Videos by Zachary J Foster
This is a brief excerpt from a longer interview about my dissertation, titled, "The Invention of ... more This is a brief excerpt from a longer interview about my dissertation, titled, "The Invention of Palestine." You can watch the full interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S1Tv582t4I 90 views
This clip comes from an interview with David Selim Sayers, host of the Paris Institute for Critic... more This clip comes from an interview with David Selim Sayers, host of the Paris Institute for Critical Studies's podcast, The Last Ottoman.
We discuss if it matters whether or not identities like "Palestinian" and places like "Palestine" are invented.
For the full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHA6S1J4-Bo 143 views
This lecture is a history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I begin in 1870 and cover the conf... more This lecture is a history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I begin in 1870 and cover the conflict's origins in the late Ottoman period. Then I transition into the Mandate period, when the British rejected the will of 85% of the population & instead supported Jewish land purchases and Jewish immigration with the goal of establishing a national homeland for Jews in Palestine. I cover the 1948 War and the causes of the Palestinian refugee issue. The War transformed the conflict into 3 struggles: 1) The struggle of Palestinians inside Israel to obtain equal rights as citizens of Israel; 2) The struggle of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza with the Israeli military occupation; 3) The struggle of Palestinians living in exile in Jordan and Lebanon to liberate the country through violence. I conclude with the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the Oslo process, the Wars between Hamas and Israel in the 2000s-2010s, and the March of Return protests in 2018-2019. 553 views
Dissertation by Zachary J Foster
Palestine exists in our minds, not in nature. If Palestine doesn’t exist, why do we identify with... more Palestine exists in our minds, not in nature. If Palestine doesn’t exist, why do we identify with it? We identify with Palestine, first, because it has a name. In fact, we only identify with places we’ve named. Unnamed places, such as 22°29′05″N 22.48 to 53°46′19″E 53.77, have no identities based on them. But we don’t identify with every place we’ve named. We need to hear stories about a place if we are going to identify with it, stories about famines and wars, conquests and tribes, history, geography, economy, archeology and millions more topics. The more engaging the stories, the more likely we are to identify with places like Palestine. We also make maps of places like Palestine. The more maps we make, the more likely we are to identify with places like Palestine as well. Finally, we distinguish Palestine from other places. We exaggerate its glory and beauty and claim we have a special relationship to it. This dissertation explains when, how and why it all happened.
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Syllabus by Zachary J Foster
The goal of this class is to learn to write a popular book. Part I focuses on writing, part II on... more The goal of this class is to learn to write a popular book. Part I focuses on writing, part II on topics and part III on examples. Ideally, students will come from a range of fields across the humanities, natural sciences and social sciences. Forced out of their disciplinary comfort zones, sociologists will learn to write for archeologists, physicists for classicists and historians for zoologists. No field is immune from academese and no field is too obscure to go mainstream. Academic work can find broader audiences. This course is about how to reach them.
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Papers by Zachary J Foster
Palestine Nexus, 2023
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Academia Letters, 2021
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Academia Letters, 2021
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When the Muslims conquered the Levant in the seventh century they at times changed the meaning of... more When the Muslims conquered the Levant in the seventh century they at times changed the meaning of ‘Palestine’. They preserved its erstwhile sense as a region but also came to see Palestine as synonymous with the city of Ramla. From the tenth to the early twentieth century, dozens of Muslim exegetes, travellers and chroniclers explained that Ramla and Palestine were the same place. Others thought Palestine was a small region based around Ramla, one that did not include Jerusalem, or that Palestine had much more to do with Ramla than it did Jerusalem. The association had much to do with the cultural tendency in the Arab Middle East to conflate cities and regions as well as the critical role Ramla played in Palestine for much of its history: it served as the capital of the District of Palestine for more than three centuries, its economic hub for many more and its imagined geographical centre up until the early nineteenth century.
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The famine that befell Syria during the First World War was among the most tragic events in the r... more The famine that befell Syria during the First World War was among the most tragic events in the region's modern history. The article argues that the 1915 locust attack, which is often neglected altogether or given terse treatment as one among a laundry list of causes of the famine, was a critical factor which drove many across the region, especially in Lebanon and Palestine, to starvation beginning in late 1915. Given that the scale of the attack was far worse than anything Syria had witnessed in many decades, if not centuries; and that a huge percentage of the region's major foodstuffs and sources of livelihood, including fruits, vegetables, legumes, fodder and a small but not insignificant amount of cereals, were devoured by the locusts, it is suggested that many of the 100,00–200,000 people that died from starvation or starvation-related diseases in the year immediately following the attack – that is, from November 1915 to November 1916 – can be attributed to the locust invasion.
