The Case of Nadia Abu El-Haj
Jesse Walker | August 18, 2007, 2:12pm
Another day, another politicized tenure battle. This time the target is Nadia Abu El-Haj, a Palestinian-American anthropologist who teaches at Barnard College. El-Haj is the author of
Facts on the Ground, a controversial book that argues, to quote the publisher's description, that "archaeology helped not only to legitimize [Israel's] cultural and political visions but, far more powerfully, to reshape them." Her tenure is being challenged by Paula Stern, a pro-Israel activist whose
petition against El-Haj has gathered more than 1200 signatures. The campaign has
attracted some
press coverage, and Stern's charges have been
uncritically reprinted by the conservative pressure group Campus Watch.
I hold no brief for El-Haj's book. I have not read it, and even if I had I would be in no position to judge the quality of her scholarship. But I am in a position to judge the quality of Stern's arguments: They clearly, unmistakably distort the truth, and they do so in easily checked ways.
Richard Silverstein of
Tikun Olam has already
noted several potential problems with the petition, in a post based on correspondence with scholars familiar with El-Haj's work. Stern claims, for example, that El-Haj ignores a "truly vast body of written evidence" that the book in fact mentions many times; Stern claims the author does not speak Hebrew when in fact she does; and so on. Silverstein also wonders if the petition's quotes from the book are taken out of context. Stern writes, for instance, that El-Haj
asserts that the ancient Israelite kingdoms are a "pure political fabrication."
Silverstein asks, "Why wouldn't it have been possible to quote an entire sentence or paragraph to determine what El-Haj actually wrote and believes on this subject?" The answer: Because quoting the full paragraph would reveal that it does not, in fact, take the radical position Stern ascribes to El-Haj. Using Amazon Reader, I looked up the quote in question. Here's the original text:
While by early the 1990s, virtually all archaeologists argued for the need to disentangle the goals of their professional practice from the quest for Jewish origins and objects that framed an earlier archaeological project, the fact that there is some national-cultural connection between contemporary (Israeli)-Jews and such objects was not itself generally open to sustained discussion. That commitment remained, for the most part, and for most practicing archaeologists, fundamental. (Although archaeologists argued increasingly that the archaeological past should have no bearing upon contemporary political claims.) In other words, the modern Jewish/Israeli belief in ancient Israelite origins is not understood as pure political fabrication.
Pretty stunning difference, huh? Here's another carefully gerrymandered quote from the petition:
We are aware that Abu El Haj excuses herself from the expectation that scholarship will be based on evidence. In her introduction, she informs the world that she "Reject(s) a positivist commitment to scientific methods..."
Instead of using scientific standards of evidence, her work is "rooted in...post structuralism, philosophical critiques of foundationalism, Marxism and critical theory...and developed in response to specific postcolonial political movements."
We reject the idea that Marxism, post-colonialism, post-structuralism or any other approach can nullify the obligation of scholars to base their work on evidence.
Here is the book's original text:
Questions concerning the relationship between interpretation and data and between theory and evidence have come center stage as increasing numbers of archaeologists are debating the politics of their own discipline, including its potential uses and the implications for their professional work. Rejecting a positivist commitment to scientific method whereby politics is seen to intervene only in instances of bad science, such critics have argued that archaeological knowledge (as but one instance of scientific knowledge) is inherently a social product. Rooted in multiple intellectual traditions (poststructuralism, philosophical critiques of foundationalism, Marxism and critical theory, a sociology of scientific knowledge) and developed in response to specific postcolonial political movements (specifically, demands for the repatriation of cultural objects and human remains by indigenous groups in settler nations such as Australia, the U.S. and Canada), this critical tradition is united, at its most basic level, by a commitment to understanding archeology as necessarily political.
Again, the phrases in quotation marks do appear in the text, but their meaning is distorted radically. While El-Haj obviously has sympathy for the intellectual tradition she's describing, there's a reason why her description is in the third person. There is an obvious distinction between listing the diverse roots of a scholarly movement and saying that you yourself embrace all (or any) of those roots. As for that "positivist commitment to scientific method" business, it sure reads differently when you specify that it's the view that "politics is seen to intervene only in instances of bad science" that's being rejected.
As I said before, I hold no brief for El-Haj's book. But if it
is a work of sloppy scholarship, the petitioners are doing its author a favor. Rather than asking her to confront serious charges that might stick, they're firing a volley of easily refuted distortions. If this is the best they can do, I suspect she'll be teaching at Barnard for a long time.
