Press TV – May 8, 2013
British theoretical physicist professor Stephen Hawking has joined an academic embargo on the Israeli regime by refusing to attend a conference hosted by the regime’s president Shimon Perez.
The prominent Cambridge professor was to take part in the Facing Tomorrow annual conference planned to be held in June but pulled out in protest at Tel Aviv’s treatment of Palestinians.
Hawking has not publicly announced his decision, but the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine said he has written a brief letter to Perez to inform him that he has sanctioned the conference.
“[Hawking has made] an independent decision to respect the boycott, based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there,” the committee said.
Hawking’s move follows a boycott of the Israeli regime by the Teachers’ Union of Ireland and by the American members of the Association for Asian American Studies.
Back in 2009, Hawking had also condemned the regime’s three-week onslaught on Gaza, saying Tel Aviv’s response to firing of rockets from the coastal strip was “plain out of proportion … The situation is like that of [Apartheid] South Africa before 1990 and cannot continue”.