Tuesday, August 14, 2007
The following review, written by David Meir-Levy, of Nadia Abu El Haj's book was forwarded to me. I present it here in full.
“Facts on the Ground†- Nadia Abu el-Haj’s new salvo in the Arab propaganda war against Israel.
David Meir-Levi, August 7, 2007
One of my favorite professors (and later my colleague) at Tel Aviv university used to adjure his students with the following definition: “Archaeology is the science of digging a hole, and spinning a yarn.â€
Professor Nadia abu el-Haj does not bother to dig the hole.
Without evidence, or with the misuse of evidence, or with fictitious evidence created by her own circular reasoning, she spins a yarn which seeks to educate the reader in to a core thesis which is advanced along the following lines of argument:
a.) Modern Israeli archaeologists practice their craft and undertake their scholarship with the conscious and heinous intent to eradicate the true history of the Palestinian people whose heritage in the Holy Land is attested in highest antiquity and which must be erased in order for the Jewish mythic tale of Ancient Israel to be foisted mendaciously upon an unsuspecting public.b.) These same archaeologists have worked for almost a century to exploit and distort archaeology for Jewish nationalistic purposes: selectively excavating sites that are likely to support the Zionist faux-narrative of Ancient Israel’s millennia-long sovereignty in the Holy Land; skewing their research and analysis in order to create, almost ex nihilo, the archaeological “facts on the ground†needed to validate a fictitious Jewish history according to which Jews lived and ruled in the Holy Land 1,600 years before the arrival of Arabs; and presenting to the public only those results which substantiate the Zionist faux-narrative.
c.) The results of “a†and “b†provide the justification and legitimization of the evil “colonialist,†“settler-national,†Zionist endeavor of stealing land from the Palestinians and pretending that it always belonged to the Jews.
Her yarn suffers from many deficiencies. The following critique describes the most egregious of these deficiencies, and analyzes how they vitiate completely any scholarly value her work pretends to offer, how they render invalid her core thesis, and how they demonstrate as well the nefarious hidden agenda to which the author subscribes and her book contributes.
Dr. el-Haj apparently knows very little, if any, Hebrew. She mis-uses Hebrew terminology for place names, confusing “neve†(dwelling, habitation site) with “nahal†(stream, rivulet). It is beyond supercilious that she attempts a sociological study of Israeli archaeology without a working knowledge of Hebrew. At very least, she could have used knowledgeable bilinguals to aid her in interviewing Israeli archaeologists and other informants. But she did not.
When she summarizes the input from others which support her central thesis, she fails to name her sources or even identify them; referring to them merely as excavators, tour guides, museum docents, students, volunteers, and sometimes even just “someoneâ€. Moreover, when she relates the criticisms and condemnations of these anonymous sources, she does not use any methodology, even vaguely akin to those used by ethnologists and anthropologists, to describe the status of the informant and thus the reliability of that informant’s input. The use of completely anonymous and unvalidated sources to substantiate her criticisms – criticisms which seek to condemn the entire endeavor of professional archaeologists and impune the professionalism of well known academics in Israel as the cheerleaders and myth-makers of Zionist jingoism -- is not just poor scholarship, or even bad scholarship. It is not scholarship at all. It is rumor-mongering.
She frequently makes reference, often without page numbers, to books that are completely unrelated to Israel, Archaeology, History, or anything else even vaguely akin to her topic. Sometimes these references are in the form of footnotes following a two- or three-word quote. She never explains how she sees as relevant and clarifying for her own thesis the host of such works that she references, including anthropological studies of simian behavior and feminism (Donna Haraway), or essays on concepts of public culture in India (Arjun Appadurai), or a variety of books and essays on European nationalism, or on Stonehenge (Christopher Chippendale), or on Alzheimer’s disease in India (Lawrence Cohen), or on Chinese historiography (Prasenjit Duara), or on pre-Shakespearian literature (Stephen Greenblatt), or on the genetics of drosophilia (Robert Kohler), or a host of other references of similarly opaque relevance. In the absence of such an explanation, one may be tempted to suspect that she is simply snowing the reader with a plethora of references that inflate her bibliography and make her sound very well-read.
More subtle, but no less problematic is her penchant for gobbledygook. The following are two representative examples of writing that comprises a very large percentage of her book:
“The making of archaeological evidence, however, entails interventions that go well beyond interpretative acts. In excavating the land, archeologists carve particular (kinds of) objects out of the contours of the earth’s depths – depending, of course, on the specific excavating techniques used, the kinds of remains made visible, and which of those remains are recognized as significant and thus recorded (inscribed as evidence) and preserved. In so doing, archaeologists assemble material culture henceforth embedded in the terrain itself, facts on the ground that instantiate particular histories and historicities.†(pp. 13f, italics are hers)
She has just spent almost half a page telling us that archaeologists dig up stuff and try to figure out what it means. Such meaningless verbosities abound. Another typical example appears just a few pages later.
“Territorial claims and boundaries had to be constituted and institutionalized, in other words (she references unrelated sources), and not just in relation to questions of state, but, in addition, in and through the development of particular ideological commitments and national-cultural tropes. As in settler colonies elsewhere, land was the object of material reconfiguration, symbolic reinscription, and (colonial) desire (more unrelated sources referenced). The (initially) Labor Zionist commitment to making place was a specific local instantiation and particular (national) configuration that signaled far more widespread phenomena in the histories of settler colonies, writ large.†(pp. 17f, italics are hers).
Writ large or not, all she has said is that Labor Zionists used archaeology to create the justification for the Jewish homeland. And here we may have a clue to why she hides this core message inside of verbose and convoluted text. Perhaps, if she just came out and said it, this core message would be immediately recognized for what it is: a risible confusion of cause and effect. By wrapping it in arcane new-age pseudo-academic non-speak, which even a well-educated reader will struggle to decipher, and padding it with numerous unrelated and irrelevant bibliographical references, she makes her message sound profound and scholarly, to the uninitiated. By sprinkling here and there some italics, the significance of which are not at all apparent, she makes her text look more visually diversified, much as are the texts of bona fide scholarly works.
The six books that she references in parentheses, in the text just quoted, are studies of socio-political phenomena in Botany Bay, Paris, Morocco, and elsewhere. She never advises her readers as to how these are relevant to the putatively nefarious archaeological goals of Labor Zionism.
But how do we know that this assertion, that Labor Zionists used archaeology to create the justification for the Jewish homeland, is risibly confused? Because the justification for the Jewish homeland sprang from Jewish history, Jewish religion, Jewish Biblical and extra-Biblical literature, culture and ideology, two millennia before Zionists engaged in archaeology in the 20th century. Cause must come before effect.
Another major deficiency in her work is her own apparent lack of familiarity with archaeological methodology in general, and modern Israeli archaeology in particular. Other than her participation in one excavation led by Professor David Ussishkin, she seems to have had no formal training or experience in Archaeology. How then can she unilaterally heap criticism upon well established and highly regarded scholars in Israeli institutions? Rather than examine and evaluate the techniques, results, and analyses of these scholars, she simply presents conclusions and levels assertions based on nothing more than either her own intuitive ability to psychoanalyze some of these scholars (see below on Yadin and Aharoni), or on some anecdotal comments of other, always anonymous, informants whose qualifications are never explained. Moreover, she never elicits from the scholars themselves any explanations or justifications for the work that she finds so condemnable. Such absurdity is not scholarship, it is slander.
In her critique of Yadin and Aharoni regarding their excavations at Hazor (her chapter 5), she makes the facile assumption that Professor Yadin was drawn to his conclusions about the Israelite destruction of Bronze Age Hazor as part of Joshua’s campaign because of Yadin’s military background. As a military man, she asserts, he was had sort of a personal identification with Joshua. While Professor Aharoni, on the other hand, developed the more nuanced theory of a gradual Israelite infiltration and long drawn out conquest over several hundreds of years (an interpretation of the archaeological evidence which finds support in the later works of Professor William Deever) because Aharoni was born on a kibbutz and held a more socialist world view.
In addition to the obvious non-sequitor of a socialist world view automatically generating a more nuanced theory of history, and to the fact that she lacks the medical training to perform post-mortem psychoanalysis on these two men, she never offers a scintilla of evidence to support her analysis. She is thus indulging in baseless and utterly absurd speculation.
Moreover, she addresses this particular example of the central issue of her entire thesis, that the archaeological remains at Hazor have been incorrectly interpreted by Israeli archaeologists to attest to an Israelite invasion, with an exercise in circular reasoning. She notes correctly that without the conquest accounts in Joshua and Judges, there is no way to identify the conquerors of Canaanite Hazor with Israelites. But then she simply asserts that therefore this identification is being made only because these Israeli archaeologists seek to use the fake history created by their interpretations of the archaeology in order to confirm modern Israel’s right to conquer and control Palestinian lands. She ignores the Mernephtah stele (see below) and the reams of extra-Biblical evidence attesting to the existence of the states of Israel and Judea a few centuries later. Those Iron Age Israelites had to have arrived at some time, in order to be around and in positions of power to create their sovereign states. Therefore, that they played a role in the conquest of Hazor, and other sites in the Holy Land at the end of the Late Bronze Age, is a reasonable hypothesis. Moreover, collared-rim ware, which she so cavalierly dismisses as an identifier of Iron Age Israelite settlement, is a type of pottery first associated with Israelite Iron Age culture by William Foxwell Albright back in the 1920s. Its ubiquitousness throughout the central hill country, the area of the Israelite kingdoms of Judea and Samaria of the Iron Age, and in early Iron Age Galilee, part of the Davidic Israelite kingdom, all argue for the validity of such an identification.
