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Stephen Hawking Should Go to Gaza
(National Post-Canada) Jonathan Kay - Physicist Stephen Hawking's withdrawal from a conference in Israel will briefly make him a celebrity among activists, but it will also cast a controversial political gloss on his reputation as a great scientist. I would urge him to travel to Gaza and the West Bank to promote another cause that might be dear to his heart, and on which he certainly can speak with authority: the humane treatment of people with disabilities. Had he been born into Palestinian society, he would have had to deal with the hostility of Palestinians to anyone cursed (as they see it) with any sort of crippling disease, such as the ALS-related motor neuron disease with which Hawking himself is afflicted. According to the Christian charity Pro Terra Sancta, "In Palestine, from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip, there is no support in place for children with learning difficulties or for families with disabled children. In the traditional mindset, disability is still seen as a form of divine punishment and brings shame on the family." The Washington Post reported on May 3 about Palestinian 3-year-old Mohammed al-Farra, a multiple amputee who lives with his grandfather in Israel's Tel Hashomer hospital. His parents abandoned him. "Mohammed's plight is an extreme example of the harsh treatment some families mete to the disabled, particularly in the more tribal-dominated corners of the Gaza Strip." "It also demonstrates a costly legacy of Gaza's strongly patriarchal culture that prods women into first-cousin marriages and allows polygamy....In the midst of [Mohammed's] treatment, his mother abandoned Mohammed because her husband, ashamed of their son, threatened to take a second wife if she didn't leave the baby and return." The writer is a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.