If I am Good Enough to Steal From, I am Good Enough to Publish

Plagiarized, dismissed, ignored — again — Theft isn’t flattery — it’s erasure

By Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS

In 2020, I completed a comprehensive study on Francis Salvador — the first Jew elected to public office in the American colonies and the first Jew to die in the American Revolution — titled “Dreaming of Equality: Francis Salvador and Jewish Patriots during the American Revolution.” I poured months into the project, digging through obscure archival sources, analyzing primary texts, and consulting generations of Jewish historiography. My 100-plus-page paper was a labor of love and a contribution to a field that often forgets the role Jews played in the founding of the United States.

I uploaded the paper to Academia.edu, where scholars share their work to reach broader audiences and engage with the intellectual community, and posted it on my blog on Medium. Imagine my shock, then, when I recently discovered that Michael Freund — a rabbi, deputy communications director in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office under Benjamin Netanyahu, and a regular contributor to The Jerusalem Post.

Freund had accessed and subsequently published an op-ed in the JPost entitled “Remembering Francis Salvador, the Jewish Paul Revere,” which became a top-five hot opinion on the Jerusalem Post site. The article is essentially an abstract summarizing my work; it closely mirrors the structure and substance of my research: the same historical arc, many of the same rarely cited details, and even rhetorical flourishes that resemble those I used.

His only difference is making a baseless comparison to Paul Revere. But nowhere does he cite me. Nowhere is there an acknowledgment of the foundational research that made his piece possible. And he has the audacity to claim Salvador’s “example deserves far wider recognition,” as if a book-length study that has been widely read in academic circles and online that I wrote is nothing or, better yet, doesn’t exist.

I have the receipts. Freund viewed my paper on Academia.edu last year and days before he published his article, which tracks access data. This incident is not a coincidence; it’s a clear case of intellectual appropriation. And while I’d like to say I was surprised, the truth is I wasn’t.

This occurs frequently to female authors, historians, and academics within Jewish media.

A Pattern, Not a Fluke

Simply put, what I experienced is sexism, and that sexism is common and prevalent in Israeli employment and also within the news industry. My experience is not isolated. In both the Israeli media and Jewish academic spheres, there is a broader systemic problem that minimizes, repackages, or erases women’s contributions entirely.

Despite making up over half the population, women are underrepresented in the public conversation and disproportionately excluded from shaping national discourse.

Carolyn M. Byerly observes, “In the larger field of journalism, there are a few women ‘stars,’ but overall, the numbers of women are small. Advancement within the field of journalism in Israel relies more on personal ties than on performance. While Israel has adopted equality laws, the government does not enforce them — as illustrated by a gender-segregated workforce, for example. Moreover, Israel’s heavily militarized society marginalizes women, and the lack of a strong feminist movement does not benefit women in their professional lives (including journalism). The difficulties Israeli women journalists face in both their profession and society suggest they are rather ‘negotiating the constraints.’ This example, among many others, highlights the challenge of establishing a dependable hierarchy of progress across nations.

As of October 2023, the Israeli TV and radio news media was overwhelmingly male, with 68 percent of the reporters being men and women only representing 32 percent of reporters. The situation is worse for radio reporters compared to TV reporters.

The poll by the Women’s Representation in Israeli Media for the first half of 2023 and conducted by The Seventh Eye, in collaboration with the Journalists’ Organization in Israel and Success Association, found the following:

• Overall Ratio: 68% male vs. 32% female journalists on broadcast news.
• TV: 61% men, 39% women
• Radio: 77% men, 23% women
• By Channel:
• Kan 11: Best representation — up to 52% women in some slots
• Channel 14: 39% women
• Keshet 12: 37% women
• Reshet 13: 35% women
• Kan B (Radio): 27% women
• Gali-Tzahal & 103FM: Worst — only 20% women
• Even when women are present, they appear less frequently than men.
• Notable female anchors: Michal Rabinovich, Tali Moreno, Maya Rakhlin, Hila Korach, Yonit Lev[1]

Until 2011, female journalists in Israel did not organize to fight for their rights. That changed with the founding of the Women Journalists Chamber, which aimed to improve working conditions and promote equality in the media. The group quickly gained prominence by exposing widespread sexual harassment by senior media figures, bringing the issue into the public eye for the first time. The global #MeToo movement further empowered Israeli journalists, prompting many veteran women to speak out about past abuse. This wave of testimonies marks a feminist turning point in Israeli journalism. Despite risks, leading women are breaking their silence — encouraging younger colleagues to join the fight for dignity and equality.[2]

One of the best studies examining the position or lack thereof of women in journalism was by Maya Bonash and her 2021 collaborative study, “Where are the Women in the Israeli Journalism?” In Israel’s early years, women’s presence in media was minimal — just 7% of employees at major newspapers in 1955 were women, among them “Yedioth Acharonoth,” “Ma’ariv,” “Ha’aretz,” “Davar,” “Al Hamishmar,” and “The Jerusalem Post.” Women held only 10.8% of print media roles by 1976. The late 1980s saw a “pink collar revolution” as women began entering media in greater numbers, but expectations of a full transformation have not materialized.