Update: Winfield Myers of Campus Watch
objects to my comment that his group "uncritically reprinted" Stern's charges. Myers points to a disclaimer at the bottom of the page in question: "Articles listed under 'Middle East Studies in the News' provide information on current developments concerning Middle East studies on North American campuses. These reports do not necessarily reflect the views of Campus Watch and do not necessarily correspond to Campus Watch's critique."
I think my phrase is accurate -- Campus Watch did reprint Stern's charges, and it did not criticize them -- but I appreciate the distinction Myers is drawing. I am pleased to hear that his group does not endorse the misquotes in Stern's petition. I hope that in the future it will be more selective when choosing articles to reprint.
anon | August 18, 2007, 10:52pm | #
Jesse
Sometimes you really do have to read the whole book.
In her convoluted, eliptical style she repeatedly denies Jewish history in ancient Israel, regularly calling it a "myth" but the accusation is made by an accumulation of slurs and innuendo.
But here is one of her clear - and clearly outrageous - brief, and undeniably incorrect statements, bottom of page 175.
In “ the Herodian period Jerusalem was not a Jewish city, but rather one integrated into larger empires and inhabited, primarily, by “other” communities.”
It is true that Herodian Jerusalem was a semi-autonomous kingdom under Herod, integrated into the Roman Empire.
But it was an overwhelmingly Jewish city. The archaeology has been done and it agrees with the historiography. No scholar in the world denies that Herodian Jerusalem was a majority Jewish city e, ecxept the inimitable Abu El Haj.
Silverstein is not much of a source. He accuses Campus Watch of being behind the petition. But Campus Watch denies it. http://www.campus-watch.org/weblog/id/90 I see no particular reason to doubt that a politically active Barnard graduate, who is a writer by trade, living in Israel, and politically pro-Israel might have done this on her own. Certainly Silverstein makes his accusation without supporting evidence.
The most sophisticated review of this book in print is by Alex Joffee in Near Eastern Studies. Posted at http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archives/008510.shtml for the convenience of those who do not have a connection to a university library. I suggest that you read it. Or that you read the book, but, as with many books, it is hard to spot the errors unless you know something about the period and about archaeology. that is why the opinion of archaeologists like Joffe is more valuable than the opinion of richard Silverstein, who I do not know , but who does not claim to be an archaeologist.
Underzog | August 19, 2007, 5:27am | #
This Stern person is to be applauded for trying to make sense out of the so-called Palestinian's nonsense. In the first quotation examined, what the so-called Palestinian is saying is that the Joos have tricked people into believing that Jews have some archeological/historical connection to the land.
The message of the second quotation is along similiar lines of the need for Marxist/post modernist commentary on scientific findings(!).
I've always found you Libertarian Rhoemite types most amusing. With all the drugs you right wing hippies take, it's no wonder you can't think coherently and believe that the so-called Palestinian's nonsense is something reasonable and objective (even as she denies objectivity with her Marxist post Modernism).
Here's a lesson in literary interpretation about your so-called Palestinian girlfriend, when reading a con artist, like this phony archeologist,
one doesn't read a con artist word for word; one reads the writing to try to get a general impression of what the person is trying to accomplish. This Stern person has done that admirably in making sense of the gibberish that your fellow anti-Semite has written.
My hat is off to Stern for wading through the so-called Palestinian's post modernism mumbo jumbo. It must've been torture to look at the so-called Palestinians post modernist word salad.
As you right wing hippies are nihilists and have the proclivities of Ernst Rhoem, of course the
zionist entity and Jews themselves should be wiped out. It must be a gas (pun intended) for you doped up clowns to even think about it. However, my Libertarian buddies aren't so open about it after the whithering criticism your movement suffered at the pen of Peter Schwartz. Since Schwartz and later Mercer pointed out how much Libertarians loathe the Jewish State, you chaps have been more circumspect.
Love Ya!
"There's no need to fear; Underzog is here!" (and don't forget the "Underdog" movie that just came out)
Mr. Nice Guy | August 19, 2007, 12:44pm | #
Anon
So if someone were doing "shoddy" postmodernist work on Faulkner you and Stern would not be so upset that you would lobby the college, from the outside, to have this woman denied tenure. This is viewpoint discrimination: to target this woman, whose work may indeed be "shoddy", because her views are "bad" while letting other shoddy work slide because the political implications do not offend you. This is actually why we have tenure in the first place, to defend against this and its chilling effect on innovative but perhaps unpopular views and findings.
