Israeli Minister Accused of Plagiarism as Graduate Student
Image by Wikipedia
Likud deputy minister Ayoub Kara was accused of plagiarism when he was a graduate student, TheMarker newspaper reported.
Kara, a Likud lawmaker and the deputy minister of regional cooperation, was required to take additional courses to fulfill the requirements for his master’s degree in public policy, but still managed to graduate on time in 2013, according to the Israeli business newspaper.
Tel Aviv University spokeswoman Orna Cohen confirmed in a statement to JTA that Kara received no credit in a course following the submission of a final paper in which “a problem” was found. The university knew of no other plagiarism allegation that involved the long-serving Knesset member and later deemed his loss of course credit sufficient punishment, she said.
According to Cohen, lecturer Gal Alon filed a formal complaint with the university in July 2012 alleging that Kara’s final report for his course plagiarized wholesale from a paper published by the Myers-JDC-Brookdale think tank in Jerusalem. Alon said he readily identified the plagiarism because he played a role in formulating the original policy paper.
At a hearing in June 2013, the university disciplinary committee determined Kara’s loss of credit for the course was sufficient punishment and recommended against further action, according to Cohen.
Kara spokesman Shlomo Weiser told JTA that Kara’s work for the course was rejected because he had misunderstood citation rules for using government documents in academic work. Weiser suggested the lecturer’s plagiarism allegations might have been motivated by political differences with the right-wing politician, though he offered no evidence to that effect.
Weiser also noted that after Kara failed to win election to the Knesset in 2013, he took advantage of a year-and-a-half hiatus from politics to pursue further academic credentials. Weiser said that Kara passed the Israel Bar Association’s examination to become an accredited lawyer during the period and is now considering pursuing a doctorate in public policy. Kara was re-elected to the Knesset in 2015.
Alon declined to comment to JTA about his complaint against Kara, except to say, “There are certain things that should be unacceptable in any academic institution.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
