...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." [They are blameworthy because they don't see it, as El Haj does, as a pure political fabrication. Sorry to keep pounding at this, but sometimes it's tough to untangle the academic mush-speak. -S]

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.