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05/03/2008: "Debate on whether to obscure Israeli archeological discoveries that are inconvenient"
The dispute centered on whether Barnard College should grant tenure to Nadia Abu El-Haj, an American-born scholar of anthropology who, in the 1990s, challenged the scientific integrity of what she saw as the Israeli use of archeology in a politically motivated way to justify Jewish settlements on territory that had belonged to Palestinians.
Although the controversy wasn’t new " it had been argued out within archeological circles in Israel for years " El-Haj became a lightning rod because she was the first academic of Palestinian descent to publicize the debate in a 2001 book, Facts on the Ground: Archeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society.
This pattern of ugly controversies whenever a Muslim or an Arab-American criticizes Israel or is seen as promoting some Islamic agenda has become more and more common, with influential neoconservative groups now operating in a concerted way to destroy careers and livelihoods.
[ There are many examples of Israeli archeological finds being interpreted in order to prove points rather than being unbiased. ]
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/042908a.html