But even more problematic, she ignores the obvious conclusion that since there is overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence from extra-Biblical sources for the existence of the Iron Age states of Israel and Judah, then it is ineluctable that Israelite Jews and Judean Jews did indeed exist in, and held sovereignty over, parts or all of the Holy Land in the Iron age and thereafter. Thus the Israeli scholars’ interpretations of archaeological remains are not some nefarious plots to eradicate Palestinian history. Rather, they are a function of an honest and objective interpretation of evidence that finds ready correlation with both Biblical and extra-Biblical accounts.
Her critique of professors Nachman Avigad and Benjamin Mazar at the Temple Mount excavations in Jerusalem (chapter 6) is even more absurd. The best she can do to show how evil Israeli archaeologists seek to ignore or obliterate Palestinian history is to accuse Professor Avigad of intentionally refraining from any analysis of those finds, such as the multitude of glass remains, which would cast some light on the daily lives of ordinary people. The problem with this accusation is three-fold:
1.) Every successful excavation produces more material remains than can be fully studied and analyzed by the excavator. It is commonplace in archaeology worldwide that much valuable material will remain for future study, becoming the subject of later Ph.D. dissertations by future scholars.2.) Future study of the glass remains in Jerusalem and at many other sites in Israel was indeed carried out by other scholars.
3.) A visit to almost any museum anywhere in Israel reveals the intense interest that Israeli archaeologists possess for the reconstruction of everyday lives of ordinary people, Jewish and otherwise, in antiquity.
It is as though, so intent on finding some basis for criticism, she grasps at even an irrational and completely incorrect assertion in order to have the excuse to reiterate her accusation that Israeli archaeologists are concerned only with the reconstruction of an historical narrative that will justify and support the modern Zionist endeavor.
Most salacious of all is her condemnation of Professor David Ussishkin for what she calls his unprofessional use of “bulldozers†and “big shovels†(pp. 148 ff) at Tel Jezreel. Her accusations are based upon comments by other excavators and volunteer participants, all anonymously reported. She never interviewed Professor Ussishkin to ask him about his use of what she considers inappropriate techniques. Based upon her descriptions, it seems likely that the “bulldozers†were actually small back-hoes that have been used very effectively, carefully, and professionally, in a variety of Israeli excavations to clear debris and to excavate parts of massive earthworks such as ramparts, moats, and glacis. Such equipment, used judiciously, does not destroy any antiquities. Similarly, big shovels are sometimes used to move earth from ancient garbage dumps, fills, and other debris where stratigraphy is almost impossible to determine and small finds are preserved by sifting. Were el-Haj more familiar with archaeological techniques, she would have been able to distinguish between a back-hoe and a bulldozer, between the times when big shovels can effectively clear away useless debris and when small hand-hoes must be used.
In the absence of concrete evidence, more specific and well documented than the comments of some anonymous informants, her criticism of professor Ussishkin is nothing less than unwarranted slander.
Perhaps the most egregious example of her abysmal scholarship is the fact that on several occasions in her book she actually contradicts herself. For example, in her critique of Avigad and Mazar (above), she goes in to great detail about how a younger archaeologist, Meir Ben-Dov, saved some later remains from Mazar’s putative destructive tendencies (pp. 154ff). Then she goes on to explain that actually the early Arab remains near the Temple Mount received very careful treatment such that she had no choice but to conclude that “…the dynamics of archaeological work were not driven in any straightforward manner by ideological positions or political pressures…†(p. 156). But she has asserted the exact opposite throughout her book. She does not seem to notice that she has just contradicted her own thesis.
In a similar self-contradictory absence of attention, she suggests (pp. 32-36) that the ancient names of various sites preserved in Arabic by the current inhabitants attest to the indigenous nature of these inhabitants. It does not seem to occur to her that because these names are Hebrew names, well attested in Biblical and post-Biblical Jewish literature, one can more readily assume that they attest to the earlier indigenousness of the Hebews, from whom the later Arab invaders took the site-names.
But these are by no means the most problematic of her errors.
The two most salient hallmarks of her book’s deficiency is the absence of any analysis of the volumes of evidence which actually contradict her core thesis.
She claims, by statements of simple fiat or innuendo throughout the text (pp. 18, 32, 26, 38, 91, 95, 98, and passim), that today’s Arabs living within the borders of Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, are indeed the direct descendents of the Canaanites who preceded the Israelites by millennia. This assertion is a cornerstone in the modern Arab propaganda narrative that seeks to delegitimize the modern state of Israel: Zionists today, the narrative asserts, have invaded and conquered and exiled from their ancestral homeland the original native inhabitants of the Holy Land, just as did their predecessors in the days of Joshua and Judges.
The best she can do to support this assertion is a reference to Charles Clermont-Ganneau (p. 37), who occasionally opined in his writings that perhaps the modern Arabs of the region were indigenous, and not really Arabs (a great surprise, I’m sure, to these same “Palestinians†today). Beyond these unsubstantiated musing of a mid-19th century antiquarian, el-Hajj offers no evidence to support this assertion; and perhaps for good reason. There is none. Not only is there no evidence to support the Arab propaganda claims to a high antiquity for the “Palestinian people†(the Arabs living in modern Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip), there is also much evidence against such a claim.
The term “Palestine,†and its fore-runners “Philistia†and “Palestina,†refer in all instances of their appearance in Greek, Latin, and later texts, to a vaguely defined geographic entity inhabited by a variety of different peoples and cultures. Sometimes this geographic entity contained several different independent nation-states (Philistines, Israelites, Samaritans, Judeans, Edomites, among others); and sometimes it was subsumed entirely within a larger empire (Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid, Ottoman, for example). Never was there a political entity with defined borders and national identity known as “Palestine†until 1922 and the creation of “British Mandatory Palestine.â€
Moreover, the endless array of migrants and invaders, of differing ethnic, linguistic and cultural origins, who plagued the region from prehistoric times onward, effectively vitiates any modern claims to any genetic or cultural ancestry of high antiquity. From late proto-historic and Early Bronze Age Canaanite invaders who displaced the Chalcolithic culture, to the Sumerians, Akkadians, Old Babylonians, Amorites, Hittites, Egyptians, Aramaeans, Israelites, Philistines, Neo-Babylonians, Edomites, Persians, Greeks, Nabateans, Romans, Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, Seljuks, Mongols, Crusaders, Ayubids, Mamelukes, Ottomans, and British…these clashes and mixtures of cultures and peoples over six millennia render impossible any claim that anyone in today’s Israel is a direct descendent of Canaanite ancestry (footnote: It is worth noting at this point that Jewish claims to high antiquity in the Holy Land do not make such impossible assertions. Jewish claims are based on continuity of religion and evidence [archeological, Biblical, and extra-Biblical – see below] of ancient Israelite sovereignty).
Adding to the mélange described above is the abundant evidence indicating that during the Ottoman and British periods, hundreds of thousands of Arabs in-migrated to the area in search of the better economic conditions that the British and the Zionists created from the mid-19th century onward (footnote: for demographic studies substantiating this assertion, cf. Justin McCarthy, Population of Palestine; and Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial). The result of this in-migration was a nearly quadrupling of the Arab population from c. 340,000 in 1855 to more than 1,300,000 in 1947. This historically recent, and well attested, in-migration means that the majority of today’s Arab population of Israel, West Bank, and Gaza Strip, can trace its Holy Land ancestry back for less than 150 years.
To the above can be added the overt and unsolicited statements by Arab scholars and political leaders in the years leading up to the UN partition plan (11.29.1947) to the effect that there is no such thing as a Palestinian nation or a Palestinian people. Hence the UN’s plan to create such a nation by its partition plan was an historical anomaly and political injustice. These statements are validated by PLO spokesperson and executive committee member Zahir Muhse’in who said in an interview with the Amsterdam magazine Trouw:
“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism….. as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan." (footnote: Trouw, March 31, 1977).
This PLO spokesperson himself tells the world that concepts of “Palestinian People,†the “Palestinian nation,†“historic Palestine,†and “Palestinian national identity†are all fictions created by Arab propaganda to legitimize the Arab terror war against Israel.
It is easy to see why el-Haj avoids any analytical treatment of the evidence against the high antiquity of her imagined Palestinian victims of Zionist conquest.
But the single most problematic issue, the nefarious Zionist archaeologists’ creation of, and creative interpretation of, archaeological evidence to support what she calls the myth of Jewish antiquity in the Holy Land, is also one that she never addresses directly.
She never actually analyses the archaeological evidence. She never examines the obviously critical question: Do the archaeological finds support the history of a Jewish presence and sovereignty in the Holy Land from Joshua’s time to the 7th century AD Arab invasion -- or not? Do the facts fit the theory? She insists that the archaeological justification for a Jewish past in the Holy Land is a ploy, a rather impious fraud, a grand plot at the highest level of Israeli academia and government, to create ex nihilo the faux-evidence that will legitimize the mythic account of Jewish belonging, Jewish antiquity, in the Holy Land (pp. 10, 20, 74, 77, 85, 104, 119, 161, 215, 258, and passim). If the archaeology and extra-Biblical literary evidence do support such an account, then the account is not mythic, the interpretations of Israeli archaeologists is justified; and her entire thesis crumbles. Indeed, it seems likely to this writer that she avoids this issue precisely because she knows that the reams of evidence available to even the lay reader do indeed support the Jewish tradition of ancient Jewish sovereignty over, continued relationship to, and existence in, the Holy Land from Biblical times onward.
Since this is the foundation issue upon which her entire book is predicated, it is worthwhile to summarize briefly these reams of evidence.
The earliest reference to Israel in ancient extra-Biblical history is the appearance of the name “Israel†in the Mernephtah stele (c. 1200 BC), accompanied by the ideographic hieroglyphic designation “people†(as opposed to “city†or “stateâ€). Mernaphtah, an Egptian pharaoh of the XIX dynasty, recounts his invasion of Canaan, and his destruction of a variety of Canaanite city-states and, inter alia, the “people of Israel†– obviously an exaggeration.