As to shoddy work, Note that the college has an established tenure review process. As someone going through a tenure process I can tell you these things are not automatic nor are they handed out like hotcakes (even if your work is politically correct). Your work is grilled. You have to have scholarly, teaching and service contributions that warrant it. Many, many people are turned down, but they are turned down by a committee of their peers who look at the quality of their contributions, not politically invested outsiders. Now, of course they cannot examine whether their contributions are shoddy by declaring them "true" or "false" since there are many live controversies within a field and many people on the tenure review will not be of the field itself (or the subfields within fields, academe is a very specialized place). In your comment: "Such a scholar would not, of course, be able to conslude as Abu El Haj does that Israel is an illegitimate colonial state whose inhabitants have no connection to the ancient inhabitants of the land" you show that for you her position is just untenable and this is a closed question, amounting to saying that the moon is made of green cheese. I don't know this field esepcially, but this woman is a PhD in it and has published in it and from what I have read while she may not be convincing she has made reasonable scholarly arguments for her position. Her field probably does not hold that this position is as outrageous of a claim as you think it is or that this question is closed, and of course her tenure committee cannot do so. Should they go off a petition or a blogger who says "hey this woman is wrong and bad (note that you imply you think she is "bad" because you don't like the political implications of her work)?" In the charged field of academe how in the world could or should a tenure committee base its decision on that? You admit that you and Stern are more concerned about her work because of its "bad" political implications. Of course tenure committees can't take such nonsense into account (if they did don't you think, considering their numbers in academe, libertarian and conservative thinkers would be the first to be denied, even more so than occurs now?). They have to go on whether the academic publishes and presents regularly. People like yourself and Stern need to really, really butt out. If you think her work is bad, then get a Phd and publish work demonstrating its falsity. That's how a free market in ideas works. But strong arm tactics bullying an institution to deny someone tenure whose work you don't like and find plainly "shoddy" (and its clear from your comments that you have an ideological stake in seeing her work as "wrong") should not rule the day.
Given your comments I also have to question what you know about postmodernism. I'm no fan of it, it's in my field (the social sciences) all too much, but I question your grasp of it. It usually has to do with taking some accepted narrative or understanding and then challenging it. Sometimes this means simply revisionism, reinterperting claims in contrary fashions, demonstrating how the former narratives were ideologically charged, formed, and used, and in its extreme form how this is inevitable (hence the charge against it that it relatives all truth claims; all narratives came from an ideological place and serve ideological goals and the postmodernist kind of draws the curtain back to expose this while supposedly detnonating the claims to objective truth that these narratives lay hold to). I find this perspective to be lacking frankly and would be glad to talk about why, but more importantly I don't think it so lacking or so worthless that these folks should be dismissed out of hand, even if their ideological implications are bad.
Let me go further and comment on your main point: Israel's "undisputed" historical connection to the land. I agree that certainly Jews acniently lived somewhat roughly in the land that we now refer to as Israel and Palestine. Of course Jewish "myths" (like the Old Testamend) are mixed as far as being reliable as to the extent, duration, etc., of what was inhabited where when by whom (how could they not be?). However, it's also simply true that Jewish connection with the land had a big gap in it between a period relatively ancient and the modern Zionist movement where the bulk of the population simply plopped down from half a world away into a land already inhabited by folks who may not have been able to trace back to the same land 2,000 years ago but that had been living there unbroken for many generations. This is what makes Israel in its current form strike me and many people as illegitimate. But what is even more illegitimate are the post-1967 borders as it is immoral and illegal to occupy people's and lands gained from military conquest. It's also just evident that Israel has actively encouraged at the least and fostered and organized at the most the use of archeology to solidify claims of historical connection, (Christians are guilty of this too) finding sites that may or may not be Biblical ones and straining to interpret them as such to give credence to their narrative, and using these to acheive political goals. This is much of what it appears that this prof writes about and criticizes, and it strikes me as fair game...Both Israeli Jews and Christians have made claims of the Biblical connections of archeological sites that have been found to be strained at best and at times just unwarranted.
Jesse Walker | August 19, 2007, 5:04pm | #
Richard Silverstein just wrote to tell me that he's having trouble posting a comment on this thread and asking if I'll paste it in for him. Here it is:
* * * * *
Can the author be de-tenured for recurrent incoherent, pompous,
or unnecessary prose?
