimon said Wednesday. “The academic boycott of Israel is outrageous, especially by someone who preaches freedom of thought. Israel is a democracy, where anyone can state his case, whatever it may be. Imposing a boycott goes against the principles of holding an open and democratic discourse.”
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev and Prince Albert of Monaco will be attending the Presidential Conference, in addition to famed singer Barbra Streisand and other leading performers.
The Wolf Foundation, which in 1988 awarded Hawking the Wolf Prize in physics, said in a statement, “We were sad to learn that someone of Professor Hawking’s standing chose to capitulate to irrelevant pressures and will refrain from visiting Israel.” The Shurat HaDin – Israel Law Center noted that Hawking is boycotting Israel despite the fact that the computer-based communication system he uses “runs on a chip designed by Israel’s Intel team.”
“I suggest that if [Hawking] truly wants to pull out of Israel he should also pull out his Intel Core i7 from his tablet,” Shurat HaDin Director Nitsana Darshan-Leitner said in a statement.
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Ethics prize awarded for Hurricane Sandy essay
(JNS.org) A Yeshiva University student writing on Hurricane Sandy won first place in the 2013 Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics essay contest, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity announced. The contest has taken place since 1989.
Gavriel Brown, YU Class of 2014 and originally from Silver Spring, Md., won a competition that invited students across the U.S. to write about ethical problem confronting the model world. In his winning essay, “Losing Self, Finding Self,” Brown discussed how he volunteered at a shelter during Hurricane Sandy and the feelings he experienced of a barrier between himself and the victims of the storm. “Often and with ease do we separate ourselves from the suffering of others,” he wrote.
“Today’s college students are listening to the ethical voices within. They are drawing on their memories and the lessons of their teachers, and are concerned with the morality of their private and public experiences. They are challenging us all to make a difference,” Elie Wiesel said in a statement.
The second prize went to George “Lawson” Kuehnert of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for his essay, “Grace and Gasoline: Self-Immolations in Modern Tibet and the Ethical Limits of Nonviolent Protest,” in which he discusses the ethical limits of nonviolent protests and self-immolation.
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World Jewish Congress re-elects Lauder as president
(JNS.org) Philanthropist and media mogul Ronald Lauder has been re-elected as president of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) and will serve another four-year term, the WJC announced during its 14th Plenary Assembly in Budapest, Hungary on Tuesday.
In addition to serving as WJC president since 2007, Lauder has been active in the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish National Fund, and other Jewish organizations. Lauder, who served as the U.S. Ambassador to Austria from 1986 to 1987, also owns Israel’s Channel 10 television station and is the son of cosmetics giant Estée Lauder.
“I see this as the top assignment for the Jewish people and I am excited to serve as President of the World Jewish Congress for another four years,” Lauder said in a statement.
The WJC also elected Chella Safra of Brazil for the position of treasurer, David de Rothschild of France as chairman of the governing board, European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor as policy council chairman, and Mervyn Smith of South Africa as policy council co-chair.
Ayatollah Khamenei supporters may dominate Iran election
(JNS.org) The race to become Iran’s next president began Tuesday, as hopeful candidates started the registration process for the June 14 election. Most analysts expect the list of approved candidates to be heavily stacked with loyalists to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran’s ruling clerics are concerned about the upcoming election. The last election in 2009 sparked massive riots known as the “Green Revolution” after many felt reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi was cheated out of victory in favor of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Since then, there have been widespread crackdowns on liberal and reformist candidates.
But this time, Ahmadinejad is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term. Ahmadinejad has endorsed his top aide, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, as his choice to succeed him. In recent years, Ahmadinejad and his allies have clashed with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over the direction of the country.
The presumed front-runners for the upcoming election are senior Khamenei adviser Ali Akbar Velayati, Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, and former nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani, who is seen as a relative moderate.
Rowhani has said he wants “constructive interaction with the world” and to address charges that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon, NPR reported.
The formal list of approved candidates by Iran’s Guardian Council will be unveiled later this month.
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Netanyahu freezes construction in Judea and Samaria
(JNS.org) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has quietly issued a freeze on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria, according to reports.
Army Radio reported that Netanyahu met with Housing Minister Uri Ariel and instructed him to halt the creation of new housing projects in Judea and Samaria. Additionally, Haaretz reported that Netanyahu promised U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that he would not issue new construction tenders there until mid-June. Kerry has been attempting to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, meanwhile, has demanded an Israeli construction freeze as a precondition for the resumption of talks.
In 2009, Netanyahu issued a 10-month halt on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria as part of an effort by President Barack Obama to get the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. But Abbas only agreed to negotiations shortly before the freeze was set to expire, and then backed out of negotiations when the freeze ended.
Netanyahu, who is currently visiting China, has not yet commented on reports of a construction freeze.
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