Over the next 300 years, there are no direct references to Israel (footnote: the numerous references to “Habiru†or “’piru†may refer to Hebrews, but this association is by no means universally accepted. But even if it were possible to equate Hebrew and Habiru, it could still very well be that while all Israelites were Habiru, not all Habiru were Israelites. Regarding the translation of the earlier term “da’idu†in the Mari texts as “David,†it has long been acknowledged that the original transliteration of the cuneiform was incorrect. The word in question should be read “da’iku,†a dike or earthen berm or rampart).
However, there are a plethora of references to Israel and Judah in Assyrian, Babylonian, Aramaic and Persian texts from the 9th century BC and thereafter: inter alia,
the reference to the House of Omri in the Black Obelisk of Shalmanesser III (9th century),
the Moabite version of the 9th – 8th centuries’ war between Israel and Moab recounted in the Book of Kings II and in the Moabite stone,
the 8th century account of the visions of Balaam (“seer of the godsâ€) in the Aramaic text from De’ir Alla,
the Assyrian accounts of Tiglat Pilesser III’s destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel and exile of its Israelite inhabitants(late 8th century) and Sennacherib’s destruction of Lachish during his abortive invasion of Judea,
the Babylonian account of Nebuchadnezar’s two deportations of Judeans and ultimately the destruction of Jerusalem (late 7th and early 6th centuries),
and the Persian account of Cyrus the Great (late 6th century) and his proclamation that permitted the return of Judean exiles to Judea and Jerusalem (footnote: translations of all of the above, and other references as well, can be found in James B. Pritchard’s Ancient Near Eastern Texts in Translations, vols. 1-2).
It is also interesting to note that a recent discovery in the archives of the British Museum indicate that a Babylonian royal official mentioned by name in the book of Jeremiah did indeed exist and function in the Babylonian government in the 6th century (footnote: to be provided).
To this list can be added a sizable compendium of epigraphic evidence from within Israel and Judea. The Samaria ostraca bear the names of Israelite provinces which are identical to the names of the daughters of Zelophehad in the book of Numbers. Ostraca from Israelite Arad are written in Biblical Hebrew. Those from the small temple in Arad IX include names identical to the names of priestly families listed in the book of Chronicles. One Arad ostracon includes the Tetragramaton (YHWH) in the context of a long and well-preserved letter from the commander of the fortress at Arad to someone in Jerusalem, regarding “Beit YHWH†(perhaps a reference to the Temple in Jerusalem). The Siloam inscription, also in good Biblical Hebrew, attests to 8th century Israelite engineering achievements in aquifer engineering. And witness to the end of Judea comes most dramatically from the ostraca at Lachish which document the Babylonian invasion (early 6th century) and conquest of the fortresses surrounding Jerusalem (footnote: most of the above can be found in Pritchard, op cit. The Arad ostraca are translated in Yohanan Aharoni’s reports on the excavations of Arad).
In addition to the ostraca, there are numerous seals found throughout Judea and Samaria written in Biblical Hebrew and containing Israelite names found in the Bible, with the theophoric elements of YH or YHWH, or displaying typical Judean hypochoristica. Perhaps the best known of these is the bronze seal of “Shema’, servant of Jereboam†found at Megiddo. The identification of this Jereboam with the Israelite king Jereboam II is broadly accepted. During the Persian period, the YHD coins, usually read “Yehuda†and found in excavations of many sites throughout Judea, attest to the continuity of Jews in Judea following the Babylonian exile.
The evidence from the Hellenistic and Roman and Byzantine periods is overwhelming. Suffice it to say that in order to reduce to “myth†the tradition of Jewish existence and sovereignty in Israel during these periods, one would need to somehow find a way to discredit a plethora of references to Jews and Israel which populate in great number the surviving manuscripts of the inter-Testamental literature, the texts of the Christian Scriptures (especially the Synoptic Gospels), a variety of Greek and Latin texts, the books of Josephus, the text of Apion (now lost) referenced in Josephus’ “Contra Apionem,†Tacitus’ “De Reribus Mundi,†the Dead Sea Scrolls with their textual replicas of entire books of the Bible, the Jerusalem Talmud, the thousands of references to Judea and Israel and Jews and Jerusalem in the Babylonian Talmud, and the Roman sources for the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD including the famed Arch of Titus. To this list of literary evidence can be added the archaeological evidence of Hellenistic and Roman period seal impressions and coins in Hebrew, bearing Biblical names, coins of the Macabean period, and the first and second revolts against Rome, and the Judaea Capta coins.
And then, of course, there is the well-known Qur’anic reference to Allah’s having freed the Israelites from Egypt and taken them across the desert and in to their promised land (Surrah 5, vss. 25 ff).
And recall that the above is merely a brief summary.
There is one final point to consider in the context of the question “does the theory fit the facts.†Toward the end of her book, el-Haj makes note of the fact that the Waqf of Haram esh-Sharif (the Moslem communal religious trust which oversees Jerusalem’s Temple Mount) has been for years conducting illegal construction and excavations on the Temple Mount, excavations which are very destructive of the pre-Islamic archaeological remains. These excavations are avowedly intended to eradicate evidence of earlier Jewish existence and activity on the site. If there were no such existence, there would be no such evidence. If whatever evidence remained on the Mount were immaterial or inconclusive, there would be no need to destroy it. The very actions of the Waqf are clear attestation to the existence of what is for el-Haj and at least some of the Muslim world the very troublesome, unwelcome, and inconveniently incontrovertible evidence of Jewish life and activities and sovereignty in and around the Temple Mount in pre-Islamic times.
The denial of the historicity of thousands of years of Jewish national life in the Holy Land is very much akin to Holocaust denial. In both cases, the assertion is beyond absurd in light of the overwhelming body of evidence supporting the phenomenon. And in both cases, the motive of those making the assertion is clearly heinous. Neo-Nazis and Akhmedi-Nejad deny the Holocaust in order to more easily perpetrate the next one. El-Haj and her ilk deny Jewish existence in ancient Israel in order to more easily delegitimize modern Israel. The delegitimization of modern Israel is part of the Arab strategy of a propaganda war against Israel. The goal of this war is to weaken support for Israel in the USA and UK so that those Arab forces so inclined can more readily fulfill the vision of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Arafat, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, a dozen other terrorist groups, and current Iranian leadership: a world without Israel, and ultimately, a world without Jews.
The real purpose of this book is clear both as to what it is and what it is not. It is not scholarship. It is not a critical analysis of the politics of Israeli archaeology. It is baseless self-contradictory propagandistic screed.
The purpose of such screed is to provide a thoroughly legitimized and authorized text, bearing the official stamp of approval of the academic community. Her Ph.D. degree, her book’s publication by one of the world’s leading universities, and her tenure at a major academic institution – all demonstrating that peers and more veteran scholars of higher rank and authority, all presumed to be objective, approve of el-Haj’s basic assertion and the methodology by which she arrived at it. With such credentials, others can quote it with high and generally unquestioned credibility to the non-academic community, and gain credence by reference to it and its scholarly pedigree. It thus becomes a very useful tool to those who seek to delegitimize Israel and demonize Zionism.
And, in fact, this has happened. Those who have referenced al-Hajj include vitriolic anti-Israel and anti-Jewish authors who use her book to justify their anti-Jewish angst and support their delegitimization of Israel and their demonization of Zionism.
Joachim Martillo, writing in Boston on the American Al Jazeerah webpage, states: “Facts on the Ground by Nadia Abu el-Haj discusses the ideology of destroying the physical record of the presence of Palestinians…â€
Matt Edgeworth of Albion Archaeology, speaking at the World Archaeological Congress, 2003, blithely accepts the very worst of el-Haj’s accusations: “….The bulldozing away of layers pertaining to a particular cultural group or peoples, in order to reach levels pertaining to one’s own perceived national or cultural heritage…â€
Elia Zureik writes in The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies, (note: Abu El Haj serves on the editorial board of this journal) that “…Abu El-Haj notes that in excavating the Old City Israeli bulldozers leveled several Islamic monuments…â€
Edward Said, speaking at Ewart Hall, The American University in Cairo, on March 17, 2003, “Even so apparently innocent a discipline such as archeology, which is one, of course, of the prides of Egypt, was used in Israel and was made complicit in the making-over of the land and its markers, as if there had never been any Arabs or any other civilizations there except Israel and the Israelites… the traces of other more just as historical histories were ignored or simply moved away by trucks and bulldozers.â€
When a book is authored by a Ph.D., a tenured professor at a well-known university, and published by the University of Chicago Press, readers will confidently expect that the factual assertions it contains are reliable. The trust placed by the general public in the work of university-based scholars and in the books published by university presses rests on the assumption that although an individual scholar’s interpretation of evidence may be controversial, the scholar, the university, and the university press can be trusted to have checked that all verifiable assertions have been verified. By exploiting that trust, el-Haj and her academic supporters create the process whereby political screed becomes scholarship, and propaganda lies become reality, thanks to the legitimization of her thesis by supposedly disinterested scholars and academic institutions (footnote: the above quotes are taken from Nadia abu el Haj, bulldozing the Facts at the University of Chicago and Barnard College, Dec. 7, 2006).
In other words, her book is one more salvo in the Arab propaganda war against Israel. She has joined the ranks of the propagandists leading the Arab war of words and ideas against the very existence of the Jewish state.