I agree with you Matthew. But I'm a former PhD candidate in Comp Lit &
quite familiar with dense theoretical critical analysis. Sure, it often
reeks of this sort of jargon. But that doesn't mean that the work doesn't
speak to important issues in the field in the language that those in the
field understand themselves. I'm not defending the prose as I wouldn't
write that way myself I don't think even were I writing something about
critical literary theory. But we need to keep in mind that her audience
wasn't you or me but archaeologists, anthropologists & others in related
fields.
Anon, is clearly a clever anti Abu El Haj propagandist. A little smarter
than Paula Stern, but a propagandist nevertheless. And he trots out
virtually the same arguments & the same alleged proof as she does.
Let's go back to the quote fr her that he mentions:
It is not an ideological assertion comparable to Arab claims of
Canaanite or other ancient tribal roots. Although both origin tales, Arab
and Jewish, are structurally similar as historical claims, Broshi's argument
betrays a "heirarchy of credibility" in which "facticity" is conferred only
upon the latter."
This passage by no means declares that an ancient Israeli kingdom was a
"pure political fabrication." It merely asks why, if both peoples have
ancient claims of origin is the Israelite claim the only one granted
historical credibility, while the Palestinian one is ignored or diminished?
That seems a legitimate question to me. It doesn't negate the Israeli
claim. It merely asks why the 2nd claim isn't accorded credibility.
she describs herself as writing within the traditions of
opposition to scientific method and commitment to the postmodern,
poststructuralist, and specific post-colonial movements that she refers to
in the third person
Wrong again as I point out in my own post about this. She is describing a
school of archaelogy here, not her own personal or scholarly views. In
fact, I know for a direct fact that she does not hold to these views herself
though I am certain that she feels more sympathy for them than for the
conventional archaelogical approaches she critiques in the book.
I do not like her politics because she is open in her opposition
to the existence of the State of Israel.
Pls. do quote anything she has written that says this.
[She] places the remains of solomon's palace (assuming Solomon
existed and that he had a palace) within the footprint of the Ottoman-era
Jewish quarter despite the fact that the walls of the city did not ezetend
to the west of the hill calle Ir David (city of David) until they were
extended in the reign of Hezekiah in thelate eighth century.
This is also not true as Prof. Brendan McKay has pointed out:
The excavation al Haj is discussing was not in the modern Jewish
Quarter but on the south slopes of the Haram al-Sharif, in other words
between the Temple Mount and the City of David.
Hundreds of pieces of securely-dated writing in paleoHebrew
exist. to leave this out and claim that archaeological artifacts cannot
support the assertion of ethnicity is simply to lie by
omission.
Again, McKay disputes this claim:
A few quick searches [of the book] shows that in fact these
inscriptions are mentioned repeatedly throughout the book. The biggest lie
here is [when] the petition.claims that these inscriptions support the
Biblical pre-exilic story when in fact the intersection between story and
evidence is extremely slight and controversial. Even the meaning of the
"House of David" inscription is hotly disputed amongst the
experts.
Abu El Haj [concludes]...Israel['s]...inhabitants have no
connection to the ancient inhabitants of the land.
She does not believe this & I challenge you to provide evidence she does.
was an overwhelmingly Jewish city. The archaeology has been done
and it agrees with the historiography. No scholar in the world denies that
Herodian Jerusalem was a majority Jewish city e, ecxept the inimitable Abu
El Haj.
But you have provided no source to verfiy yr claim that it was a majority
Jewish city. And even if was a majority Jewish city, Jerusalem through the
ages has been a city shared with many communities and religions and all of
them have conflicting traditions regarding the city. I think what she is
arguing is that Israelis have already given preference for their own
narrative regarding Jerusalem and given short shrift to that of others. She
is arguing for balance more than anything something that is lacking within
Israeli society when it comes to the values and traditions of minority
communities.
He accuses Campus Watch of being behind the petition. But Campus
Watch denies it.
Besides the fact that CW as a site is built on a tissue of lies and
distortions against its "enemies," let's assume that Campus Watch isn't
behind the petition. The fact is that Campus Watch & Frontpagemagazine have
been on the warpath against Abu El Haj for months. If Stern & these sites
aren't in direct collusion then they're a loose alliance of the like-minded
with the same agenda: to smear Abu El-Haj in order to advance their own
ideological agenda.
