Campus Watch in the Media

El Haj and the "Pure Political Fabrication" [on Nadia Abu El Haj]

by Paula Stern
Paula Says Blog
October 22, 2007

http://www.paulasays.com/articles/nadia_el_haj/el_haj_and_the_pure_political_fabrication.html

http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4303

"Pure political fabrication." that is how Nadia Abu El Haj describes the "modernJewish/Israeli belief in ancient Jewish origins."

A blogger named Richard Silverstein says I'm making this up. He says I'm lying. That if you quote the full sentence:

"The modern Jewish/Israeli belief in ancient Israelite origins is not understood as a pure political
fabrication."

says Silverstein, the meaning is reversed.

In reality, Nadia Abu El Haj is faulting Israeli archaeologists for their thought crimes. Put more simply, El Haj believes they are at fault because "The modern Jewish/Israeli belief in ancient Israelite origins is not understood as a pure political fabrication."

Read the whole paragraph (p. 250) and see what she really says.

"While by the early 1990s, virtually all archaeologists argued for the need to disentangle the goals of their professional practice form the quest for Jewish origins and objects that framed an earlier archaeological project, the fact that there is some genuine national-cultural connection between contemporary (Israeli-)Jews and such objects was not open to sustained questioning. That commitment remained, for the most part, and for most practicing archaeologists, fundamental. In other words, the modern Jewish/Israeli belief in ancient Israelite origins is not understood as a pure political fabrication. 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, (Israeli archaeologist) Broshi's argument betrays a "hierarchy of credibility" in which "facticity" is conferred only upon the latter."

But, Nadia, dear, it is not merely possible but valid for scholars to construct a "hierarchy of credibility." Most would say that this is the point of having scholars. Scholars examine the evidence and make the judgment that, after sustained questioning of the evidence, there is indeed a "genuine national-cultural connection between contemporary (Israeli-)Jews" and many two and three-thousand year old archaeological artifacts, while there is no evidence of Palestinian Arab national-cultural connection to Canaanite or other ancient tribes.

Note: Postings in "Campus Watch in the Media" do not necessarily reflect the views of Campus Watch.

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