Why she chooses to abandon academic ethics, eschew professional integrity, and write an utterly absurd thesis, contradicted by vast and well-known bodies of evidence, is reasonably clear. She is an advocate of the Palestinian cause. She reveaks her political position continuously throughout the book. She consistently refers to the modern state of Israel as a “settler nation,†and to Zionism as a “colonial†endeavor. She repeats uncritically the Arab position that the Zionists invaded, conquered, subjugated, and expelled the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants, who date their own existence in the Holy Land back to “time immemorialâ€â€¦the Canaanite period and perhaps even earlier. And she almost verbatim regurgitates the standard Arab accusations that Israel is the recalcitrant obstacle to peace (cf. for example, p. 241).
As is the case with many advocates of the Palestinian cause, she does not care that her work in support of that cause promotes a completely fictitious narrative, foists upon a largely ignorant audience a mendacious and deceptive account of Israeli archaeology, and contributes to the ultimate Islamo-fascist goal of the delegitimization of Israel and demonization of Zionism, in order to facilitate the ultimate destruction of the Jewish state and the genocide of its Jews.
Unclear, however, is why her thesis advisors and committee at Duke University chose to grace her fake scholarship with their stamp of approval and bestow upon a mendacious propagandist the title of Doctor of Philosophy. Why the University of Chicago Press chose to lend its prestige to her lies with the publication of her thesis is also unknown, as is Barnard’s approval of her tenure even in the face of dozens of articles akin to this one, demonstrating the fallacies of her work, the mendacity of her presentation, and the degree to which her anti-Israel screed is the antithesis of scholarship.
She cannot be ignorant of the bottom line goal of the Arab side in the Arab-Israel conflict: the destruction of Israel and the genocide of its Jews. With her book, therefore, she has joined the ranks of Hitler’s little helpers; and Duke University, the University of Chicago Press, and Barnard have, unwittingly I presume, supported her in her war efforts.
David Meir-Levy is a lecturer at San Jose State University, Dept of History, teaching Middle Eastern History. He holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University, and an MA in Near Eastern Studies from Brandeis University. He taught Archaeology and Near Eastern History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at the University of Tel Aviv in the 60's and 70's.
Muzzling Scholars of Arabic Ancestry
by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)
Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition by Yael Zerubavel discusses the construction of memory and the invention of traditions in Mandatory Palestine and in the State of Israel. The book describes some unusual Israeli or Zionist practices in association with Masada and Bar Kochba archeological excavations.
Rather like Nadia Abu el Haj in Facts on the Ground: Archeological Practice and Territorial Self-fashioning in Israel, Zerubavel describes the use of archeology and other scholarship to construct Zionist national identity.
Other scholars have investigated the political use of archeology in various contexts. Not only Max Weinreich and Eric Hobsbawm provide similar analysis in their published works, but Constructing "Korean" Origins: A Critical Review of Archaeology, Historiography, and Racial Myth in Korean State-Formation Theories by Hyung Il Pai addresses precisely that same issues with regard to the development of Korean national consciousness.
Even though Abu el Haj focuses more narrowly on professional archeologists whereas Zerubavel looks at Israeli society as a whole, both authors make similar points in their books, and Zerubavel provides support for some of the claims for which Nadia Abu el Haj has been most criticized.
Zerubavel received the 1996 Salo Baron Prize of the American Academy for Jewish Research for her work while Nadia Abu el Haj is the target of an international campaign to drive her out of Columbia/Barnard. The difference in the responses evoked by the two authors almost merits a scholarly study in itself.
I found this to be a convincing condemnation of Nadia Abu el Haj’s book. I heard that some Palestinians are descendents of immigrants to the area. In fact, I heard that the area was so under-populated in the 19th century that the Ottoman government tried to recruit immigrants from all over the empire. But I had no idea that more than three-quarters of Palestinians in 1947 could trace their ancestry in Palestine back less than 100 years. In any event, I have to confess that I hope it’s true.
Two points that disturb me, however:
1. One is the author’s reference to Joan Peters’ book, From Time Immemorial. I thought that book had long been discredited. She was apparently a pro-Zionist version of a Nadia Abu el Haj, falsifying and ignoring facts and quotes. I was disappointed that Peters book was apparently so bad, but I understand that it’s not one to be cited. Correct me please if I’m wrong.
2. Regarding that quote from Zahir Muhse’in to the effect that “the Palestinian people does not exist…since Arab national interestes demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism…as a Palestinian, I cn undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem…â€: It’s a great quote, but I’ve seen it used so many times that it makes me wonder if it’s genuine, and why there aren’t other quotes and writings to the same effect. One guy saying this one thing this one time. I don’t know. Are we milking this too much?
Anyway, it’s nevertheless a good essay, one of the most convincing I’ve read, and not just about El Haj but about Israel/Palestine in general.
In re Peters - I'd heard the book was terrible (mostly from far left, proPalestinian sources); in fact I heard it so often I didn't bother reading it. However, I was often accused of quoting it even though independent research had led me to some similar conclusions and/or back to the same sources (including for example Winston Churchill's own words about Arab immigration into the Mandate, especially the Jewish areas where the economy had greatly improved - as you know he fought the White Papers partially on these grounds).
Finally curiousity got the better of me - along with the fact that I kept being accused of quoting Peters of course - and I bought it and read it.
So. It's heavily and impeccably researched and annotated. I don't know if her conclusions are accurate, especially regarding local population numbers during the Ottoman and early Mandate eras, which would be difficult to prove or disprove either way - but her background information and work is solid. The bibliography alone should probably be required reading, especially works pertaining to Middle Eastern Jewish history. I think that's important because it isn't well known, and also because there's a mythology about it, yet it's critical to understand what life was really like in various Jewish communities and also, modern Israel can't really be judged without a textured sense of Middle Eastern relationships, politics, religious prejudices, treatment of minorities, etc. Yet, too often the Arab/Israeli conflict is reduced to this tiny petrie-dish of "Israel/Palestine", which ignores regional issues and a very long span of time. This in itself contributes to a perspective so innaccurate that it distorts reality, just as photographing a person from his shoes up will make him look completely unnatural.
Also, Peters started out intending to write a book defending the Palestinian point of view but her reading led her to change her mind. I think that's very different from al Haj's academic journey.
I think you should check it out for yourself, then compare and contrast where you feel she's wrong, or do extra reading where you're unsure of a particular conclusion. I certainly wouldn't dismiss "From Time Immemorial" out of hand and I would be interested in hearing your thoughts if you do read it.
Whoops. For some reason the above comment came out signed by Joanne when it's actually by me.
Sorry, I must have typed your name instead of mine, Joanne!
(My auto-fill is always suggesting a huge list of names -- names I've never typed in to the box but other people have. No idea why that is.)
Regarding Joan Peters I couldn't assess it, but from what I've seen, her main academic tormentor has been Norman Finkelstein, sicked on her by Chomsky. Take that as you will.
On #2, I'm quite sure there are many such quotes concerning a "Palestinian people," (or more often, a lack of such a label) but maybe this is a particularly "good one" so it gets repeated a lot.
Sophia, you were obviously thinking of me when you typed your comment, since it was a response to me, so you automatically typed my name in.
Sophia and Solomon, I hope you're both right about Peters. I'll be glad to read it. Truth be told, I would root for Peters to be right.
The thing is that the charges made against her focus on her supposed practice of altering quotes, facts and figures, or taking them out of context. I would have to go back to many of her sources to see if the scathing criticism of her book was accurate or not, and I don't have the time for that.
Also, it's not just a question of the extensiveness of her bibliography, but of how she uses the books and documents she cites.
One other thing: Sophia, you say that you don't know if her conclusions are accurate regarding the population figures in the Ottoman and early Mandate periods, but that's an important point. In all fairness, however, I've heard that there are only very sketchy records or no records regarding the populations during the Ottomans; they didn't go in for census statistics. So no one can be really sure what was what at that time, or who was who. And that means that conclusions on both sides of the issue will have doses of wishful thinking. But if she really didn't start out to write a pro-Israeli book...
In any case, I am somewhat reassured by your assessment, Sophia. So I'll put it on my list of books to read. I am flattered that you would want to hear my thoughts on it. If I get to read it in a timely fashion, and if I can be sure enough of my opinions, I'll definitely let you know what I think of the book.
Solomon, if what you say is true, that most of the criticism came from Finkelstein and Chomsky and their ilk, that's also reassuring, as I don't take them very seriously. And talk about the pot calling the kettle black! My impression is that Chomsky and Finkelstein are past masters at misuse of cited sources.
Just an aside: I remember in the 1980s talking with a PhD student, who told me he was impressed with Chomsky because his books were so big, with tons of footnotes. Yikes!
"Just an aside: I remember in the 1980s talking with a PhD student, who told me he was impressed with Chomsky because his books were so big, with tons of footnotes. Yikes!"
If you only knew the number of times I've heard that. Yikes indeed.
It is difficult for the layman to sort out bad history (if the Peters book is bad...I don't know). That's why it's such a crime. I note that Dershowitz didn't cite Peters directly in his book, but went straight to some of Peters' sources -- which itself resulted in charges of "plagiarism" from Finkelstein.
Talk about spurious scholarship -- just who is the propagandist/author of this review?
Recycling the discredited claims of Peters' book -- which was trashed by all serious commentators, not just Finkelstein -- should certainly give pause. Especially when the author uses misleading and misinterpreted population figures to bolster the long-dismissed concept of "recent" Arab in-migration to Palestine. Here is what a serious demographic study by Justin McCarthy concludes (ironically and falsely cited by the author to support Peters!):
"In the Ottoman and Mandate periods, migration was a minor factor in the demographic makeup of the Muslim and Christian (though obviously not the Jewish) population of Palestine. Although there was a certain amount of seasonal labor migration to and from Palestine, analysis of Ottoman statistics (McCarthy, 1990) yields evidence of little permanent migration of Arabs into or out of Palestine from 1860 to 1914. The number of Arabs who left Palestine on the Ottoman defeat in World War I was negligible. Mandate authorities did not record migration properly before 1932; non-Jewish immigration was recorded fairly well, but not emigration. Statistics indicate that only 838 more Muslims entered Palestine than left from 1932 to 1946. "
Jeff, all of the preceding discussion has been about the point that the Peters' book has this cloud of "discredited" around it that's impossible for a fair-minded layman to make sense of.
