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Archaeologist David
Ussishkin is familiar with the allegations leveled
by Nadia Abu El Haj - of politicized archaeology and
the deliberate destruction of upper (Islamic) layers
out of nationalist motives in the dig he headed in
the Jezreel Valley: "I don't remember meeting Nadia
el-Haj during
the excavations. All her accusations are based
on talks with anonymous participants after the
excavations. She did not study the excavation
reports nor approached the directors of the
project to ask their views. This is not a proper
and serious way of research."
Jonathan Burack, writing at Family Security Matters, is the latest academic to contribute a scathing review of Nadia Abu El-Haj's: "Enter Nadia Abu El-Haj, the Barnard assistant professor of anthropology who has, in her 2001 book, ignored many facts and instead accused Israeli archaeology of inventing the Jews’ right to Israel. This woman is up for tenure at Barnard, and if you do not like the idea of granting such an honor to America’s and her allies’ enemies, then contact Barnard now.
...El-Haj is not a practicing archaeologist. She hardly knows the Hebrew in which many Israeli archaeological debates are conducted. She has taken part in very few actual digs. Yet she confidently condemns Israeli archaeology as a tool of the Zionists. With only gossip to go on, she accuses one archaeologist of bulldozing non-Jewish strata to get to the levels that might offer details about ancient Israel. Bizarrely, she then concludes her book by reversing herself on such desecration, asking us to "understand" sympathetically the Palestinian mob that destroyed Joseph’s Tomb on October 8, 2000.
...Lately, she has also embarked on genetic ancestry testing among Israel’s Jews in order to explore "race, diaspora and kinship." Will she seek to prove that Israelis today have no genetic link to the ancient Israelites and therefore no claim to their Jewish homeland?
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