Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Columbia's tenure-tracked Nadia Abu el-Haj scores another scathing review, this time by Haifa U Professor, Sondra M. Rubenstein: Denial of Heritage
Since there is no evidence for Arab/Muslim national-cultural continuity in the Land of Israel dating to before the Arab conquest of the seventh century, this young woman demands that we level the playing field by pretending that evidence of Jewish national-cultural continuity does not exist either. The modern Jewish/Israeli belief in ancient Israelite origins" becomes a "pure political fabrication," to be understood as an "ideological assertion comparable to Arab claims of Canaanite or other ancient tribal roots." This eliminates the "hierarchy of credibility" (here she follows Cooper and Stoller, 1997, Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World) in which "facticity" is conferred only upon the former.
Unfortunately, Ms. Abu El Haj's approach also eliminates the standards of evidence upon which scholarly work is based...
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This al-Hadj represents a frightening type, no doubt to become more common. Speaking of Joseph's traditional tomb site, here's a link to my post on Joseph's Tomb in Sh'khem. I quote from ancient and medieval Jewish and Christian sources.
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2005/07/josephs-tomb-in-shkhem-pas-big-lie.html