At any rate, that debate is largely irrelevant to the criticism of Nadia Abu el Haj’s book. It sounds like the writer here is an archeologist and he probably would have been wise to stick to the ground he knows.
No, actually, the points Jeff makes are germaine. I just don't know if they're accurate.
Is the author of that review misrepresenting McCarthy? Was Peters discredited by more sober, honest scholars and not only by the likes of Finkelstein? I don't know. But these are important points, even if they don't relate directly to Nadia Abu el Haj's book.
Joanne:
There's quite a difference between footnoting by Chomsky and Peters -- primarily that Chomsky's footnotes are largely references to his other works whereas Peters looked to authoritative sources and recognized scholars in relevant fields like Bernard Lewis.
Jeff:
Please name the "serious" critics of Joan Peters' book. If the late Ed Said is one of them, he hardly passes the test of being an honest and authoritative source himself.
We can't get an honest and accurate census out of the PA today, so what hope have we of getting the same accounting for the years between the Roman occupation of the Holy Land and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
The suggestion that there is no legitimacy to the Jewish claim on Israel is simply and patently dishonest. There is plenty of evidence of a continuing presence and large communities, particularly in and around Jerusalem, Safad, Hebron and Tiberias including the publication of the first printed text in Hebrew in Safad in the 16th century. There is also much evidence that although the Jews of the Ottoman Empire weren't presecuted as badly as they Jews of Europe were during the Inquisitions in Spain, Portugal and Italy, that they were subjected to systemic persecution by means of onerus taxes and other outrages, including pogroms in Safad and Damascus long before the Zionist movement emerged from the European diaspora.
No, actually, the points Jeff makes are germaine...But these are important points, even if they don't relate directly to Nadia Abu el Haj's book.
OK, I was just responding to his wholesale dismissal of Meir-Levy based on what's a completely peripheral issue to whether biblical Israel did or didn't exist.
There are plenty of serious, scholarly dissections of Peters' fable -- as well as much politically-motivated praise from non-scholars who are after pro-Zionist propagands. Try googling to see for yourself, but this is a good one to start with:
Mrs. Peters's Palestine
By Yehoshua Porath
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/5249
And the question of the "reviewer" promoting Peters' fake scholarship in an article supposedly charging academic failings by another author is highly relevant.
One problem with establishing census numbers is simply this: there were and still are transhumanant populations throughout the Middle East, much of Africa and Central Asia. Nomadic and semi-nomadic people, who travel as a way of life, could well be counted in one census and not in another!
This in and of itself could account for disparities in population and I don't think it can be underestimated as a factor.
Sorry if this OT vis a vis the OP but sometimes, "truth" is a both/and rather than an either/or situation.
However I don't think Jewish connections to the Land of Israel can seriously be disputed and it's rather appalling that people would try. It's yet another attempt to wipe us off the map, akin to outright physical genocide, replacement covenants and the appropriation of Jewish history and holy books as foundations to build religions that then specifically turn around and demonize Jews.
Academically Massad has done this too, neatly turning "antisemitism" into a movement against Arabs and Jews into the Nazis; you can read his essays in al Ahram. I'm linking one, all the more pernicious because of the carefully reasonable tone of his verbiage and the assurances that he feels sorry for the victims of the Holocaust (yet he then turns around and damns the survivors!)
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/720/op63.htm
Abu El Haj has stated herself (in the introduction to the book in question, I believe) that she "writes within a scholarly tradition that 'reject(s) a positivist commitment to scientific methods…†and is “rooted in… post structuralism, philosophical critiques of foundationalism, Marxism and critical theory… and developed in response to specific postcolonial political movements'".
When she says she "rejects a positivist commitment to scientific methods", what she is saying is that she has no use for objective facts. That alone brands her work as politically motivated fiction and disqualifies her as a "scholar". She clearly is a proponent of the view that there is no such thing as a true, provable, objective fact, there are only "narratives". She also blandly and shamelssly states that her writing is in service to a very specific political agenda.
For a person who believes there is no such thing as a fact to call her book "Facts on the Ground" is a chutzpah of monumental proportions.
I applaud her balls in trying to foist this rubbish on the public. However, that anyone would take it seriously is a cause for deep sadness. How can people who call themselves scholars have fallen for junk like this? How could her "thesis" have merited a degree? How could her book have been published? How can she not only have a job teaching this nonsense, but also be up for tenure at what was once one of our most well-respected universities?
The world has gone mad. Everyone involved in aiding and abetting this farce should apologize at once and immediately resign.
Ephraim: Take a breath and please stick to criticizing matters about which you might have a glimmer of understanding.
You quote from the author's preface -- 3rd, 4th hand? -- a statement of methodology about which you are obviously clueless. Then you put words in the author's mouth -- "she has no use for objective facts." What "facts" are and what they mean in the social sciences and ideology are indeed contested matters. You can legitimately criticize the author's stance, but not by creating a cartoon version of your own.
Is it a "fact" that Joshua conquered Jericho after its walls fell down? Was Hazor sacked by an ancient Israelite army? Was Palestine a "Land without a People" in the 20th cenury? Did Israel "win" the latest war with Lebanon? Is it "targeted killing" or "assasination" when an Israeli missile blows up a car in Gaza?
If Nadia el Haj did not say what I am under the impression she said, please show me where I have been misled.
Until then, sorry, but when a person states that she has no use for the scientific method, which requires a person to prove a thesis by the use of evidence, I assume what she means is that she has no use for evidence in the commonly accepted sense; that is, that she has no use for facts as most people understand them. I think this is a reasonable interpretation of her words. Therefore, I see no reason to assume that her work is going to be objective and unbiased.
Whether or not Joshua conquered Jericho as related in the Bible is indeed a legitimate subject of debate. Trying to prove that there never were Jewish kingdoms in Israel, however, is not. The preponderance of evidence is that such kingdoms did indeed exist. Did Rome sack a fictitious Jerusalem? Does the Arch of Titus depict a fictional event?
Arguing about what the existence of independent Jewish states in Israel at various times in history may or may not mean today is also a legitimate subject of debate. But it is not the same as saying that they were never there.
It is a fact that Israel often shoots missiles at people in Gaza, just as Arabs blow people up in Israel. These are facts. How these facts are interpreted (terrorism or self defense)is another matter.
Of course, the entire scholarly endeavor consists of debating what facts might mean and what facts are suggested by the evidence. This argument is the heart and soul of scholarship. Howver, if the definition of what a fact is is hotly contested in the scholarly world, then either scholars have too much time on their hands or they are a pretty useless lot.
There never were any Jewish kingdoms in Palestine. There were a few Judean kingdoms, and there was a province of the Persian Empire called Yehud, but Jewish identity does not crystalize until the 10th century, and modern ethnic Ashkenazim have no biological connection to ancient Judahite/Judean populations whatsoever. Just as Shaye Cohen (Author of The Beginning of Jewishness) at Harvard University.
The Zionist colonizers of Stolen and Occupied Palestine are murderous genocidal thieves and interlopers. All decent human beings should hate and despise this criminal population as well as the traitorous subversive racist ethnic Ashkenazi American population that has manipulated the USA into maintaining the Zionist State of Israel.
As for Joan Peters' ridiculous nonsense, the most common figure for the Palestinian population in 1870 is 120,000.
Lets conservatively estimate that there were about 40,000 nuclear families. Palestinian families at that time period had about 6 children per family. It means that circa 1900 we expect approximately 240,000 in the next generation.
Lets assume some reasonable amount of mortality and emigration and cut this figure down to 200,000 or 100,000 nuclear families with about 6 children per family.
Thus by 1925 we expect the next generation to consist of about 600,000. Let's cut this down to about 200,000 nuclear families that have approximately 6 children per family.
Circa 1947, we expect the next generation to consist of approximately 1,200,000 individuals, which is fairly close to the standard estimates.
Guess what. The Zionist invaders in 1947-8 stole the country and committed genocide of the native population. The State of Israel is a criminal state, which the United Nations and the United States have the obligation to abolish.
The Zionist government, the Zionist population and supporters of Zionism are genocide deniers. Genocide denial is genocide incitement as racist ethnic Ashkenazim continue to remind us in the case of Iran.
As I understand international law with respect to genocide, a genocidal population may be obliterated without committing genocide under international law. I assume such is the goal of Zionist propaganda with regard to Iran, but this logic applies far more strongly to the criminal Zionist population in Stolen and Occupied Palestine than it does to Iran.
Under international law American Zionists are coconspirators in inciting genocide. Like genocidal Zionists in Palestine, American Zionists are also a criminal population. By Neocon logic, this criminal population should probably be confined to prison camps like Guantanamo and stripped of all assets as well as all legal rights.
Assuming Jeff and Jeffrey Klein are the same person: You posted a link to the thorough, sane review from Porath that's far more persuasive than any random foaming at the mouth. Why not just post the link and leave it at that?
If you're not the same person: Thanks to Jeffrey Klein for the link, and Jeff might want to learn from your example.
"Circa 1947, we expect the next generation to consist of approximately 1,200,000 individuals, which is fairly close to the standard estimates.
Guess what. The Zionist invaders in 1947-8 stole the country and committed genocide of the native population."
This figure is probably close to correct. Let's take a radical view and assume that around 800,000 Palestinian Arabs became refugees during Israel's War of Independence 1947-1948. (400,000 remained in Israel and became citizens of the Jewish State).
