Monday, October 10, 2005
At Campus Watch, Hugh Fitzgerald reviews Nadia Abu El-Haj's book, Facts on the Ground: Archeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society, and...well, I think he didn't like it. I posted a review in full of the book previously in the entry Applauding the destruction of Joseph's Tomb at Columbia? One of my correspondents says this is a decently written review, but does have some concerns about Fitzgerald's piece, noting for instance that, contrary to what's implied, El-Haj has certainly visited Israeli digs, and describes them at length. Reading the piece again, I think Fitzgerald may be speaking figuratively -- that is, given El-Haj's conclusions and explanations, one would think she had no direct experience at all with actual Israeli archaeology.
Anyway, take a look at the review. It certainly appears that El-Haj's presence represents another case of politics trumping scholarship in highering.
Crisis at Columbia: Nadia Abu El-Haj by Hugh Fitzgerald
Is it surprising, is it illegitimate, is it deplorable, that in once again having a restored Jewish state, that the Jews of Israel should not have dug into the earth, not attempted to study the past, including – and this must be emphasized for it is left entirely out of El-Haj's account – artifacts from every period, and not only artifacts of the Jewish past? Israeli archeologists have, often with foreign colleagues, discovered Roman coins and mosaic floors and temples, have uncovered Byzantine artifacts, and those of the Islamic conquest, both of the Arab period, and of the period of Ottoman rule. Many of the Islamic artifacts have, in fact, been meticulously and scrupulously catalogued, studied, and preserved – all serious students know about the Islamic Museum in Jerusalem and its exceptional collection. Does Nadia El-Haj? El-Haj seems to think that the study of the Jewish past by Israeli archeologists, observing the highest professional standards, known for the meticulousness, is an outrageous political act, an act of "Jewish settler-colonial nation state-building" (that phrase itself deserves analysis, for the hysterical confusion of its English)...
(Hat tip to Judith for one of the pointers.)
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