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Cross-posted from Al-Akhbar-
YNet's Giulio Meotti likes to cut and pasteItalian columnist Giulio Meotti's book, "A Second Shoah," earned abundant praise from a Who's Who of neoconservatism, from Victor Davis Hanson to Norman Podhoretz to John Bolton. George Weigel, the right-wing Catholic intellectual, hailed Meotti as a modern-day Truman Capote, while the pro-Israel travel writer Michael Totten described the book, which contends that Israelis are victims of an ongoing Holocaust, as "very moving." "We must be grateful to Giulio Meotti for his magisterial work," wrote self-described Muslim apostate Ibn Warraq in the National Review.
This week, Marc Tracy at Tablet revealed several instances of plagiarism by Meotti, who is a columnist for YNet and the pro-Berlusconi Italian daily, Il Foglio. According to Tracy, the plagiarism occurred in a recent piece by Meotti who wrote contrasting Israel's supposedly flawless record on gay rights with the record of the barbaric Arabs, who are portrayed through the increasingly popular pro-Israel tactic of pinkwashing as not culturally enlightened enough to enjoy their liberation. In the column, Meotti lifted entire paragraphs from writings by two fellow pro-Israel cadres, Jamie Kirchick and Brett Stephens.
Meotti's penchant for plagiarism was not limited to a single column, however. Google a paragraph at random from any column and you are likely to find that he has lifted much of it, if not the whole thing, from someone else. Here are some examples (thanks to Michael Moynihan for pointing a few of these out):
On April 30, 2012, Meotti authored a column attacking advocates of the BDS campaign as anti-Semites and neo-Nazis. Meotti wrote:"Will the European Union, many of whose prominent members either participated or acquiesced in the destruction of European Jewry 70 years ago, put a stop to this obscurantist conspiracy of the grandchildren of those Max Weinreich called 'Hitler's Professors' to expel the Israelites (again) from the family of nations?"
On January 3, 2003, Edward Alexander wrote in a column attacking BDS supporters:
"More importantly, will the European Union, many of whose prominent members either participated or acquiesced in the destruction of European Jewry 60 years ago, put a stop to the conspiracy of these spiritual descendants of those Max Weinreich famously called 'Hitler's Professors,' to expel the Jews (once again) from the family of nations?"