Let's look at their numbers today: 9 or 10 million Palestinians worldwide, of which 4 are in the Palestinian territories, 3 millions in Jordan, 1.5 million in Israel, and the rest scattered throughout the Middle East, Europe and the rest of the world.
In other words, they started with just over a million individuals and are now close to 10 millions.
Let's look at another genocide claimed by the Jews:
In 1939 there were around 12 million Jews in the world, 7 in Europe. By the end of the war, there remained 1 million Jews in Europe, reducing the total Jewish population in the world to 7 million. Today there are 12 million Jews in the world.
Sixty three years after the Holocaust, Jewish population has managed to break even with the number of Jews before WWII. which is what one would expect to follow from a project of industrial extermination of a people.
Sixty years after Martillo's so-called Palestinian "genocide", the Palestinians multiplied by a factor of at least ten.
It looks to me that what the Palestinian numbers show is the very opposite of the claim made by Martillo.
Propagating lies about Jews as murderers on a huge scale is a very old-fashioned cliche, a traditional form of racism. It's medieval antisemitism.
Are you an antisemite, Martillo? I can't wait to hear your answer.
Regarding Joachim Martillo, he is not just some random reader expressing his opinions. He is a political activist who's well-known at least in some circles. Here is some information on him:
From Robert Spencer:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/005292.php
This link is mainly about his wife, who is also an activist, but there is material on him, too. Just scroll down.
http://www.somervillemejustice.com/marriage.html
And
http://www.universalhub.com/node/8393
And
From Sue Blackwell, who, if I have the right name, is a far left-winger and a bit of a flake herself, but here goes:
http://www.sue.be/pal/hate-mails.html
And this, which contains a long letter from him expressing his views:
http://naqniq.wordpress.com/2007/08/02/amazing-rant-from-joachim-thors-provoni-martillo/
Just Google "Joachim Martillo" or "Joachim Martillo Ajami." I haven't bothered Googling "Joachim Carlo Santos Martillo Ajami," but I'm sure that will turn up plenty of hits too.
Martillo is clearly an anti-Semite and a racist to boot. I'm sure he sees himself as a "good" racist, since in his mind he is on a crusade against the (insert adjective of choice here) Zionists. But he is still a racist.
His claim that the Jews of today have no connection to the Jews who lived in ancient Israel, and therefore have no right to a state in Israel, is based, so far as I can tell, on the assertion that European Jews, or Ahskenazim, are not biologically related to the Jews who once lived in Eretz Israel. This is a specious argument. Even if it were true, which it is not, it is utterly irrelevant.
The essence of Jewish life is ruchnius, or spirituality, rather than gashmius or physicality. Like a typical gentile, Marillo can only think in physical, that is, biologically racist, terms. Biology is destiny and color determines rights. He is a racist through and through.
The inheritace of the people of Israel is a spiritual inheritance. Race as it is comonly understood by people like Martillo has nothing whatsoever to do with anything, especially as far as the Jews are concerned. This is why people like Martillo cannot understand the essence of the life of the Jewish people. We do not fit into any of the categories racists like him create to order the world, and so he cannot understand us.
The Jews of today, regardless of their color, are the direct lineal descendents of the ancient people of Israel, through a commonly shared spiritual, cultural, religious and linguistic inheritance that can be traced from generation to generation in an unbroken line. That people of varying colors and ethnicities may have joined themselves to the Jewish people through the generations, and thus added to the variety of the Jewish gene pool, is entirely irrelevant.
Avraham Avinu was the first Jew, but he was not born that way. G-d gave him a mission and took him out of his native land to take him to a different place. His Jewish identity was a spiritual one. That remanins true today, and that is why the people of Israel are still here and always will be, in spite of the efforts of people like Martillo and his ilk.
Ephraim:
Thankfully, Martillo is hardly a typical gentile. And Jewish men are no less susceptible to the beauty of a woman than most men. If you thought otherwise, I'm sorry for this rude awakening :-) Anyway, modern genetic research has long established the direct biological commonalities that exist between Jewish men of either an Ashkenazi or Sephardi descent, a fact that stands in stark contradistinction to Martillo's bizarre repetitions about Ashkenazi Jews. There are other interesting aspects to that reseach, such as the fact that Jewish women are not closely or genetically related to each other, which means that Jewish men were always very desirable mates to local women in the various habitats of their wandering over the years. As to why is that, you might want to speculate on Julie Burchill's answer (that Jewish men are great lovers) or you might just accept the terrible stereotype that Jewish men make good husbands and fathers.
Martillo is selling products of malevolence and hatred which are exclusively his own. He does not represent anyone but himself and handful of other alchemists who try to turn their crude wishes into historical facts.
While I am not exactly sure to what your comment is intended to be a response, I am quite aware of how susceptible men, Jewish and otherwise, are to the beauty of women. It is one of the things that makes life worth living. Long may we be susceptible! So, no rude awakening here. ;-)
I am aware of the preponderance of genetic research that gives the lie to Matillo's bizarre claims. My point is that the genetic argument is a false one and I do not care about it. What Martillo says is clealry false, but even if it were true it is of no consequence. There is no point in arguing on these terms or engaging this argument at all.
This is because the idea of race as propounded by racists like Martillo is of no relevance when discussing the Jewish people. The Jewish inheritance from Avraham Avinu is primarily a spiritual inheritance. Race is irrelevant to it, and it always has been.
I am not aware of research that shows that Jewish women are not closely biologically related to one another. If true, this is interesting but also irrelevant. The Torah, not DNA, determines who is or is not a Jew. The fact that gentile women over the centuries may have been converting to Judaism, marrying Jewish men and producing Jewish children is a wonderful thing. Long may it continue.
Googling Martillo was quite an experience. It seems he may himself be "ethnically" Jewish (Sephardic) but be a convert to Islam who is married to another convert to Islam whose original name indicates she may be "ethnically" Jewish also. If true, this would explain a great deal. There is no hate stronger than self-hate.
"...is married to another convert to Islam whose original name indicates she may be "ethnically" Jewish also. If true, this would explain a great deal. There is no hate stronger than self-hate."
No, I don't think so. His wife's name is Karin Friedemann. That looks like a Christian German spellilng to me. The Jewish spelling would've been Friedman. Of course, you can never be sure.
I noticed the spelling also, which is whay I said "may be". At this point it is just speculation. And, it's the internet, so there's not way to know if any of it is true.
Still, it would not surprise me if it turns out Matillo is a Jew himself. Stranger things have happened.
joachim,
Please stop misquoting Professor Shaye cohen. Shaye cohen is a friend of mine. and you are no Shaye Cohen.
Then why don't you just go ask him whether he believes modern E. European ethnic Ashkenazim are descended from the populations of Greco-Roman Palestine?
I did. He said that he does not like to comment on people that have not been dead for at least 400 years. (I think he even wants to avoid controversies relating to Shabtai Tzvi.) But he did state that there has been a lot of conversion over the last two millennia.
In any case, I have done the research in Europe, studied the relevant ancient and medieval texts, and understand the math of genetic anthropology.
The facts are completely clear.
Racist ethnic Ashkenazim indoctrinate themselves with a fantasy even stupider and more dangerous than that of the German Nazis.
Ethnic Ashkenazim have no connection whatsoever to ancient Palestine beyond the mythological.
In Palestine, ethnic Ashkenazim are muderous genocidal thieves and interlopers.
All decent Americans should hate the vile criminal Zionist colonizer population.
American Zionists are traitors, who constitute a danger to the USA and who are enemies of the whole human race.
Martillo:
Noted that you completely ignore my comments about: (1) genetic research that does not support your "thesis" about Ashkenezi Jews, and (2) If Palestinians were genocided, where are the mass graves, where is the evidence, and how do you explain their growth from a 100,000+ to 10 Million+ population in 60 years, in spite of being wiped out? Who are these Palestinians today? Where did they come from?
Do you know what "genocide" means?
Would you tell us what you think the world should do with all these Ashkenazi Jews "who are enemies of the whole human race"?
I think Martillo has made himself pretty clear on that, Noga. If I understand him correctly, he believes that Ashkenazim should all be killed. So much for "anti-racism".
Since Martillo is so obsessed with genetics and DNA, I think we are entitled to know his own background.
Are you a Jew, Martillo? Googling you indicates that you are a Sephardic Jew who has apostasized to Islam and married another convert to Islam. I would like to know if this is so. If it is, your intense hatred of Jews becomes more understandable. Jews who hate themselves for being Jewish and convert to another religion to get away from their Jewishness are usually the most intense anti-Semites as they attempt to ingratiate themselves with their new community. If you are an apostate Jew who has adopted Islam, what better way to prove your Islamic bona fides than by showing how much you hate Jews?
When you say you have "studied the relevant ancient and mediaeval texts", to which texts are you referring? And did you read them in the languages in which they were originally written or in translation? A lot of texts from the past were written by anti-Semites who had a vested interest in "proving" that the Jews were of unsavory origins and thus hated by G-d. One favorite trope of these people was to say that the Jews were a band of lepers who were driven out of Egypt so they wouldn't infect the Egyptians, for example.
To repeat, the number of converts to Judaism through the centuries, large or small, is entirely irrelevant. In your race-obsessed world it may be important, but so far as the Torah, the only thing that is at all relevant when it comes to determining who is or is not a Jew is concerned, it is of no consequence whatsoever.
There are certain people among both Christians and Muslims who are negatively obsessed with Jews, since the continued existence of the Jewish people shakes their faith in their identity as G-d's real "chosen people". Islam in particular is adamant in its belief that it has replaced Judaism and Christianity and that neither of these religions are relevant any longer. Thus, any promises G-d made to the Jews have been trasnferred to the Muslims, the followers of Mohammed, the "seal of the Prophets". Thus, the need to "prove" the Jews to be unworthy is very strong. Glorifying Islam requires that Judaism, and, hence, Jews, be debased.
