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Facts in the air
By Bari Weiss
Tags: land of israel, Archeology 

Earlier this month, a young anthropology professor named Nadia Abu El-Haj received tenure at Barnard College, a division of Columbia University in New York. Unlike most academic promotions, which largely go unnoticed, her successful tenure bid was met with raucous jeers and cheers. Here was a victory for a "purveyor of hate," according to Paula Stern, the Barnard alumna who organized a campaign to deny El-Haj tenure. For her supporters, this marked a clear victory against the "New McCarthyism" - the alleged campaign now being waged against scholars who criticize Israel, particularly those of Arab descent.

It's all too easy to toss the news of El-Haj's tenure into the stew that is the ongoing battle over the state of Middle Eastern studies at universities today. But this is not just another round between the Zionists and the anti-Zionists. This is about the nature of truth, and the possibility of, well, facts themselves.

Sound hyperbolic? Consider El-Haj's 2001 work, "Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society" (University of Chicago Press), based on her doctoral thesis at Duke, and the only book upon which she was granted tenure. Its title is a tongue-in-cheek allusion to Moshe Dayan's post-1967 suggestion that Israel take de facto control of areas in the West Bank by purposefully building settlements there.
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In it, El-Haj argues that for decades Israeli archaeologists have literally created facts on the ground. To argue that people, rather than evidence, create archaeological fact, El-Haj is forced to abandon the methodology of science altogether. And this is precisely what she does. She explains her work as "rejecting a positivist commitment to scientific method." Instead, she works on the level of theory, within the frameworks of "post structuralism, philosophical critiques of foundationalism, Marxism and critical theory." These frameworks are united by a "commitment to understanding archaeology as necessarily political."

El-Haj is hardly the first to employ this approach. Perhaps its most powerful trailblazer was Edward Said, who argued in his landmark 1978 book "Orientalism," that when dealing with Asia, the West was necessarily politicized. Said alleged that even the most well-intentioned scholars, if they were Western, were Orientalists, actively constructing a mythical "Orient" out of their own political motivations as the exotic, feminized, other. For Said, there is no such thing as objectivity in scholarship, and those who claim to strive for it may well be the ones with the most to hide.

Said's approach quickly spiraled into nasty finger-pointing, in which he and his disciples accused seasoned scholars in the field of implicit political bias at best, and at worst, of harboring a kind of pervasive racism. With tremendous success, his book asserted that there is no such thing as truth or fact. Instead, there is only identity.

Now, consider imposing this rough framework on the field of archaeology in the land of Israel. Here we are not talking of novels or paintings with Middle Eastern themes. More than perhaps any other, this is a field based on physical objects dug out of the ground: potsherds, bits of wood, and, if you're lucky, foundations and walls of ancient buildings. And yet, to El-Haj, such hard physical evidence is in fact just as easily constructed as the theoretical Western conception of the East. She writes of Israeli archaeology: "At the most fundamental level, archaeology produced... and created the fact of an ancient Israelite/Jewish nation and nation-state rooted therein." Rather than taking existing evidence to create historical theories, El-Haj holds that the field of archaeology creates evidence itself. In her narrative, highly regarded Israeli archaeologists turn into nationalist robots, wielding bulldozers in a desperate effort to "create" evidence of a historic Jewish presence in the Land of Israel, where no such presence existed.

El-Haj spells out the contemporary implications of creating such facts on the ground. "The work of archaeology in Palestine/Israel is a cardinal institutional location for the ongoing practice of colonial nationhood, producing facts through which historical-national claims, territorial transformations, heritage objects, and historicities 'happen.'" Thus, the field of archaeology simply becomes one more theater for the project of "Jewish settler- colonial nation state-building."

By casting the whole of Israeli archaeology in this way, El-Haj grants herself permission to interpret Palestinian destruction of ancient artifacts as a legitimate form of "resistance." By "destroying the tomb [Joseph's Tomb in 2001], Palestinian demonstrators eradicated one 'fact on the ground.'" This is El-Haj's logic come full circle. Ancient artifacts are just as synthetic as pre-fab houses in the West Bank, thereby rendering the destruction of both equally justified, even heroic.