The most sophisticated review of this book in print is by Alex
Joffee in Near Eastern Studies.
By "most sophisticated" you really mean "the best hatchet job" don't you?
There are many nasty negative reviews of this book. There are many positive
ones. You put forward the ones that suit yr agenda & disregard the rest
that don't. Convenient.
Regarding the use of sources. Abu El Haf does not name her sources in some
instances. One wishes she would have. But one cannot know the reasons for
this though one could make educated guesses. If a graduate student or even
fellow professor witnessed the incident & reported it to Abu El Haj would
she be willing to endanger the person's future career by leaving them open
to retaliation? Perhaps the informant demanded anonymity. We just don't
know. I always prefer to names sources. But there are cases in journalism
and academic discourse where you don't & there are many valid reasons for
this practice.
thoreau | August 19, 2007, 5:22pm | #
joshua-
Certainly there are some tenured professors who are relatively unproductive. However, you can't just eliminate those positions and offer the money to junior stars because the teaching roster still needs to be filled.
Also, while I can't speak to every discipline, in the natural sciences and engineering I'd say that most people remain quite productive well past tenure. The ones who are less productive as researchers often assume crucial mentoring roles in the department. In almost every institution that I've been associated with I've benefited from an informal relationship with a guy who had progressed to a senior stage of his career and no longer ran a research program of the same caliber as his colleagues. As an undergrad, I worked in a lab with a guy who no longer had to devote so much attention to grad students and grants and could spend more time one-on-one in the lab with undergraduates. I learned far more from him than I did in any classroom. In grad school there was a guy who no longer took graduate students but was still active in teaching, sat on thesis committees, and ran a small research lab. He was my "informal" advisor, a guy that I could go to for advice when I wasn't comfortable talking to my official thesis advisor, and he get me through some tough spots. In one of my adjunct faculty jobs I spent a lot of time talking to a guy who just taught and sat on committees and no longer did much research, and learned a lot of useful things about my job.
So even the ones who are less productive on paper are often still teaching and mentoring, which are the most important roles of a professor.
So the amount of dead weight is probably less than you think. But I will grant that there is some dead weight, and some of the teaching load could be lifted with adjuncts. This is indeed what is happening, to some extent. Schools are trying to get an older generation to take early retirement, and are being more selective about filling those spots. Teaching loads are being filled in part with adjuncts, and full time faculty are being hired more selectively.
So yes, I do know a thing or two about the faculty job market.
Oh, and as I said above, private for-profit schools are on the rise. I was an adjunct at one for a while. Mostly they offer professional, trade, and vocational programs rather than basic science, and only hire basic scientists as adjuncts to teach prerequisite classes. If I knew of a for-profit school hiring full-timers to teach basic and applied science, and to mentor senior research projects as well as teach the standard curriculum, I'd seriously considering applying, depending on the pay, even if tenure wasn't offered.
from Paula Stern's blog | August 19, 2007, 9:27pm | #
Does Nadia Abu El Haj know Hebrew?
For those of you who don't know...I live in Israel. I speak Hebrew every day, in all settings. One would assume that someone who is studying the culture and archeology of a land would want to have an in-depth understanding of the language of the people, the language in which the bulk of the experts would be writing. The most experienced experts in Israeli archeology are...Israelis. They write in Hebrew. They converse in Hebrew. They study and work in Hebrew. So...as someone who would want to give the impression that she is an expert in her field...or why else would she have chosen to do her dissertation in this field (why, indeed?)...it is valid to ask if Nadia Abu El Haj is even capable of understanding the language in which the bulk of the literature is written. So, does Nadia Abu El Haj know Hebrew?
She says she studied Hebrew in her Acknowledgements section, but reviewers of her work have doubted that she knows enough Hebrew to function in the language. Any Israeli reading the book will quickly see that the numerous mistakes she makes are a clear indication...this woman is as uncertain and unskilled in her Hebrew skills as she is in her research, her documentation, her ability to draw logical and intelligent conclusions based on real facts on the ground.
