Israel To Join CERN As First Non-European Member

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."

Comments

Re:Military State

[paleshadows]

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.

Funny.

I suggest you take a look at, e.g, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start-up_Nation. Here's one paragraph (the source is backed by reference):

"How is it that Israel -- a country of 7.1 million people, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources -- produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the United Kingdom?[4] The Economist notes that Israel now has more high-tech start-ups and a larger venture capital industry per capita than any other country in the world."

Or, e.g., browse the list that ranks the top-100 computer science departments in the world and observe where and how many times the Israeli flag appears in the list. (FYI, Israel has only 6 universities.)

etc. etc.

Re:Bad

[dotancohen]

Politics IS a science. And science has politics. I wonder how many potential Palestinian scientists have gone undetected, untrained and unfunded?

As a student at the Technion, Israel's premier university, I can tell you that Arabs are very disproportionately overrepresented there. That's fine, there is good reason: the Arabs have strong motivation to work hard and push ahead. Despite the huge number of Arabs in Israeli universities, I do not recall a single political or racial event in my time at the Technion. Not one.