Jump to content

Anat Kamm–Uri Blau affair

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Uri R (talk | contribs) at 20:45, 9 April 2010 (two, not "some"). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Anat Kam

Anat Kam (Hebrew: ענת קם, born 1987) is an Israeli journalist who most recently worked for Walla!, an internet news portal owned, until recently, by Haaretz. She was secretly put under house arrest in December 2009 by the Shin Bet for allegedly leaking classified documents from the IDF, which suggested the military had defied a court ruling against assassinating wanted militants in the Palestinian territories who otherwise might be arrested safely[1][2][3][4][5][6]. The Shin Bet alledged that Kam copied over 2,000 classified documents during her military service at the IDF and leaked some of them to the Haaretz journalist Uri Blau.[7][8][9][10][11] The documents allegedly include "operational military information, security and situation assessments, meetings' minutes and protocols, highly sensitive intelligence information, orders of deployment and battle, drill briefings, and warfare doctrines for the West Bank".[12] Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin said that the case "had the potential to cause grave damage to state security" and defined the documents as "the kind that any intelligence agency would be delighted to get its hands on".[13]. The Israeli police secured a gag order prohibiting Israeli media from reporting on Kam's arrest and the reasons for it. The charges against Kam do not relate to her journalistic activities as a celeb gossip writer, but rather to being a journalistic source. [14]

In 2008, Uri Blau of Haaretz published a report[15] based on these documents which showed that the IDF senior command planned and executed targeted killings of three terrorist leaders, that violated an earlier 2006 ruling of the Israeli Supreme Court limiting the circumstances in which such a tactic could be used.[16]

During Kam's military service, she worked in the office of the head of Israeli Central Command, Major General Yair Naveh, one of the officers referred to in the Haaretz report.

Despite the fact that numerous foreign media outlets have reported on the case and her identity, there was an almost ironclad gag within the mainstream media. No newspaper has published her name though many have published reports criticizing the authorities for imposing the gag and preventing them from telling their readers about this major story. The first overseas reporting on the case[17] came in the Tikun Olam blog, which collaborated with Israeli bloggers and journalists to bring the story into the public consciousness.

The gag order was removed on April 8. On April 14th, Kam's trial is scheduled to begin unless her attorneys arrive at a plea bargain with the prosecution.

Though the prosecution originally sought the gag order, in this case Kam and her attorneys felt it was in her interest to honor it as well. She has exerted great pressure on her supporters not to publicize her arrest or the charges against her. She successfully got Hebrew Wikipedia to remove the article about her[18], which raised controversy both within the Hebrew Wikipedia community and among free speech and free press advocates within Israel and abroad.

The case raised profound questions about the balance between national security and press scrutiny.[19] Advocates for human rights and democracy both within Israel and outside are closely monitoring the case. The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders issued a statement saying that "Defence of national security is a legitimate objective but censorship must not be used to prevent the Israel Defence Forces from being held responsible if they broke the law."[20]

References

  1. ^ Israeli woman detained on military leak accusation
  2. ^ Israel gags news of soldier turned journalist under arrest
  3. ^ Israeli leak suspect held in secret house arrest
  4. ^ Journalist on the run from Israel is hiding in Britain
  5. ^ Israeli journalist Anat Kam under secret house arrest since December
  6. ^ Israel arrests soldier Anat Kam over targeted-killings ‘leak’
  7. ^ Template:He icon http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART2/090/636.html#after_maavaron
  8. ^ Template:He icon http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3871970,00.html
  9. ^ Template:He icon http://news.walla.co.il/?w=//1660912
  10. ^ Template:He icon http://www.mako.co.il/news-military/security/Article-100cb08f4dcd721004.htm
  11. ^ http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=172699
  12. ^ http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3871981,00.html
  13. ^ http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3871981,00.html
  14. ^ http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gKA_Ee9dHFKBbMLrCqkfNDktyxlAD9EUVCN82
  15. ^ http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1041160.html
  16. ^ http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1041160.html
  17. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07israel.html
  18. ^ Discussion in Hebrew; Note that two of the voters cited Kam's request as a reason to delete the article.
  19. ^ See, for example: Ilene R. Prusher, Press freedom vs. state security: Israel's Anat Kam faces jail for leaking army files, The Christian Science Monitor, April 8, 2010; Daniella Peled, The real moral of the Anat Kam story, The Guardian, April 8, 2010
  20. ^ http://www.rsf.org/Israeli-media-forbidden-to-report.html
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anat_Kamm–Uri_Blau_affair&oldid=355016159"