“In particular, discussing Israeli archeology as a cultural phenomenon requires an in-depth understanding of Israeli society and, above all, a working knowledge of scholarly Hebrew. Abu el-Haj indicates she studied Hebrew in a desultory fashion, and although her bibliography and footnotes do contain references to Hebrew publications, she appears to have invested lightly in the multitude of Hebrew sources that could have informed her study and made it compelling.” -- http://www.meforum.org/article/560
Jacob Lassner
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2003
Abu El Haj claims that in her book she “analyzes the significance of archaeology to the Israeli state and society and the role it played in the formation and enactment of its colonial-national historical imagination.…”
The usual scholarly approach to looking at the role of something like archaeology in any society is to systematically examine such sources as school books, newspapers, and popular literature. Anthropologists also ascertain attitudes and beliefs by conducting interviews with members of the society being studied. Abu El Hj neither conducted interviews with Israelis nor explored the sources – school books, newspapers, novels, political speeches, and so forth – that would have revealed the range of Israeli opinion on archaeology. There is every possibility that she failed to take this important step for a very simple reason...she couldn't read them; she couldn't understand them. They are, after all, in the language of the Jewish state she so despises: Hebrew.
Instead, she took the ordinary tours that tourists take. The book includes several extended passages in which she seems to put forth the words of a particular tour guide as representative of Israeli opinion as a whole.
This is a methodological problem with the book. Instead of studying Israeli society, she quotes the opinion of a couple of tour guides in the Jewish Quarter. And she quotes them directly and entirely in English. It is reasonable to assume that she (people who have heard her speak report that she sounds like a native, American English speaker) took the tours in English.
Here is an academic critique of her methodology in studying Israeli society.
“But any discussion of how high culture connects to low culture must include a review of the locations where this really happens in an active sense, not least of all school curricula, pamphlets, and newspapers. On these Abu El-Haj is largely silent, choosing instead to retread the familiar ground of Zionist nature walks. Her omission may be contrasted with the work of Amatzia Baram on Ba’athist Iraq or Asher Kaufman on ‘Phoenicianism’ in Maronite Lebanon, not to mention Nachman Ben-Yehuda’s on Masada in Israeli culture. (10) Her determination to focus on high culture products such as museums and ‘space’ is again in the tradition of Said. Not coincidentally, these are precisely the subjects explored most cogently by leftist Israeli academics, whom she cites approvingly and repeatedly. They, like the revisionist Israeli ‘New Historians’ are at least familiar with their subjects.
“Whatever might have been said or created by archaeology is received differently by pluralist society. People heard, and hear, what they want to hear; as Yaacov Shavit notes, in a critically important English-language paper not cited by Abu El-Haj, Israeli archaeology was many different things to different people. (11) Historical memory, a concept she invokes without mentioning Pierre Nora or Maurice Halbwachs, is produced throughout every society and not merely among intellectuals. As if to compensate for her elevated focus, she tries to grasp the ‘meaning’ of the ‘facts’ she has gathered by a kind of crypto-ethnography, overheard snippets of tourist chatter, conversations with unnamed informant archaeologists, and commentary from ever reliable tour guides. Does this chart public opinion or public policy in any meaningful way? It is a flimsy and unconvincing method for entering into the gestalt of Israeli society. If nothing else it is undone by her pretending to straddle the impossible boundary between observer-independent and observer-dependent relations. Her understanding of Israeli politics is simplistic and falls back on convenient dichotomies; religious versus non religious, Mizrahi versus Ashkenazi, and of course, religious-nationalist ‘settlers’ versus everyone. (12) Ultimately, Abu El-Haj’s anthropology is undone by her epistemology and ill-informed narrative, intrusive counter-politics, and by her unwillingness to either enter or observe Israeli society with a modicum of sympathy or generosity.”
Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society, Alexander H Joffe. Journal of Near Eastern Studies. Chicago: Oct 2005. Vol. 64, Iss. 4; p. 297.
http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archives/008510.shtml
Add to this the fact that Israel is a free country. You can take a tour of Jerusalem’s Jewish sites with local or foreign guides who speak Arabic, English, Hebrew, and a hundred other languages. Migdal David on a typical day is a fair stand-in for the Tower of Babel, with guides simultaneously speaking Japanese, Italian and more languages than I can identify. More to the point, available tours are as ideologically diverse as they are linguistically diverse. This is not China or Jordan, where a government ministry regulates what the guides can say. You can take a Christian, Muslim, Jewish or anti-religion tour, you can take a poltically right-wing or a politically left-wing tour. You can take regularly organized tours of Jerusalem sponsored by groups that advocate the elimination of the State of Israel.
But back to the language question. Does she or doesn’t she?
