His PhD thesis proves Palestine is an invented Arab identity

Yet he still supports it over Israel and spreads lies about it

In a separate article, I present Zachary Foster’s PhD in which he seeks to prove that the Palestinians are a people invented, not by the Arabs themselves, but by Russian missionaries running schools in the land long before Arafat was even born.

Therefore, his apparent deep hatred for Israel and unalloyed support for that invented people is baffling.

I must admit that there is likely no turning the clock back by now. Since 1967, the Arabs living in Judea-Samaria and Gaza have developed separate historiosocietal trajectories apart from the Arab countries and, according to Palestinian Arab peace activist Bassem Eid, it even seems that the Arabs in Judea-Samaria are not exactly the same “People” as those in Gaza.

I have been wondering if Foster supports the two-state-solution and then I found this (all “X” post images are linked to the post so you can read all the comments on the threads if you so chose):

What does that mean for Foster? If he does not see the two-state-solution as a possibility, what DOES he see as a possibility? Does he wish for the demise of Israel as Jewish state? I don’t know. Then I found this:

I guess this means that he does not support the end of Israel. OK.

That still leaves the question of why he is so one-sidedly coming down against Israel — telling Israel to stop everything and asking nothing of Hamas. Even if he believes that the bulk of the Gazan civilian population were innocent bystanders on Oct 7th and now in the ensuing war, why is he not asking they stand up to the Hamas they openly and publicly blame for the disaster that has befallen them (unlike him)? Why is he not asking the Gazan civilians to tell the IDF where the hostages are?

Perhaps I got my answer in a post he uploaded on Oct 12, in which he defined himself as a Jew-loving anti-Zionist. I certainly won’t contest the way people define themselves and he says he is Jew-loving to contrast with the way many commonly define Jewish anti-Zionists as antisemitic. I do marvel at the way he throws numbers around, however, as he states in that same post that there are millions of antisemitic Zionists. (Good thing he is a historian and not an engineer designing buildings and bridges.)

One could write an entire book critiquing Zachary’s “X” posts. Let me give you just a small sample of what he has been writing about the situation since Oct 7th. And note, he has 79.3K followers.

He pinned his March 31 post in which he states: “Israel has been killing 75 Palestinian children every day for nearly 6 months.” I should ask where he got this figure from. See responses in the thread below the post:

Signed, Hamas
TOTAL LIE. GO TO HELL, TERRORIST
Yes and no terrorists
And don’t forget about the 150 doctors killed each day.
Prove it
#GenocideLibel right there.
Let’s play the game of throwing random numbers.

And those are just the first of 309 comments. This post did get 4.3K reposts and 7.2K likes. Unfortunately, the reposts quoting this one all believe the lie.

One of the last posts before that black Saturday was on Oct 3rd, when he put up a derogatory post about Yoseph Haddad, calling him a lazy pro-Israel activist for not providing a source for something he claimed. I’m sure Haddad was shattered by that. If you need a chuckle, I recommend you read the comments under this post.

Foster showed his laziness (and malevelence) when he posted this:

Why malevelence? First of all, I opened the source and beyond comparing Democrats to Republicans, the respondants were not distinguished by being Jewish or otherwise. The 73% he attributes to Jews is merely the average of all respondants to the survey. And he called Haddad lazy!

What did he write immediately after Oct 7th?

This is what preoccupied Foster on Oct 8, as Jews and non-Jews in Israel were still reeling in shock from seeing our fellow Israelis slaughtered, raped, tortured, and abducted by Hamas and Hamas-supporting civilians.

Funny that Foster refers to hundreds and hundreds of unarmed protestors when the UN, not a friend to Israel, wrote this:

While the vast majority of protestors have acted in a peaceful manner, during most protests dozens have approached the fence attempting to damage it, burning tires, throwing stones and Molotov cocktails towards Israeli forces and flying incendiary kites and balloons into Israeli territory; the latter resulted in extensive damage to agricultural land and nature reserves inside Israel and risked the lives of Israeli civilians. Some incidents of shooting and throwing of explosive devices have also been reported.

If over ten people were in your neighbour’s yard, Zachary, and stood by as three of them burned tires, threw stones and Molotov cocktails into your yard, and then at the police when they answered your 911 call, what would you expect the police to do when they got there and incendiary items were still being launched over your fence? And would you consider those unarmed individuals innocent or accomplices if they did nothing to stop the violence?

And then on Oct 9th:

It is common knowledge that Israel left Gaza judenfrei in 2005 and I wrote about our poor excuse of a siege. What shocks me about this post is how a historian can claim nonviolence for the Gazans. Going into this, and Israel’s response, is beyond the scope of this piece. It is getting too long as it is.

This is the most ridiculous post he has written and I will only say this: How glibly Zachary writes that they are being killed for the crime of having been born Palestinian. Funny how he appropriates the truism that Jews have been targetted throughout history for the crime of having been born Jews and not having been willing to be killed off, to religating ourselves to the pages of history; you know, everyone loves dead Jews, right?

Continuing on the theme of no-Palestinian-is-safe, now we are onto genocide:

Here are some of the comments he got to this “genocide” post, those who challenge his opinon:

Definitely not like this. There are casualties in any war. There is no systematic killing on the contrary. IDF has helped clear out the hospital for weeks now. There were 50,000 people around the hospital there are only 2000 now. Who else would do this?
Would you go to gaza to further research it?
It would certainly not look like the population growth seen in Gaza and would certainly not include requests to leave areas where fighting takes place.
Keep wondering
Yup when you have hospital stuff that refuses to evacuate with three weeks' notice
Well, well, well...that happens when you start a war and you go and massacre families... So sorry for the inconvenience. #Gaza #Israel

And this:

David Collier, famed lie-buster wrote: “Anyone with a brain can see the difference here. Which is probably why our Zach cannot see it. A map of Palestine without Israel actually advocates genocide. A map of Israel and Jordan is historically accurate and still gives Palestinians their state.”

Now, we cannot say that Foster is not giving a balanced picture. He joins the call to release at least two of our hostages; at the same time, he cannot keep from bothsidesism.

Zachary was in Gaza just before Oct 7th. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he did not know about the assault beforehand. He was there as a historian and he most certainly acquired a treasure trove of historically important documents. He has made these available on his website. Kudos for this.

Finally, in a post yesterday, he directs us to his PhD thesis. As I said at the start of this article, I critiqued his thesis in an accompanying article you might find edifying.

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