Overview: Hamid Algar has blamed Israel for Palestinian terrorism and is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Algar is a professor of Persian and Islamic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley).
Blaming Israel for Terrorism
In June of 2003, Algar gave an interview, in which he attempted to explain away Palestinian terrorism by charging Israel as the cause.
In the interview he asserted that, “these so-called suicide bombings did not start until a considerable time after the beginning of the Intifada, when a large number of Palestinian children had been killed by Israeli forces, for nothing other than throwing a stone, or in some cases not even that. It was only after such casualties had begun to mount that this tactic was used."
Algar went on to call the Israeli army one of the “most ruthless military forces in the world," and claimed that they continue “daily, with impunity, to kill and to humiliate the Palestinian people."
He ended off by stating that since Israel’s is the cause of terrorism, “to criticize or condemn an effect while overlooking the cause is not very helpful."
Support for BDS
On February 3, 2015, Algar signed a petition, published by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) West, calling upon the University of California Students Association to join the BDS movement.
On August 2, 2014, Algar signed a petition, authored by various American Muslim organizations, entitled “End Israeli Aggression and Occupation."
The petition called upon the American government to cut economic ties with Israel and to support BDS.
Algar signed another petition — published on January 12, 2009 — by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).
The petition, an open letter to former United States President Barack Obama, accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and apartheid and described the situation in Gaza as “one of the most massive, ethnocidal atrocities of modern times."
It concluded with a call for the U.S. to divest from Israel.