Thursday, April 11, 2013

plagiarism and anti-Semitism

There is a story in the Times from yesterday about plagiarism by the Chief Rabbi of France.  But suddenly at the end of the article, the New York Times inserted this: "The turmoil comes at a time when organizations that monitor anti-Semitic episodes in France and Europe generally say that such incidents are on the rise. The American Jewish Committee has publicized a recent report by Tel Aviv University’s Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry that recorded what it terms 686 anti-Semitic attacks in Europe in 2012, compared with 526 in 2011, including physical violence and vandalism of synagogues and Jewish cemeteries."  What does this have to do with the story of plagiarism? Is the implication that any reference to the plagiarism is anti-Semitic?