Let's be clear: Is it in the interest of today's Zionists to find evidence of an ancient Israelite kingdom in the Land of Israel? Of course. But recognizing such interest does not preclude the possibility of the application of fair, professional standards, and the ability of archaeologists, regardless of their ethnic group, to uphold them in good faith.

El-Haj's work does not remind readers of the need to be skeptical of the influence nationalism can have on the interpretation of archaeological facts. Instead, she has written a book condemning the notion of facts themselves. It is for this reason that those who care about the future of the veracity of facts - and not just the future of Israel - should take serious notice of her promotion.

Bari Weiss is a Dorot fellow living in Jerusalem.
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  1.   is the book subjective or is just applied to israel? 09:44  |  victor hardman 02/12/07
  2.   Nadia Abu El-Haj 09:56  |  George 02/12/07
  3.   ancient Israel itself is an invention, to a very large extent 10:57  |  Khalid 02/12/07
  4.   "Colonial nationhood" 11:21  |  Ex-Syrian Jew 02/12/07
  5.   @Khalid 11:33  |  Ralph 02/12/07
  6.   Khalid 11:38  |  David 02/12/07
  7.   Theory in practice 11:48  |  Daniel Hershtal 02/12/07
  8.   it wouldn`t matter so much if.... 12:28  |  malkizedek jethro 02/12/07
  9.   David in Toronto. You sound like an educated fellow. 12:32  |  Maureen Ann 02/12/07
  10.   The Failure of the Minimalist School 12:43  |  Ovadiah ben Avraham 02/12/07
  11.   however, many Israeli archaeologists are not religious 13:13  |  Uday 02/12/07
  12.   #8 mo and the khazars are mythical 13:27  |  victor hardman 02/12/07
  13.   I HAVE REALIZED THAT HA ARETZ IS THE WRONG NEWSPAPER FOR ME 13:30  |  H.Onestman 02/12/07
  14.   The "Great Davidic Empire" Strawman Argument 14:31  |  Ovadiah ben Avraham 02/12/07
  15.   If there are no facts then there is no Palestinian people 14:31  |  AA 02/12/07
  16.   promise to abraham:dan to beersheba.enough? 14:44  |  kdarla`omer king of 02/12/07
  17.   ARABS ARE MASTERS OF DISINFORMATION 15:07  |  Iskander 02/12/07
  18.   mdern Arabia itself is an invention, to a very large extent 15:12  |  Herbert Kaine 02/12/07
  19.   # 3 Kahalid 15:15  |  17 02/12/07
  20.   # 9 Maureen Ann - 15:18  |  17 02/12/07
  21.   The Minimalist - Traditionalist Controversy 15:26  |  Mark Lincoln 02/12/07
  22.   Khalid is a muhammedan 15:53  |  Johnny 02/12/07
  23.   George 15:55  |  sh 02/12/07
  24.   ovadiah ben avraham 16:05  |  avraham ben ya`akov 02/12/07
  25.   her attack isnt just against history, its against science 16:10  |  Copernicus 02/12/07
  26.   Lincoln: It was "Kadesh" not "Meggido" 16:17  |  Ovadiah ben Avraham 02/12/07
  27.   You are correct Ovadiah ben Avraham 16:55  |  Mark Lincoln 02/12/07
  28.   Manipulating archeological finds 17:04  |  Native 02/12/07
  29.   #21 facts, khazars, etc 17:05  |  Bob 02/12/07
  30.   Mark Lincoln # 21 Pharoah Ramses II 17:16  |  Jeff Northridge 02/12/07
  31.   Its in the History Stupd 17:25  |  Steve 02/12/07
  32.   from the people who brought you Mohammed Al-Dura 17:26  |  McQueen 02/12/07