“A Brief Evaluation of Methodology and Use of Evidence in Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society by Nadia Abu El-Haj
“Command of the Hebrew Language
“El-Haj has undertaken to write an anthropology of Israeli attitudes towards archaeology and their role in “self-fashioning in Israeli society,” yet there is no indication in the text that she either explored these topics in conversation with Israelis in a systematic way (she cites only conversations with tour guides) or by reading materials published in the national language. Indeed, there are indications in the text that she was not capable of doing so due to her apparent unfamiliarity with Hebrew. Even when following a source (p. 95), El-Haj repeatedly mistakes neve (settlement) for nahal (stream), misnaming, for example, Nahal Patish as Neve Patish (writing, roughly, the town of Patish in place of Patish Creek, a stream valley named for its hammer [patish]-shaped rock formation.)
“On the next page (p. 96), she accuses Zionist pioneers of naming Tell Hai, Tell Yosef, and Tell ha-Shomer in a manner intended to mislead, that is, by implying that these new villages were built on tells, that is, on sites “of the remains of ancient settlements.” El-Haj not only condemns such misappropriation of the word tell but asserts that the government Committee on Place Names (Va’adt ha-Shemot) “insisted” that “such improper terminological uses could not be continued.”
“Throughout this remarkable passage, Abu El-Haj appears to be entirely unaware that tell (tel) is a common Hebrew word meaning both “hill” and “artificial hill created by the remains of an ancient settlement.” A direct translation of Tel Aviv, for example, is Hill of Spring, a hopeful name for a city that makes no pretense to antiquity. El-Haj’s assertion that the names of these towns were condemned by the Va’ad ha-Shemot is sheer untruth.
“A lack of familiarity with the language of a nation disqualifies a scholar from attempting certain projects. Lack of Hebrew disqualifies a scholar from undertaking a technical discussion of Hebrew and Arabic place-naming.”
http://phibetacons.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjZhNzE1ODRmYzg4M2VkZGVmMzc3Njg0MzMwMWM2ZGQ=
Readers of Facts on the Ground with a working knowledge of Hebrew understandably come away with the impression that Nadia Abu El Haj lacks a working knowledge of Hebrew. If she does have command of Hebrew sufficient to interview Israelis and read Israeli newspapers and books, she ought to have done so before pretending to publish a study that “analyzes the significance of archaeology to the Israeli state and society.”
August 19, 2007, Paula Stern
http://www.paulasays.com/articles/nadia_el_haj/does_nadia_abu_el_haj_know_hebrew.html
James Butler | August 20, 2007, 8:05pm | #
I have had literally hundreds of conversations with my Israeli brethren regarding "whose" land the Israeli political State is currently encamped on, and at some point or another, one of my brethren will drag out something like, "Your argument that the Palestinians have
any right to
our land would be more satisfying if you also approved of the rights your American Indians hold to the land occupied by Americans."
My retort to them, every time, as it is in this situation, is, "I'm not saying they do not have a right to the land, however they were not strong or brutal enough to retain it, so my
distant ancestors forcibly took it from them. Such is the nature of war and conquest."
Sure, Jewish folks have lived all over the world, including places like the currently designated Israeli State. Sure, there are archaeologically-available artifacts from dozens of cultures in that same region.
In support of the thought process (and not specifically the current tome by Abu El Haj), what's with all of this "Our Land" crap? Yeah, it's currently under Jewish control, because y'all used what God gave you and managed to seize the opportunity presented to you at the end of WWII. To wit (http://www.mfa.gov.il/):
"On May 14, 1948, on the day in which the British Mandate over Palestine expired, the Jewish People's Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum, and approved the following proclamation, declaring the establishment of the State of Israel. The new state was recognized that night by the United States and three days later by the USSR."
Politically expedient? You bet. Great timing? Couldn't have been better! Based on scientific research and vetted by a panel of knowledgeable experts in historical land occupation and territorial ownership, or even by a preponderance of the existing archaeological evidence? Not bloody likely.
It's like "finding" WMD in Iraq after our forces have been on the ground for a year (didn't happen, but I'm just saying...). History is being written by the victorious. In this case, the Israelis. (Not to be confused with the religious designation; "Jews") If they want to use archaeological findings to "prove" their "ownership" of a piece of turf, and in so doing deny any and all others the opportunity to have a say in how that lump of dirt is managed ... happens all the time.
Just don't get your panties up in a bunch when someone points out that's what is happening. No sense in denying it ... it happened. (Sound familiar?)
Good for goose = good for gander
