Nadia Abu El Haj

Nadia Abu El Haj is an assistant professor of anthropology at Barnard College and author of Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society. In the book, El Haj attempts to demonstrate how "(social) science generates facts or phenomena, which refigure what counts as true or real," and concludes that the existence of the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah should be considered "a pure political fabrication."

Abu El Haj became the subject of news reports when Barnard alumnae and archaeologists questioned the calibre of her work. Although the criticism came from archaeologists and alumnae who support the right of the Jewish State to exist, the cirticism was not of Abu El Haj's political positions but of the quality of her work. William Dever, the most senior American archaeolgist digging in Israel, said that Abu El-Haj seems intent on writing Jews out of ancient Middle East history, and demonizing a generation of apolitical Israeli archaeologists in the process. He described her scholarship as "faulty, misleading and dangerous.”

A subsidiary controversy arose when Abu El Haj charged a prominent archaeologist, David Ussishkin of the University of Tel Aviv, with “bad science” on the grounds that “bulldozers are used in order to get down to earlier strata which are saturated with national significance, as quickly as possible” because of "nationalist politics guiding research agendas." Abu El Haj based her charges on the word of anonymous “archaeologists and student volunteers” who “recounted [the incident to her] after the fact.” In an open letter published on the internet, Ussishkin denied the accusation. His denial was supported by archaeologist Aren Maeir of Bar Ilan University, who wrote in his blog that “despite what Abu el-Haj repeatedly states, Israeli archaeologists do not only excavate archaeological remains relating to 'their heritage'. In fact, as any one can see from the excavations at Tell es-Safi/Gath for example, we deal with, excavate, study, publish and relate to finds from various periods, including 'Pre-Israelite', 'Post-Israelite' etc.”

In an extended discussion of the bulldozer controversy, British scholar Ralph Harrington concludes that , "Nadia Abu El-Haj’s distorted picture of Israeli archaeological practice is not simply a matter of confusion over technical terms, but a conscious strategy of ideologically-motivated misrepresentation. The essential point is that Abu El-Haj’s target is not Israeli archaeology at all, but the existence of Israel itself.... Israel, for Abu El-Haj, is an invention, an artificial colonial enterprise driven by an ideology, Zionism, within which colonialism and nationalism are intrinsically linked. Facts on the Ground is devoted to her argument that the nationalist archaeological tradition of the Jewish State since 1948 has played a fundamental role in inventing and sustaining the interrelated fictions of ancient and modern Israel. It is as a symbolic epitome of that claim, rather than for itself, that her notion of ‘bulldozer archaeology’ is important to her argument; and on those grounds the archaeological bulldozers of her imagination must be dismissed as an ideologically-driven fiction themselves."

See also

Israeli-Palestinian history denial