In 1994, Dan Caspi and Yehieal Limor published “The Feminization of the Israeli Press,” the first study of women in Israeli journalism. They predicted a “feminization” of Israeli media, but three decades later, the landscape remained male-dominated. Anat Saragusti, the founder of “Ta Ha’Itonaiyot” [Hebrew: The Women Journalists Chamber], highlighted the illusion of progress, noting that naming each female anchor indicates how few there are. Professor Einat Lachover stresses the gap between on-screen visibility and real decision-making power.

As of early 2021, women hold only 26% of senior editorial and decision-making roles across major media outlets, with men holding 74%. On TV:

• Kan 11: 23% editors (women), 58% producers
• Channel 12: 33% editors, 57% producers
• Channel 13: 17% editors, 80% producers
• Presenters: 47–50% women
• Reporters: 26–39% women

Women usually work in “technical” execution roles, rather than as content creators or decision makers.

In radio, women are again underrepresented in editorial roles:

• Kan Reshet Bet: 40% editors, 80% producers
• Galatz: 25% editors, 64% producers
• 103FM: 33% editors, 43% producers

In print media, managerial roles are mostly male:

• Haaretz: 80% male managers
• Ma’ariv: 100% male
• Yedioth Achronoth: 55% women managers (highest)
• Editors-in-chief of all major papers are men
• Junior editors: 14–27% women
• Reporters: 30–42% women

A 2021 study by Yifat Media Research found that, out of 39,010 TV appearances, only 39% were by women. Men dominate in expert and political roles, while women are more visible in “softer” topics like health and welfare. Systemic issues persist: job criteria and expertise definitions often favor male-dominated areas like security and economics. During crises (e.g., military conflicts), media defaults to male “experts,” reinforcing gendered hierarchies in content and coverage.

Notable exceptions like Carmela Menashe and Keren Neubach show how women can shift media agendas — covering soldiers’ welfare and social issues — but they remain rare.

The authors concluded that while representation has improved superficially, the deeper power structures and content perspectives remain largely male. True progress requires not just more women, but more diverse, inclusive voices in content creation and editorial decision-making.

When women do appear, it’s often in “soft” sections: lifestyle, education, and family. Men dominate history, politics, diplomacy, and religion — the very areas in which I write and research. This skewed distribution gives men not only more visibility but also more perceived authority. So when a male writer borrows the work of a woman scholar, few question his originality or expertise. He simply gets published.

This problem isn’t confined to journalism. In Israeli academia, women account for just 34% of tenured faculty — and far fewer in fields like Jewish history, political science, or Talmudic studies. The editorial boards of major Jewish academic journals are similarly male-dominated, despite increasing numbers of women completing advanced degrees in these areas.

Sociologist Nina Toren observed, “Recently, attention has been drawn to the persistent gender inequality in Israeli academia. Though women and men enter the academic tenure track at the same level, females constitute a small minority of total tenure-track faculty, and their rate of advancement in the academic hierarchy is slower than that of their male colleagues. Research indicates that the discrimination against women faculty is a continuous process of accumulation of obstacles and disadvantage, rather than specific barriers located only at career entry or at career’s peak.” [3]

In Israeli higher education, the Knesset Research and Information Center determined women are significantly underrepresented in senior academic positions despite starting out in equal numbers. While women constitute about 50% of academic staff at the lecturer level, their numbers drop sharply at higher ranks. Only 17% of university professors and 15% of college professors are women. [4]

This disparity is especially evident in STEM fields: in mathematics and computer science, women’s representation falls from 29% at the lecturer level to just 6% among full professors. In physics, only 7% of academic staff are women. (AIP Publishing).

Between 2002/03 and 2014/15, the proportion of women in senior university faculty rose by 7 percentage points, while the number of male faculty decreased by 2%. In 2014/15, women made up 30% of senior university faculty overall. Rates varied widely, with the Open University (46%) and University of Haifa (42%) showing higher female representation, while the Technion had only 17% women in senior roles.

Toren concludes, “Although some positive change occurred in the position of women faculty in Israeli academia during the 1990s, questions remain about why there are so few faculty members and why progress has been so slow,” and any changes have been evolutionary not revolutionary.

“Alongside women’s high rate of participation in the labor force (17th in the world, according to the Global Gender Gap Report 2024), there are very large wage disparities between Israeli women and men who hold similar positions (86th place) and an abysmal record in senior managerial positions (85th place). The Global Gender Gap Report currently places Israel in 91st place overall, representing a drop of 8 places compared to the previous report. The main reason for this decline is the slowdown in female representation in political arenas, especially in relation to other countries.” [5]

Anecdotes and Erasure

This erasure has a long legacy.

