“Oversight” by Repubblica, publishes an academic’s pro-Israel letter, without saying that he died in 2022. Then he apologizes

“Dear students, Israel is not a regime”, with this title the newspaper Repubblica of the Gedi group (Agnelli-Elkann) today publishes a long letter from the academic Denis MacEcoin on a double page (with a reference on the front). Next to it appears an “intervention” by the director Maurizio Molinari, title: “The seed of hatred comes from October 7th”. Introducing MacEoin’s letter […]

“Dear students, Israel is not a regime”, with this title the newspaper Repubblica of the Gedi group (Agnelli-Elkann) published today on double page (with front page reference) a long letter of the academic Denis MacEcoin. An “intervention” by the director appears next to it Maurizio Molinari, title: “The seed of hatred comes from October 7th”. Introducing MacEoin’s letter are these lines: “We publish a response from Denis MacEoin to the motion presented by the University of Edinburgh Students’ Association to boycott everything Israeli and which states that Israel is governed by an apartheid regime. Denis MacEoin is an expert on Middle East affairs. Here is his letter to the students”.

All good, except that MacEoin died in 2022 and the letter even dates back to 2011. However, Republic does not specify this “detail”. Nevertheless A lot of things have happened in these 13 years. Even before October 7 and the start of an International Court of Justice procedure to assess whether Israel is perpetrating genocide. There have been other UN resolutions, including this one of 2018 in which he criticized himself the Israeli response to the protests (largely peaceful) held in Gaza. The Israeli army killed 223 people, including 43 children. The Israeli government has veered further to the right, illegitimate land grabs in the West Bank continue.

So who knows if MacEoin would have written the same things. Given the contents of the letter, which denies any responsibility of Israel for anything, perhaps yes. However, MacEoin was not an intellectual particularly open to criticism. For 10 years he ran a blog dedicated to defending Israel from accusations of being an illiberal state with traits of apartheid. For his positions he was defined as neoconservative and some of his publications were accused of containing several forgeries.

The “oversight” of Republic However, the lack of dating did not go unnoticed. Many reports on social media. At this point the editorial team of Republic he responds apologetically while the date of the letter is added in the online version.

See more

It may actually have been an innocent mistake. But the precedents justify some doubts. The director Maurizio Molinari, distrusted by the editorial team, in recent months he has been accused on several occasions of a certain excess of pro-Israel partisanship. As in the case of an interview with the singer Ghali, which was made to disappear because there was no reference to the events of October 7th.