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An Arabic translation of my "The Diary of Sami Yengin: The End of Ottoman Rule in Syria" Jerusale... more An Arabic translation of my "The Diary of Sami Yengin: The End of Ottoman Rule in Syria" Jerusalem Quarterly 56/57 (2013/2014): 78-94. (“Mudhakkarat Sami Yengin, 1917-1918: Nihayat al-Dawr al-‘Uthmani fi Suriya,” Hawliyyat al-Quds 18(2014): 58-70)
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Thesis by Zachary J Foster
This is a study of the historical works produced by the Arabs of Palestine during the period of B... more This is a study of the historical works produced by the Arabs of Palestine during the period of British Mandatory rule. First I trace the perception of late Ottoman rule in Palestine, suggesting that, at first, the vicious war years left a profoundly bitter impression of Ottoman rule for most writers. In the 1920s, the Ottomans were, for the most part, deemed tyrannical and backward usurpers who failed to bring civilization to the Arabs. As the war years faded in the mid-late 1930s and 1940s, we find a much more positive portrayal of late Ottoman rule over Palestine. Second, I trace attitudes towards British rule. It may be surprising, for many scholars bent on demonizing the colonial powers, that the British were, at first, embraced with white flags and flying colors. For many Arabs in Palestine, they continued to be considered liberators rather than colonizers for the first few years after their arrival in Palestine—notwithstanding their support for Zionism and their broader colonial ambitions in the Near East. By the mid-late 1920s and 1930s, to be sure, this attitude had all but vanished and a strong anti-British feeling came to dominate Arab historiography in Palestine until the very end of the Mandate. Third, I trace loyalties and identities during the Mandate period. I argue that, in the 1920s, local loyalties to cities and towns were the most significant identity markers, followed by Arab and religious loyalties, both of which were also very important. In the 1920s, a territorial identification with
Bilad al-Sham or Suriyya rivaled if not trumped a territorial identification with
Filastin. Even in the 1920s, though, it would be a mistake to consider either of these broader territorial identifications loyalties insofar as they did not trigger a sense of self-sacrifice nor did they carry with them much emotive power. Not until the late 1920s and early 1930s did Palestine triumph over broader territorial identifications such as Syria and not until the mid-late 1930s and 1940s did this territorial identification with Palestine emerge as a key source of loyalty for many of the region’s inhabitants. All the while, the historical works suggest the growing importance of an Arab identity and the declining importance of religious loyalties.
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Essays by Zachary J Foster
InkStick Media, 2023
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Palestine Nexus, 2023
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Haaretz , 2023
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Although Palestine was probably not part of the geographical lexicon for an average peasant or me... more Although Palestine was probably not part of the geographical lexicon for an average peasant or merchant in the Arabic speaking Middle East from 1100-11850, it was part of the vocabulary for scholars who wrote about the past, and it was used in day-to-day speech by people in Ramla.
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TRT, 2022
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Uploads
Videos by Zachary J Foster
We discuss if it matters whether or not identities like "Palestinian" and places like "Palestine" are invented.
For the full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHA6S1J4-Bo
Dissertation by Zachary J Foster
Syllabus by Zachary J Foster
Papers by Zachary J Foster
Thesis by Zachary J Foster
Bilad al-Sham or Suriyya rivaled if not trumped a territorial identification with
Filastin. Even in the 1920s, though, it would be a mistake to consider either of these broader territorial identifications loyalties insofar as they did not trigger a sense of self-sacrifice nor did they carry with them much emotive power. Not until the late 1920s and early 1930s did Palestine triumph over broader territorial identifications such as Syria and not until the mid-late 1930s and 1940s did this territorial identification with Palestine emerge as a key source of loyalty for many of the region’s inhabitants. All the while, the historical works suggest the growing importance of an Arab identity and the declining importance of religious loyalties.
Essays by Zachary J Foster
We discuss if it matters whether or not identities like "Palestinian" and places like "Palestine" are invented.
For the full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHA6S1J4-Bo
Bilad al-Sham or Suriyya rivaled if not trumped a territorial identification with
Filastin. Even in the 1920s, though, it would be a mistake to consider either of these broader territorial identifications loyalties insofar as they did not trigger a sense of self-sacrifice nor did they carry with them much emotive power. Not until the late 1920s and early 1930s did Palestine triumph over broader territorial identifications such as Syria and not until the mid-late 1930s and 1940s did this territorial identification with Palestine emerge as a key source of loyalty for many of the region’s inhabitants. All the while, the historical works suggest the growing importance of an Arab identity and the declining importance of religious loyalties.