Stephen Hawking had a complicated relationship with Israel. The world-renowned physicist made a last minute decision in 2013 to boycott the conference in Jerusalem to honour Shimon Peres. It is said that he decided to boycott the conference due to pressure from the BDS movement.
The last of the four visits Stephen Hawking made to Israel was in 2006, at which time Yad Sarah provided Mr. Hawking with with a specially-adapted YadSaraVan, which took him all over the country. The British Embassy hosted Hawking in Tel Aviv, as he delivered public lectures at Israeli and Palestinians universities; the embassy approached Yad Sarah for transportation assistance. Shaul Pasternak, the driver of the van, drove him to student lectures and meetings with senior scientists and researchers. During his trip, Hawking visited the Hebrew University and the Bloomfield Science Museum in Jerusalem, The Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, and the University of Tel Aviv.
Arguably the most famous scientist in the world, Hawking enjoyed a special relationship with a now-deceased Israeli physicist, Jakob Bekenstein, who died in 2015. Bekenstein, who was a professor at both Ben-Gurion University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is considered to be the man who taught Hawking a thing or two about black holes. Hawking was initially one of Bekenstein’s detractors, but he eventually embraced the Israeli scientist’s groundbreaking ideas, which served as the basis for his own revolutionary theory that black holes give off radiation.
