[wvns] Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain
The latest salvo against Arab and Muslim academics being waged by
extremist and fanatic Zionists in the ongoing Tenure Wars is a
conspiracy to deny Nadia Abu el Haj tenure at Columbia University.
SIGN THE PETITION! SUPPORT THE PROFESSOR!
http://www.petitiononline.com/Barnard2/petition.html
===
"Pay no attention to that Man Behind the Curtain"
Nadia Abu el Haj and the Truth about the Wizard of Oz
August 18th, 2007
by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni @ aol.com)
Jesse Walker supplies an article worth reading at the Reason Magazine
website. The title is "The Case of Nadia Abu El-Haj" and the URL is
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/122022.html . Walker references an
even more thorough article from Richard Silverstein's blog. It is
entitled "Pro-Israel Campaign to deny El-Haj Tenure." It's URL is
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2007/08/17/rightist-jewish-campaign\
-to-deny-nadia-abu-el-haj-tenure/
Both articles missed the negative role that David Project operatives
like Alexander Joffe have played in the controversy, which could well
be the handiwork of David Project operative Rachel Fish. (See
http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/06/removing-islamophobe-soapbax.html
and http://angrywhitekid.blogs.com/weblog/2005/01/columbia_unbeco.html .)
Aren Maeir has complained that Nadia Abu el Haj is insensitive to the
changes that have taken place in Israeli archeology, and there have
always been a few Israeli archeologists whose goal is to elucidate the
past as Mark Lehner does in Egyptology, but the reports of the
excavation at Herodium and the reaction of the Israeli Jewish public
indicate that the goal of Israeli archeology for many Israeli
archeologists and for the larger part of the Israeli public remains
verification of scriptural text in order to concretize the link of
modern Jews and therefore of Zionist colonizers to Greco-Roman
Palestine. Such is context in which Nadia Abu el Haj and Yael
Zerubavel have written their books (Facts on the Ground: Archeological
Practice and Territorial Self-fashioning in Israel and Recovered
Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition).
As one would expect from the history of Zionist colonization since the
late 19th century, the archeologists did not worry at all whether they
had any right to carry out digs in the Palestinian Occupied
Territories, and the Israeli public interpreted the discovery as yet
more proof of the Jewish claims to the land in a sort of Pavlovian
non-sequitur because Herod, who ruled a mixed population of Judeans,
Galileans, Idumeans, Nabateans, Greeks, Samanians and others, was
three quarters Nabatean and one quarter Idumean by ancestry.
Neither Zerubavel nor Abu el Haj addresses the issue, but Herod's
subjects were almost certainly the ancestors of modern Palestinians
and certainly not of any modern Jewish population while Eastern
European and Southern Russian archeology as well as Geniza and other
texts of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages show that modern
ethnic Ashkenazim are descended almost entirely from various Eastern
European and Southern Russian populations that adopted some form of
Jewish or Judean practices at various times.
The ethnogenesis of Palestinians and ethnic Ashkenazim are interesting
topics, and I recommend The Myth of Nations by Patrick Geary for
anyone interested in such questions, but they do not appear in either
Zerubavel's or Abu el Haj's book. Zerubavel is describing the
sociological relationship of modern Israelis to their past while Nadia
Abu el Haj is analyzing how Israeli archeology functions internally
and in relationship to Israeli society.
If the vandalization of the Bruno Schulz historical site by Yad Vashem
(see
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0A17FB3E540C778EDDAF0894D94044\
82&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fS%2fSchulz%2c%20Bruno
) had occurred earlier, Zerubavel would probably have discussed it in
her book because it supports her analysis of the role of shlilat
hagalut and shlilat hagolah in Israeli society.
Abu el Haj does not describe her work in this way but when I read the
book in 2003, I was reminded to some extent of Boswell's Christianity,
Social Tolerance and Homosexuality, for I had the impression she was
providing an in-depth under-the-surface look at the Zionist high
priesthood. She gives incite into the integration of doctrine,
doctrinal debates, practices, and non-canonical history or facts into
the consciousness that Israeli archeologists fashion.
A lot of the membership of the Catholic church was uncomfortable with
Boswell's work just as many Zionists have rejected Abu el Haj's
approach to Israeli archeology, but neither scholar's results are any
less important or any less valid on account of such reactions. Nadia
Abu el Haj definitely deserves tenure.
===
Nadia Abu el Haj and Yael Zerubavel:
Muzzling Scholars of Arabic Ancestry
by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni @ aol.com)
http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/08/nadia-abu-el-haj-and-yael-zerubavel.html
Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National
Tradition by Yael Zerubavel discusses the construction of memory and
the invention of traditions in Mandatory Palestine and in the State of
Israel. The book describes some unusual Israeli or Zionist practices
associated with Masada and Bar Kochba archeological excavations.
Rather like Nadia Abu el Haj in Facts on the Ground: Archeological
Practice and Territorial Self-fashioning in Israel, Zerubavel
describes the use of archeology and other scholarship to construct
Zionist national identity.
Other scholars have investigated the political use of archeology in
various contexts. Not only Max Weinreich and Eric Hobsbawm provide
similar analysis in their published works, but Constructing "Korean"
Origins: A Critical Review of Archaeology, Historiography, and Racial
Myth in Korean State-Formation Theories by Hyung Il Pai addresses
precisely that same issues with regard to the development of Korean
national consciousness.
Even though Abu el Haj focuses more narrowly on professional
archeologists whereas Zerubavel looks at Israeli society as a whole,
both authors make similar points in their books, and Zerubavel
provides support for some of the claims for which Nadia Abu el Haj has
been most criticized.
Zerubavel received the 1996 Salo Baron Prize of the American Academy
for Jewish Research for her work while Nadia Abu el Haj is the target
of an international campaign to drive her out of Columbia/Barnard. The
difference in the responses evoked by the two authors merits a
scholarly study in itself.
Zerubavel's description of Israeli or Zionist archeological practices
is quite disturbing and congruent with Abu el Haj's.
Zerubavel's book was published only six years before Abu el Haj's, and
it won a Jewish book award. Zerubavel is the director of the Center
for the Study of Jewish Life at Rutgers.
The behavior of Israeli archeologists at Herodium indicates that their
behavior has not changed much over the last 40 years, and while it was
not precisely an archeological sin, Yad Vashem's seizure of Bruno
Schultz's murals in Drogobych in 2001 (see
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40614F835550C738EDDAF0894D94044\
82&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fSubjects%2fJ%2fJews%20and%20Judaism
) shows that the mentality described in Abu el Haj's book was
definitely still alive in 2001.
The linguistic complaints against Abu el Haj were minor. I have not
been particularly impressed with the Zionist colonizer population's
command of Hebrew, and in at least one case Abu el Haj was correct
while her critics were wrong. See
http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/06/long-version-of-tenure-wars_14.html
. I would have been more impressed with the criticism for the
misunderstanding of nahal if more of her critics showed some
understanding of why she might have confused it with the word for
settlement. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facts_on_the_Ground:_Archaeological_Practice_and_Te\
rritorial_Self-Fashioning_in_Israeli_Society#Criticism
.
In the end Abu el Haj's critics are upset with her tone. It is simply
unreasonable for ethnic Ashkenazi Americans and Zionist colonizers to
expect scholarly works about Israel to gush with love for Zionism or
the Zionist states especially in the case of a scholar that is
probably a victim of Zionism and the State of Israel. I do not
remember much criticism of Max Weinreich's tone in Hitler's
Professors. That book addressed some similar archeological and
geographical issues, expressed justifiable anger, and was reasonably
scholarly.
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