The defenders aren’t getting it:
Hawking and other celebrity physicists have created a kind of cult of science. They deny religion, but then create outlandish theories like wormholes, the universe being shaped like a folded piece of paper (none of their theories have any evidence by the way) and the naive college students eat it up. They deny religion on the basis of lack of evidence, but then believe everything these guys say without evidence. People underestimate how dangerous this is. We have an authority that a huge portion of the population considers infallible. In the middle ages it was the Church, now it’s celebrity science.
So, when they say the Jews are evil and we should all be pro-Hamas, people don’t question them. Why would they? They think they’re infallible. Baruch Hashem, this particular one is no longer with us.