Because I have read both Recovered Roots and Facts...

2007-09-29T19:24:00.000-04:00

Because I have read both Recovered Roots and Facts on the Ground carefully -- something that I doubt Segal has done -- I can add that Zerubavel, who is a native speaker of Modern Israeli Hebrew makes clear in note 45 associated with the passage that Abu el Haj is completely right on this issue of Modern Israeli Hebrew idiom while Segal is completely in the wrong.

Here is the passage.

Although the subperiodization of Antiquity into the First Temple and Second Temple periods might appear to enhance the religious dimension, their common representation in modern Hebrew as the First or Second "House" eliminates the explicit reference to their sacred dimension and renders them closer in spirit to the English terms, the First or Second Commonwealth.

Here is note 45.

In this historiographic context, the Hebrew term for the Temple bet hamikdash (the house of sanctuary) is shortened to the First or Second House (ha-bayit ha-rishon or ha-bayit ha-sheni).

The Columbia administration should be investigating whether Segal has crossed the line into moral turpitude and possible criminal activity (Title 18 USC Section 241 Conspiracy against Rights) that would require his immediate termination despite having tenure.

Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technolog...

2007-09-27T13:18:00.000-04:00

Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance by Michael Adas may describe the same phenomenon that Nadia Abu el-Haj discussess in Facts on the Ground.

I wish I had more time to look into the connection...

2007-09-27T12:59:00.000-04:00

I wish I had more time to look into the connections among the anti-Abu el Haj crowd.

I purchased Facts on the Ground about 4 years ago after attending an Israel on Campus Coalition meeting that discussed the growing problem of pro-Palestinian academics on campus. Abu el Haj was identified as one of the most dastardly.

As I remember, I purchased Recovered Roots because Abu el Haj talks about the work of Yael Zerubavel in her preface or elsewhere in the book. If I am not mistaken, Zerubavel and Abu el Haj thank almost the same group of scholars for their advice and assistance.

The following article directly address the issue of Israel Studies. The view of al-Jazeera is simply wrong.

http://media.www.thejusticeonline.com/media/storage/paper573/news/2007/09/25/OpEd/OpEd-Israel.Studies.al.JewZeera-2988473.shtml

It asks the question: "Can the University's new Schusterman Center for Israel Studies function in other than an advocacy role?"

I answer: "Only if it could invite a Palestinian Israel studies scholar like Nadia Abu el Haj to be a member."

Here is a comment that I made on another list about Brandeis Shusterman Center director Ilan Troen.

I have not read Jews and Muslims in the Arab World: Haunted by Pasts Real and Imagined, by Lassner and Troen, but I have met Troen.

I attended a Harvard seminar in which he discussed the language used to talk about the conflict over Palestine.

Troen made some good points, but he criticized Arabs, who refused to recognize Jewish peoplehood, and provided some examples of Arab intellectuals and political leaders, whom he delineated as racists and bigots.

His position was completely unreasonable. Arab Christians and Muslims do not generally know much about Jews, and their knowledge rarely goes beyond Arab Jews, whom they perceive for the most part as ethnically identical to themselves.

As a consequence, such Arab intellectuals find ethnic Ashkenazi and German Jewish concepts of Jewish nationhood completely incomprehensible (as historically did most non-ethnic Ashkenazi or non-German Jews).

Moreover, the essentialist primordialist concept of a single Jewish people that has existed for approximately 3000 years is complete nonsense.

In historic Poland Jews (i.e, people that had some sort of ancestral connection to Jewish religion) belonged to two separate ethnic groups. Some were ethnic Ashkenazim and others were ethnic Tatars.

Ethnic Ashkenazim, if they practiced a religion, only practiced Judaism. In contrast Polish Lithuanian Tatars that practiced some form of religion were either Armenian Apostolic Orthodox, Sunni Muslims, or Karaite Jews. There is also evidence that in the past there were Polish Lithuanian Armenian Catholic Tatars and Polish Lithuanian Rabbinic Jewish Tatars, but Roman Catholic Tatars fairly quickly assimilated among Roman Catholic Poles and Rabbinic Jewish Tatars fairly quickly assimilated among ethnic Ashkenazim.

While Tatar and ethnic Ashkenazi Jews generally had fairly good relations through the 18th century, from the 19th century onward friction increased.

In brief, in historic Poland there was an Ashkenazi ethnic group but there was no single Jewish ethnic or national group, and, in fact by the late 19th century when Zionist ideas began to take hold among ethnic Ashkenazim, there was outright hostility between the two Polish Jewish communities.

I understand the intricacies of Zionist and Yiddishist Ashkenazi ethno-nationalism because I read most of the languages that were in use in historic Poland and because I have an interest in everything Polish. I could probably give a fairly long lecture on Sarmatian origin myths among the Polish Szlachta or on interethnic relations among ethnic Poles and Kassubians and ethnic Germans or about the permeable boundaries of the ethnic German and ethnic Ashkenazi communities in early 19th century Poland, but to expect Arab intellectuals and leaders to understand the details of Polish ethnology and to agree with Zionist ideas that are demonstrably false is unfair to say the least.

It is interesting that of all Arab and Arab American academics of my acquaintanceship, she is probably the one that shows the greatest interest in Jewish and Israel studies. By my standards her work is flawed, but not for any of the reasons that her critics give, and she will probably correct her scholarly deficiencies -- something that Edward Said never did.

Is it any wonder that Zionists are so frightened and outraged by her?

Consider her ongoing work.

"Professor Abu El-Haj’s work examines the relationship between scientific knowledge and the making of social imaginations and political orders. Her first book examined the practice of archaeology—a historical science—and sought to specify the ways in which it generated facts and to understand how those facts circulated in wider social worlds, helping to fashion the cultural understandings, political possibilities and “common-sense” assumptions. Abu El-Haj’s more recent scholarship explores the field of genetic anthropology by analyzing, first, projects that seek to reconstruct the origins and migrations of specific populations and second, the participation of for-profit corporations that offer genetic ancestry testing. The intersection of race, Diaspora, and kinship figures prominently in this study, where genetic origins emerge as a shared concern among those who may seek redress or recognition."

Jabotinskian Zionists are obsessed with the genetic connection of ethnic Ashkenazim to ancient Israel, but ethnic Ashkenazim have no ancestral connection as the textual, onomastic, archeological, and linguistic data clearly show. Hence, the latter day fascination with statistical genetic anthropology among Jabotinskian Zionists.

What did Mark Twain say? There are lies, damn lies and statistics. It is not a big part of my business, but I have been a working statistician since 1978, and I have evaluated the statistical genetic anthropological claims with regard to ethnic Ashkenazi ancestry from the Hammer Oppenheim research group. They are rubbish.

Take a look at http://gath.wordpress.com/2006/12/06/re-discussion-of-nadia-abu-el-hajs-book-on-israeli-archaeology/ .

Aren Maeir shows a lot of evidence from the discussion thread of being thoroughly enmeshed in Jabotinskian genetic racism. (Did I say anything about Khazars? I use a different working hypothesis of the origin of ethnic Ashkenazim.)

Nadia Abu el Haj is a smart lady. Because she will eventually figure out the issues and expose them brilliantly, Jabotinskian Zionists have to diminish the impact of her scholarship in a sort of preventive strike by denying her the tenure that she merits on the basis of the quality of her exiting oeuvre and the promise that she shows.

Comments on Ethnic Ashkenazim Against Zionist Israel: Jacob Lassner and Nadia Abu el Haj

Because I have read both Recovered Roots and Facts...

Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technolog...

I wish I had more time to look into the connection...