  33.   Academia = meaningless jargon 17:29  |  McQueen 02/12/07
  34.   She has written a book condemning the notion of facts th 17:41  |  James 02/12/07
  35.   JEWISH SITES IN ARABIA 17:44  |  Iskander 02/12/07
  36.   The new BS 18:02  |  Danite 02/12/07
  37.   The new BS#2 18:05  |  Danite 02/12/07
  38.   Revisionism or Careerism 18:06  |  TT 02/12/07
  39.   don`t feel too bad mark lincoln 18:08  |  avraham ben yaakov 02/12/07
  40.   Mark Lincoln 18:10  |  Danite 02/12/07
  41.   Khazars and Jews- Greeks and Arabs 18:17  |  Danite 02/12/07
  42.   Muslims also destroyed Farsi history 18:17  |  Ethel 02/12/07
  43.   FARS IN THE AIR 18:18  |  LJF-CANADA 02/12/07
  44.   #34 James on Ilan Pappe 18:18  |  Ben Alofs 02/12/07
  45.   Prof. Nadia Abu El-Haj 18:18  |  Jeff Northridge 02/12/07
  46.   Avraham ben yaaov 18:32  |  Mark Lincoln 02/12/07
  47.   Biased subjectivity-existentialism 18:33  |  Ethel 02/12/07
  48.   Khalid 18:35  |  Danite 02/12/07
  49.   dr ben and ilan pappe are birds of afeather ideologically 18:37  |  victor hardman 02/12/07
  50.   Danite - it is clear 18:39  |  Mark Lincoln 02/12/07
  51.   Danite - what is important to myself 18:47  |  Mark Lincoln 02/12/07
  52.   Another antisemitic Arab "Academic"? Gee, that`s novel! 18:49  |  Jack Levine 02/12/07
  53.   lincoln-i was defending you,not gloating 18:55  |  a.b.y. 02/12/07
  54.   Mythology 18:57  |  Mark 02/12/07
  55.   Danite - 150 years of archeology 19:00  |  Mark Lincoln 02/12/07
  56.   Ethel - the arts of Archaeology and Histor 19:07  |  Mark Lincoln 02/12/07
  57.   Ben Alofs 19:07  |  James 02/12/07
  58.   Danite: The New BS 19:09  |  CHGODMK 02/12/07
  59.   Emotion vs. Reason 19:11  |  Ethel 02/12/07
  60.   Ethnic cleansing - I`m shocked shocked 19:15  |  Other Voices 02/12/07
  61.   Mark Lincoln 19:18  |  Danite 02/12/07
  62.   mark Lincoln #2 19:20  |  Danite 02/12/07
  63.   MarK Lincoln more on revisionists 19:26  |  danite 02/12/07
  64.   Lincoln: But Only Minimalists Have Ever Charged "Forgery" 19:29  |  Ovadiah ben Avraham 02/12/07
  65.   danite-yeah right 19:40  |  prove it 02/12/07
  66.   Misses the Point of the Palestinian Argument 19:43  |  ARTH 02/12/07
  67.   An interesting thesis,and probably not accurately reported here; 19:45  |  lakshmi 02/12/07
  68.   facts never matter 19:49  |  citizen zero 02/12/07
  69.   Columbia was once a great university 19:49  |  Sidney 02/12/07
  70.   . . . contd. and the British in India did not do that.They were 19:51  |  lakshmi 02/12/07
  71.   Are you kidding? 19:55  |  Immanuel 02/12/07
  72.   Ovadiah 19:56  |  Danite 02/12/07
  73.   Prove it, cand you read it? 20:00  |  danite 02/12/07
  74.   laksmi - there is no whatsoever archeological traces o 20:03  |  17 02/12/07
  75.   sh 20:12  |  George 02/12/07
  76.   #4 Ex-Syrian Jew - it was wrong, but doesn`t justify more of same 20:14  |  Rick 02/12/07
  77.   o.k danite-you win,teach me 20:24  |  humble pupil 02/12/07
  78.   # 3 Khalid...can`t spin the truth of finds 20:27  |  Lynn 02/12/07
  79.   # 76 Rick of Garland Texas 20:34  |  Lynn 02/12/07
  80.   # 11 Uday.. there is a wonderful program on 20:38  |