Israel To Join CERN As First Non-European Member 351
First time accepted submitter WorldPiece writes "More accurately, first non-European full member. This comes with some opposition from groups pushing to boycott Israel academia in response to the Israeli government's policies. 'It is a vital part of our mission to build bridges between nations. This agreement enriches us scientifically and is an important step in that direction,' CERN's Director General Rolf Heuer, a German physicist, told the signing ceremony."
Re:politics a vital part of the mission? (Score:5, Interesting)
"It is a vital part of our mission to build bridges between nations."
I thought CERN was all about science. What's this about building bridges?
International co-operation is pretty critical in science, without touching on politics at all. That's one of the great things about conferences. I went to a conference in the US earlier in the year, and met someone doing a PhD in hydrology. After chatting with them, it turned out that as part of their work they had collected a pretty comprehensive set of deep-sea water samples for an area I was interested in. I work on marine microbiology, and my university has no way of collecting deep-sea water samples. After a little discussion and a few polite emails later to her P.I., they kindly gave me pretty hefty aliquots of water from as deep as 5,600m below the sea surface. That stuff has been pretty central to the work in my PhD and like I said, I had no way of getting it on my own.
International co-operation, collaboration and exchanges of ideas and equipment/samples is incredibly important and doesn't have to involve politics one bit.
Re:Military State (Score:4, Interesting)
For a military state such as Israel, it is impressive that every now and then they come up with innovations; not very many, but they do come up with them.
I can cite two clear counter-examples in tech. If you posted on a computer that using an Intel chip newer than an Pentium IV, the technology came from Intel's Israel development center. If you've played a game using a MS Kinect, that also came from Israel.
Re:Good. (Score:2, Interesting)
Now for a touch of reality, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_exodus [wikipedia.org]. Based upon the endless lies of Jewish Palestinians and a horde of European migrants, the expulsion of the majority of the population and denial of return and, the blatant theft of land, friendliness is highly unlikely.
Consider the same in your country, if the majority were, killed, expelled and imprisoned and via biased religious apartheid based immigration turned into a minority. Whilst this has happened before to the shame of several major countries, what happens in our life times is our shared responsibility and shame.
It is clear from the the outset, that one side wanted and worked towards religious apartheid, not just targeted at Muslims, but as demonstrated by the fundamentalists who actually spit on Christians against all others.
Upon this basis that country based around the theft of land, the removal and expulsion of the original inhabitants and the continual denial of truth should be specifically excluded from all international organisation and trade. There is no place in this modern world for a pariah nuclear armed state.
Re:Not good. (Score:3, Interesting)
How this ever got to +4 insightful I will never know. Rather, it just shows how much pro-Israel propaganda has been successful in the west. The image of Israel as a beleaguered state, surrounded on all sides by enemies while it is only defending itself is largely a creation of the media and has no relation whatsoever to the actual history of the region.
I will not go into a discussion of the conflict here as any not pro-Israeli posts get modded -1 overrated to oblivion but I will point out what I do know and that is wrong with your post. Though if anyone is interested "The Gun and the Olive Branches" is a very informative book(written by a British journalist).
"If the Palestinians are really suffering as much as people claim why has Egypt, Jordon, Lebanon, or Syria never allowed the Palestinians to settle in their lands?"
Each nation has its own situation, in the case of Lebanon(my country, which, by the way, is a democracy and where a large segment of the population does not really have a major issue with Israel -- the Christians, ~40% of the population, and I happen to be one), the Palestinians aren't given citizenship because doing so would upset the current balance of force in the country, tilting it towards the Sunni Muslim side. Given that the country is still in the early stages of recovering from a devastating 15 year civil war(in which the Palestinians played a major role igniting, but they weren't alone) and given the fact that Sunni/Chiite tensions continue to rise year-on-year in the whole area almost all analysts agree that attempting to assimilate the Palestinians into Lebanese society would shatter what fragile equilibrium currently exists.