Liberman seems to plagiarize speech to families of fallen soldiers
Defense minister’s address at memorial takes large sections from predecessor’s words two years earlier
Large sections of an address by Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman at the annual memorial for fallen soldiers appear to have been copied from a speech by his predecessor two years earlier.
Speaking at the Mount Herzl military cemetery on a day commemorating fallen soldiers whose final resting places are unknown, Liberman, or his speech writer, seemed to plagiarize large sections from the speech that former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon gave at the same event two years previously, Channel 10 reported.
Both speeches opened with the touching story of pilot Arlozor “Zorik” Lev, whose plane was shot down into the sea in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and his son who never knew him. Both read out the letter that Lev’s son wrote in 2003, beginning “Dad — I’m not used to writing those three letters, Dad… This is me, the son you are holding in the picture… 30 years later. I’m sitting and thinking of everything you’ve missed…”
Whole lines from the two speeches were identical. Even the final words of both speeches were the same. “Know that your heroism, your choices… are a model for us all.”
In response, Liberman’s office said that if one listens to the entire speech it is quite different than Ya’alon’s. It is natural that at such events similar ideas are presented and the same stories told, his office added, since such stories do not change from year to year.
The annual ceremony to mourn the 179 soldiers that have no grave to visit takes place on the seventh day of the Hebrew month of Adar, the traditional date of the death of Moses, whose grave is also unknown.
According to the Bible, Moses was buried in a valley near Mount Nebo, in present-day Jordan, but “no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.”
Instead of a burial-place, those soldiers have a memorial — a stone wall with their names inscribed on it in Mount Herzl Military Cemetery in Jerusalem.
