A professor given tenure several years ago by Barnard College, despite a petition signed by thousands and many questions about her qualifications, maintains that the Jews do not necessarily have a well-documented history in the Holy Land and in fact, she claims, Israeli archaeologists were guiding their finds by their agenda…something one could easily say about Abu El-Haj.
In one review, University of Arizona Professor William Dever, the senior American archaeologist digging in the Middle East (cited inThe New York Sun), called El-Haj’s scholarship “faulty, misleading and dangerous,” while Aren Maeir, the archaeologist heading the dig at Gath of the Philistines, deemed it “ludicrous.” Despite the protests, Columbia gave Abu El-Haj tenure – not something that surprised me from a place that welcome Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak.
So, every once in a while – actually, quite often, Israelis and visiting scientists and archaeologists discover more and more roots, facts on the ground, and truths of our ancient and eternal connection to this land. I thought of Nadia Abu El Haj when I saw this video. Nadia Abu El-Haj told a reporter, Jane Kramer of the New Yorker, that the next thing she expected was for me to want to have lunch with her – I”m not sure whether that shows her incredible self-centered ego or her very slim hold on reality – or both.
More, I wonder how she can continue to claim to be a scholar when she has no hold on history (or reality). So, this one is for the incredibly ignorant Nadia Abu El-Haj – yet another video showing our connection to this land.
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