If Martillo is indeed a Muslim, his racist and baseless calumnies against the Jewish people become quite understandable.
So, before this discussion goes any further, I think Martillo needs to come clean about who he is so we can clarify the motives for his slander.
"Jews who hate themselves for being Jewish and convert to another religion to get away from their Jewishness are usually the most intense anti-Semites as they attempt to ingratiate themselves with their new community."
That would be true of any convert, not just a converted Jew.
If Martillo is a former Jew, then we can perhaps extend some pity to him. He may not know it, but this phenomenon is as predictable a result of antisemitism as the gas chambers. Jewish history is dotted with this kind of a Jew, like Pablo Christiani, a notorious medieval apostate who converted in 1230 and joined the Dominicans, spending the rest of his life attacking Jews and the rabbinical scriptures. His most famous moment was the disputation with Nahmenides in Barcelona, where he attempted to prove the talmudic Aggada was a corroboration of Christian truth.
However, there are other famous converts who never took that road, like Heinrich Heine or Benjamin Disraeli. They seem to have developed a finer appreciation for their roots, upon their conversion...
The more mediocre the intellect, the more vile the hatred, I suppose. Poor Martillo, he is such a caricature.
The article excerpts a quote from a timeline that al-Jazeerah published a few years ago.
Here is the full quote:
The full timeline can be found in nicer format at: http://members.aol.com/ThorsProvoni/Palestine/timeline.htm .
I was not writing a book review. Both books are worthreading and represent considerably more than a discussion of the ideologogy of destroying the physical record of the presence of Palestinians.
Zionists do not only attempt to control or to blot out the history of Palestinians. They also blot out or manipulate the history of Jews of various ethnic groups as I discuss in
It appears to me that el Haj’s type of scholarship wishes to reverse scientific scholarship for a politically self-indulgent Palestinian narrative. she actually wishes to re-instate the equivalent of “the earth is the center of the universe†thinking.
I say, in the name of academic freedom, and for the sake of preserving sacredly intact that tenure-decision process, she ought to be allowed to teach these anti-historical histories to a bunch of ignorant students who will then carry this information within them as though it were gospel truth.
Likewise, maybe “creationism†should be given its full rights to be regarded as science within Physics.
Alternatively, maybe the university should have to courage to admit that her book is a work of fiction and maybe offer her a seat in the Depratment of English Literature, where she will fit in more snugly. It was, after all, Edward Said, a professor of English Literature, who started this fashion of denying Jews their history when he wrote his book about Moses and Freud, in which he made a psychoanalytical historical analysis proving that the Jews were really Egyptians. I'm sure Martillo finds that book also highly worthwhile in his crusade for erasing Jews from world history.
We must all rejoice for at last the purveyors of truth will get to show everybody else what's really what.
Are you a Jew who has apostasized to Islam, Martillo? Why can't you answer a simple question?
Since you have decided not to address it, instead waiting a few days till you think the coast is clear and then bringing up another subject, I assume that it is true.
Are you so ashamed of who you actually are that you cannot own up to it in public? Are you afraid that if your fellow Muslims find out who you really are you will be ostracized as a dirty Yahud? Or that the anti-Semites and Nazis with whom you have made common cause will look at you and sneer "Another damned kike. I should have known."
Best to stay in the closet, I guess. Glad to see that being a Muslim gives people such courage.
I mean, really. A simple yes or no will do. What could be so hard?
Daniel Burros.
Interesting.
So you're saying that if it comes out that Martillo is actually a Jew he might do us all a favor and jump off a building?
I'm sure I could get over it in time.
Sorry, it is off the topic, but there was some interest in Joachim Martillo's background.
Based on his own writing, it seems he is an Arab, not a sephardy Jew.
If you go to Google groups and type in Martillo Ajami you'll be able to find a lot of interesting messages from the past.
Here is a message I refer to:
In fact, considering one culture superior to another is perfectly
reasonable. Only bigoted ignorantsia who intend to dump on modern
Western Yankee Enlightenment-based culture claim "moral" equivalence of
all cultures and in fact even these yo-yos refrain from making this
claim about Nazi culture or Stalinist culture not to mention Aztec
culture in which human sacrifice also played a major part. In fact,
Yankees had to modify traditional German and Japanese culture in major
ways in order to render their nations reasonable members of the world
community. Unfortunately, for the dogmatic multiculturalists most
people know rather too much about these disgusting cultures to tolerate
the usual multiculturalist claim.
Unfortunately, most people don't seem to know much about E.Asian
(chopstick) culture or Arab/Islamic culture, but as a person of Syrian
Arab Muslim background whose family has traded in E. Asia for
centuries, I know a heap about both culture spheres and they both are
essentially piles of shit. When someone points to some feature of
Arab/Islamic culture or to some feature of E. Asian culture and claims
that this feature is of value, almost invariably this feature has no
origin in traditional Arab/Islamic culture or in traditional E. Asian
culture but in fact this feature is a result of Western influence or
domination. The world needs more Yankee imperialism to completely
eradicate these mindlessly stupid cultures. The world would become a
much better place for everybody.
Joachim Carlo Santos Martillo Ajami
#1 Posted by: Gaby at August 21, 2007 4:43 PM
More from Joachim's strange past statements:
The usual Muslim inability to make ethical distinctions.
Palestinian Muslims and their Christian pets who do not
like conditions on the West Bank are free to leave. Syrian
Jews are not free to leave. Israel generally respects the
property rights of individual non-Jews. Syria does not generally
respect the property rights of individual non-Muslims. Jadid
(a predecessor of Asad) took property from my family and expected
some of my family members to kiss his ass in gratitude). Syrian
Jews are not adherents of a political/social/cultural system
which seems at war with the modern world and which rejects fundamental
concepts of natural rights and enlightenment. Palestinian Muslims
are adherents of a basically disgusting political/social/cultural
system which constitutes a crime against humanity. The Christian
pets of Palestinian Muslims are active co-conspirators. Syrian
Jews do not have a millenium long history of oppression and
acts of violence against Muslims. Palestinian Muslims have
a millenium long history of oppression and acts of violence
against non-Muslims. The Christian pets of Palestinian Muslims
have a history of inciting Muslims to acts of violence. Palestinian
Muslims attempted to drive Jews off of land which the Jews legitimately
purchased (from Palestinian Muslims) before Israeli independence.
Syrian Jews have never tried to run such a disgusting land-scam
against Muslims.
In practically every way, Palestinians are a thoroughly dispicable
community whose bigotry and fanaticism prevents them from joining
the modern world and who deserve much worse punishment than they
are receiving (apparently mostly at their own hands -- poetic
justice or the cunning of history, if I have ever seen it).
Syrian Jews have committed neither communal nor individual crimes
on the scale of the Palestinians. And in any case Mustafa whishes
to punish the Syrian Jewish community for the acts of other Jews
elsewhere. Such thinking is the hallmark of a bigoted, primitive
disgusting mentality which is a major contributory factor in
the backwardness, primitiveness, savageary and powerlessness of
Muslim nations vis-a-vis the West.
Joachim Carlo Santos Martillo Ajami
Here is more:
1. Joachim Martillo
View profile
More options Dec 13 1989, 2:16 am
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african, soc.culture.indian, soc.culture.misc, soc.culture.arabic, talk.politics.misc, talk.politics.mideast, soc.rights.human
Followup-To: soc.culture.indian
From: marti...@jjmhome.UUCP (Joachim Martillo)
Date: 12 Dec 89 19:59:18 GMT
Local: Tues, Dec 12 1989 3:59 pm
Subject: Re: Affiliation with American "Black Muslims"
Reply to author | Forward | Print | Individual message | Show original | Report this message | Find messages by this author
You should read Gandhi's Autobiography. He has an interesting
observation about Indian Muslim behavior in British South
Africa. Apparently Indian Muslims (as well as local Muslims)
would claim to be Arabs which made them whites under the
system of segregation then current.
Now I find it interesting that Arabs would be considered whites
but Portugese tended to be considered sort of half-caste at
the time. I theorize Arabs achieved white-status in
recognition to the intellectual debt Dutch Reformed
racism owed to the Arab Muslims who introduced slavery
and anti-black racism to South Africa. To this day I have
noted a lot of the language of Apartheid is actually
borrowed terms from the Muslim language of humiliation
and degradation of non-Muslims. I have heard Afrikaners
use terms like kaffer and wakhem
to refer to Blacks. The whole concept of apartheid is
practically equivalent to dhimma. If you hate apartheid
you must despise Islam.
Ummmmm.....wow.
Guess he's just an escapee from the loony bin who's gone off his meds.
What a whackjob. Somebody get a net.
This site has interesting information on Martillo and his wife.
http://www.somervillemejustice.com/marriage.html
If you were a professor whose tenure precariously hangs in the balance over such issues as historical revisionism and factual credibility, would you want someone like Martillo to advocate for your case? It's one of those times when I have to remind myself most strenuously not to judge a person by the kind of company he keeps, or the kind of friends who rush to her assitance..
Generally, it's foolish to believe everything that is published in the newspapers. Trusting the web is even more foolish. I have been spoofed for a long time, but I will concede that that email looks like something that my ex-wife or one of her friends might have rewritten to sound more extreme. I will admit that I had strong Neocon beliefs until I actually worked in Israel and the Occupied Territories. The experience forced me to reevaluate my position.
"Strong neocon beliefs"?
You're just a racist, Martillo. You have simply replaced one version of paranoid, self-righteous, unhinged, foaming-at-the-mouth, batshit crazy, stone racism for another. "Piles of shit chopstick cultures?" Where the f**k do you get off?