The scholar Ruth Wisse, one of the pioneers of Yiddish literary studies, has spoken candidly about her early career, when her research was either dismissed or “echoed” by male peers who received credit for “discovering” what she had already written. In her memoir Free as a Jew: A Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation, Wisse reflects on this pattern, writing, “Young women looked over the field and were looked over in turn” and recounting a time when “no women were invited to participate in the conference.” Throughout her memoir she discussed the struggles women had in academia even as late as the turn of the millennium art Harvard University. [6]

Make a Google search of men plagiarizing women, and you will get thousands of hits and examples of men either miscrediting or stealing the ideas and inventions of women throughout history or the men now plagiarizing the writing of women. The situation is absurd in our modern society that claims to care so much about equality. One gregarious account had the following headline in the Washington Post: “A female historian wrote a book. Two male historians went on NPR to talk about it. They never mentioned her name. It’s Sarah Milov. They have tenure. She does not.” The headline effectively conveys the lack of respect towards women in academia. Afterward, Milov expressed in an interview, “Every single word they said was from my book. Then I got to the end of a nearly 10-minute segment and did not hear myself credited at all.”[7] Even Tel Aviv University admits, “Although women complete PhDs in Israel at a higher rate than men, they are still drastically underrepresented in academic faculty.”

This bias plays out in Israeli media as well. Of the few prominent female journalists who have spoken out about being interrupted on-air, have been subjected to online abuse, or treated as “emotional” or “unprofessional” when covering security or political matters. Their male counterparts rarely face similar scrutiny.

Historian Dalia Ofer has written about how women’s experiences in the Holocaust were long underrepresented in Israeli historical narratives and how women Holocaust scholars were marginalized — until men began publishing on the same subjects, earning praise for their “insight.”

So when someone like Michael Freund uses my research to build a popular article and receives praise while I remain uncredited and unpublished, it’s not an accident. It’s a pattern.

What Needs to Change

This is not just about ego or personal credit — it’s about justice, transparency, and the integrity of public discourse.

If Jewish journalism and scholarship are to serve their purpose — telling the truth, preserving memory, and elevating community voices — they cannot continue to exploit the invisible labor of women.

I am calling for three things:

1. Editorial Accountability. Publications like The Jerusalem Post must adopt clear policies on source attribution, especially when writers use publicly available academic material. Editors should ask, “Where did the material come from?” and verify that sources are credited appropriately.

2. Representation Reform. Jewish and Israeli media must increase the share of women writers in opinion sections and leadership roles. The low percentages should be a scandal, not a norm. It’s time to ask: why aren’t more women being published? And more importantly, why are their ideas being published under someone else’s name?

3. Public Correction. In this specific case, The Jerusalem Post should publish a formal acknowledgment noting that Mr. Freund’s article draws upon the research I originally published. This would not only restore integrity to the article — it would signal to other women scholars that their labor matters.

Why I’m Speaking Out

When I previously called out another well-known writer for using my Judah Benjamin research without acknowledgment, it sparked debate, and I faced backlash. His book tanked — but only after people began to question the ethics of appropriation.

Now, I face a similar situation. And this time, I’m not staying silent.

I have over twenty years of experience. I’ve taught at universities, published in Jewish news outlets, and

I am a Jewish historian, writer, and educator with over twenty years of professional experience who has worked to preserve the memory of Jewish resilience and identity through history. I have graduate degrees and graduate work and a body of writing that has commanded respect from some of the most elite scholars, with readers from all over the world, and I have taught from grade school to graduate school.

I was the second person listed on the masthead of a major academic news publication. I have self-published my book and written viral articles. For most of my career, I chose not to associate with a publication because I wanted the control, like Taylor Swift, over my writing, and with very little exception, I own the copyright to everything I put out there. It was a conscious decision, not a consolation prize.

If I’m good enough to steal from, I am good enough to publish — and so are thousands of other women.

We don’t want charity. We want credit. And we demand the space to speak in our voices — not just see our work repackaged under someone else’s.

It’s time to stop treating women’s ideas as raw material for men’s careers.

Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS, is a historian, librarian, journalist, and artist. She is the author of “On This Day in History…: Significant Events in the American Year,” and “A Constant Battle: McGill University’s Complicated History of Antisemitism and Now anti-Zionism.” She has a BA in History and Art History and a Masters in Library and Information Studies from McGill University. She has done graduate work in Jewish history at Concordia University as part of the MA in Judaic Studies and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as part of their MA in Jewish Education. She contributed to the “History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–2008,” edited by Gil Troy, Arthur M. Schlesinger, and Fred L. Israel (2012). She is the former Features Editor at the History News Network and reporter at Examiner.com, where she covered politics, universities, religion, and news. Her scholarly articles can be found on Academia.edu.

[1] https://www.the7eye.org.il/493832 The Seventh Eye (עין השביעית), “מדד ייצוג הנשים במדורי הדעות,” 2020. https://www.the7eye.org.il

[2] https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/women-journalists-in-israel

[3] https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/academia-in-israel

[4] Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. “Women in Academia,” 2023.

[5] https://en.idi.org.il/articles/48097

[6] Wisse, Ruth. Free as a Jew: A Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation. Wicked Son Books, 2021.

[7] https://www.washingtonpost.com/gender-identity/a-female-historian-wrote-a-book-two-male-historians-went-on-npr-to-talk-about-it-they-never-mentioned-her-name/