Stephen Hawking Joins Academic Boycott Of Israel Apartheid Regime

George Galloway: British physicist Stephen Hawking has pulled out of a conference hosted by Israeli President Shimon Peres in protest at the regime's treatment of Palestinians.

The British daily Guardian said in a report on Wednesday that the world-renowned professor backed the academic boycott of the annual president's conference, entitled Facing Tomorrow, which will be held in Jerusalem in June.

The 71 year-old theoretical physicist and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge had first accepted the invitation to attend the conference, which also attracted major international figures.

However, he wrote a letter to Peres last week to inform the Israeli President of his decision to boycott the event.

The British Committee for the Universities of Palestine issued a statement on Hawking's decision, describing it as "his independent decision to respect the boycott, based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there." Source