Are you an apostate Jew, Martillo? Yes or no? If we can't believe anything on the net about you (and the number of personae you have adopted makes it impossible to tell who you might actually be), why don't you just tell us?
I certainly do not have to explain the contents of all the usenet and elist articles that spoofed me over the last 20 years or so. (Hint: I never use words like sh*t in my articles. I don't even like to see them.)
As for analysis or arguments, they stand on their own not on the ethnicity or religion of the person that makes them -- unless of course the evaluator is some sort of Nazi worried about Jewish vs. Nazi ideas.
As for Nadia Abu el Haj, I believe that she and her scholarship stands on its own, and I have to thank Nogah Ron for informing me that all the bilingual siddurs that translate Yerushalayim, Ir haKodesh, as Jerusalem the Holy City are wrong.
"Ayara means a small town. "Ir" is a town. "Krach" is city."
The quality of her analysis speaks for itself.
No, I think you do have to explain yourself.
Even if we assume that you are telling the truth when you say that the barking-mad screeds that pop up when you are Googled are forgeries (I see no reason to believe you, particularly; the "vindictive ex-wife" thig is far too lame an excuse), your entire thesis is a racist one from top to bottom. Therefore, I think that it is only fair to consider your race and background so we can determine the origins of the racist ideas and racial bias that forms the basis of your "theories".
Are you an apostate Jew or not? If you do not answer, then I have to assume that that is indeed what you are.
Martillo, you remind me of someone who used to troll the best message boards on the internet. She, too, boasted of great knowledge and first hand experience of everything and anything. She was Sartre's cousin. She was a dinner guest at Chirac's. etc. etc. Not a friend of yours, is she? Actually, we were never really sure she was not a "he". But whoever it was, had the same methodology used by you. Endless repetitions of "catch phrases", ignoring simple questions, antisemitism galore. And quite coincidentally, "it" wrote for the Al-Jazeera.info, too.
BTW, your "critique" reveals your ignorance of Hebrew. Too funny.
It takes about 4 months of living with Palestinians under Israeli occupation to hate everything about Zionism, the State of Israel, the murderous genocidal Israel Zionist interlopers, and the subversive traitorous American Zionists that manipulate the US into supporting the continued existence of the racist Zionist state.
Are you an apostate Jew, Martillo? Yes or no? Stop avoiding the issue.
Noga Ron should not argue with me but with Avraham Zilkha and the Yale University Press Hebrew dictionaries and grammars, with which I have been checking my comments.
Zilkha says "To keep pace with the ongoing expansion of contemporary Hebrew vocabulary, the translations provided in this dictionary are based on current usage in the media and recent decisions by Israel's Academy of the Hebrew Language, as well as on professional literature." The dictionary was published in 2002.
I will admit that I have not been in Israel or the Palestinian Occupied Territories since the end of 2002 -- right after I purchased that dictionary which was helpful in those few cases where I had problems with current Modern Israeli Hebrew vocabulary.
While I was there, Krakh was far closer in significance to Metropolis than to city, but if Nogah can show me a text that says Yerushalayim Krakh haKodesh, I will concede the point.
I am not an apostate Jew.
OK, good. Now we're getting somewhere.
Are you then a convert to Islam or were you born a Muslim? Since you have disavowed the "article" that claims you are from Syrian Arab stock (Christian or Muslim is not clear) it would help to know if your anti-Jewish animus is a result of your childhood upbringing or your conversion to a new religion.
So, your entire argument here rests on one fraction of a verse in a Siddur that refers to Jerusalem as town? And you consider yourself an authority on Hebrew because you can cite it?
And what's all that to do with the fact that el-Haj consistently misunderstood the meaning of "Tel" which is not, btw, "slang" for hill (but keep on inventing. It is a fascinating type of thinking).
And btw, I've no idea who Noga Ron is.
Yes, I'd like to know the origins of Martillo's knowledge. How does he know what the Siddur says? Either from having learned it himself or from being told by someone who grew up Jewish. I also wonder about this obsession with Ashkenazi Jews. I recall only one example of a similar acute hostility to Ashkenazim by an Iraqi Jew, named Giladi, I believe. But he was a Jew, as I said.
What about the Sephardim, Martillo? Aren't they racists, Zionist etc etc? Why are you excluding them from your hatred?
I was going to bring that up after I nailed down who and what Martillo is, exactly, Noga, but I'm glad you brought it up.
If Martillo is such an expert on Jews, surely he knows that about half of the Jews in Israel are native Middle Eastern Jews (Mizrachim) from Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, etc. My experience has been that is precisely the Mizrachim who are the most Zionistic and anti-Arab, precisely because they have suffered at the hands of the Arabs. (Non-Ashkenazim are often lumped together as "Sephardim" but many Jews from the Middle East are not really Sephardim. Real Sephardim trace their lineage back to Spain/Portugal [Sepharad]. Jews from Persia and Iraq, for example, never left the Middle East, and so have no cultural connection to the Spanish-Portugese Jews, although they do daven according to the nusach Sephard.)
I assume, of course, that it was the (insert adjective of choice here) Ashkenazim who poisoned the minds of the non-Ashkenazim to hate the Arabs when everyone knows that the Arabs and Jews all existed in a state of Kumbayah-brotherhood, sweetenss and light until the (insert adjective of choice here ) Zionists introduced the serpent into Gan Eden and ruined everything down on the plantation.
I doubt Joachim's messages above were forgeries. Then, the same as now, Joachim seems to be obsessed with the issue of race. Then Arabs/Palestinians/Muslims were bad, now - Ashkenazim.
And please do not confuse this racist ideology with that of Neocons.
Also, in spite of the fact that Joachim was a frequent poster, I did not see him saying that those were not his messages.
Oh, I assume he's lying, Gaby. But since you seem to have some past experience with him, you are in a better position to judge.
Ephraim,
I'd like to clarify. I did not have any past experience with him. These messages I found on google groups via the following link: http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?enc_user=jxxEuhUAAADC12PPsRaAlnfeg9UwjpJeE2Jqdg8TdKzOxA2YIbL3Dw&hl=en
[Note that while the term Ashkenazi has ethnic significance, the term Sefardi has only liturgical significance even though common Israel usage tends to describe non-Ashkenazi Jews collectively as Sefardim.]
Moroccan, Yemeni, and Iraqi Arabs of Jewish religion certainly have no more right to steal Palestine from the native population than do Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazim.
It has certainly been a practice of racist European imperialist agents throughout the world to exacerbate divisions among local populations as part of establishing control, and such behavior on the part of Zionists is quite easy to document in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco.
Before 1948, the Central and Eastern European Zionist invaders had little interest and were generally quite hostile toward Oriental Jews. Only after the Zionist leadership realized that they could not hold Stolen Palestine without an infusion of manpower, did they begin to show much interest in Oriental Jewish populations.
The Zionist practice can be elucidated by comparison with the behavior of other racist colonialists.
The French and British often selected local minorities as native collaborator populations, and we see similar practices of Russian, German and Austrian Imperialists in Occupied Poland and of Russian Imperialists during the expansion into the Caucusus during the 19th century.
The situation in Palestine is a little different because the Central and Eastern Zionist thieves, invaders and interlopers for the most part could not find suffient native collaborators to keep control after the Zionist genocide of 1947-8. Therefore they created conditions that would force large numbers of Oriental Jews to come to Stolen Palestine to serve as Ersatz native collaborators.
Like genuine native collaborator populations, Oriental Jewish immigrants developed extreme hostility toward the remnants of the native population as a way of justifying to themselves the crimes in which they were taking part and to strengthen their relationship with the dominant colonial population.
The Zionist leadership understood this logic because ethnic Ashkenazim were for the most part preferred native collaborators in Austrian and German Poland while Russian Ashkenazim tried very hard to obtain such status in the Czarist Empire but usually failed because the Czarist government preferred to use Russian Germans and other populations in that capacity. The provinces of Chernigov and New Russia were an exception.
In any case in the late 40s and early 50s there are some mitigating circumstances for oriental Jews that took part in Zionist crimes against humanity, but nowadays the entire Israel Zionist population whatever its origins must be considered a criminal genocidal population.
As for determining whether the current spoken Modern Israeli Hebrew use of tel to mean hill is originally a slang usage, you will find that the web page, http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Tel%20Aviv , seems to agree with me as well as Nadia Abu el Haj and cites the Even Shoshan dictionary as support.
If there is a coherent thought, or some firm idea, hiding somewhere in Martillo's projectile vomiting of words and slanders, I can't quite see it. Maybe someone can help me understand what it is he is saying, claiming, aiming at.
Noga,
Saw your comment on Abu El Haj at the Chronicle of Higher Education. Excellent. Nice. It is so important that intelligent people take the time to post and comment on issues like this. Otherwise the discussion gets dominated by sick people with vile agendas, like our friend Joachim.
Hey, Joachim, have you thought about getting ghelp, there are some very good psychiatrists in boston. Your condition is treatable.
Well, it's nice to know Martillo hates all Jews and not just Ashkenazim.
For a while there I was worried that he wasn't a a complete and genuine anti-Semite. I'm really relieved to find out that he is exactly what he appeared to be at first.
Nothing left to see here, really. Jews bad/evil/racist, Arabs good/pure/righteous, blah blah blah yada yada yada, whamma-lamma ding dong, koo-koo-kajoo.
Carry on.
Anna:
Can you provide a link to Noga's comment?
Thanks, Anna. I was not too sure about that comment so I'm glad you found it helpful.
I thought Norman Levitt's comment was much more effective, though.
Here is the link to that discussion:
http://chronicle.com/blogs/footnoted/438/defending-tenure?commented=1#c000522