Medad/Pollak - Respect for the law?

Yisrael Medad/Eli Pollak..
Media Comment/JPost..
06 June '12..

Faced with the evidence, the attorney-general made the decision to charge the journalist with criminal action. He had been found to be in possession of stolen government documents. That is a felony, and, if convicted, he could be sent to jail. The formal charge in court was that the investigative reporter did “unlawfully receive, conceal and retain... government documents... and records, with intent to convert the said property to his own use or gain,” knowing the documents had been stolen.

Uri Blau, Israel, 2012? No, Les Whitten, 1973. And there were other cases, such as Thomas Drake, 2010, or James Risen, 2011. The United States government decided to prosecute all three for willful retention of national defense information or other security-related documents.

The first instance, of course, is not fully comparable. Whitten never went to court, his arrest was a result of a vengeful president and the documents were not security- or military- related. Another important element is that the US Constitution was amended to include a prohibition to abridge the freedom of the press.

Israel has no constitution.

Nevertheless, both cases are linked to the passionate debate over whether, how and to what extent journalistic privilege should be protected versus the issue of journalistic liability for violating the law. In this connection, the name Julian Assange could also be mentioned, or even Winston Churchill’s Regulation 2d during World War II, which severely limited the press.

The dilemma, which we also face in Israel, is: Should a journalist who acts in concert with a source who has stolen classified government documents, or who solicited the source to misappropriate classified documents, be immune from criminal prosecution? A secondary aspect of this debate in Israel is that the parameters of the debate and how it is being debated is being directed here mainly by other journalists, who understandably have quite a vested interest in the case.

Shine - The watchdog that bit democracy

Dr. Haim Shine..
Israel Hayom..
31 May '12..

The attorney-general's decision to try Haaretz reporter Uri Blau for the unauthorized possession of confidential material was good, and brave. In a country where the media dictates the national agenda on many issues, courage is required to stop the reckless behavior of journalists who, under the protection of freedom of expression, put Israel in real danger. It is not the attorney-general's job to dictate codes of behavior — that job is reserved for the legislative and judiciary branches of government. The attorney-general's job is to ensure that well-founded indictments are heard by the court. The attorney-general is supposed to treat everyone equally: rich and poor, elected official and common citizen, journalist and any other professional.

The message communicated by the attorney-general's decision to indict Blau is important: Freedom of speech is not freedom to commit national suicide or freedom to abandon judgment. Journalists can be expected to display a fair amount of responsibility and regard for the security of the state and its values. Anat Kamm and Uri Blau are not heroes. Efforts by the radical left-wing media to portray them as such are absurd: They portray an enemy as an ally, liberation as occupation and cowardice as civilian courage.

Loose lips sink ships

Anat Kamm may have been exploited by the unscrupulous media, but her offense wasn’t about freedom of the press.


Sarah Honig
Another Tack/JPost
2 April '10

In herself Anat Kamm could not be more unimportant. As a symptom of the psycho-political ills that plague Western democracies Anat Kamm could not be more important.

The malaise her pseudo-intellectual narcissism mirrors can obviously be least afforded in beleaguered Israel, but it’s not only endemic here. Moreover, it’s lauded as the epitome of politically correct bon ton not only by this country’s homegrown left-leaning media.

True, Israel can also least afford the damage inflicted by left-wing popularized misrepresentations – far more pervasive here than anywhere else due to the incomparable dominance of local leftist opinion-molders, who are particularly aggressive in the Kamm case. After all, they are covering their exposed rear ends.

And for this purpose it suits them to parade Kamm as a selfless journalist, standing her ground courageously in desperate defense of freedom of information. This, their basic contention, already constitutes a gross cock-and-bull narrative. One must either be mulishly gullible or uninformed in the extreme to consider Kamm a crusading journalist and portray her offense as inspired by allegiance to journalistic ethics.

OF LATE Kamm found employment as a gossip purveyor on an Internet site.

It’s quite a stretch to consider the 23-year-old philosophy student a professional in the forefront of investigative reporting. Besides, she broke the law long before her Web site connection. She wasn’t remotely in journalism when, as a young conscript, she worked in the OC Central Command’s office, duplicated 2,200 documents, hid her haul and hung on to it long after her 2007 discharge.

That she later postured as a newswoman cannot retroactively justify her larceny. Would Kamm’s thievery be reckoned more reprehensible had she earned her living at a supermarket check-out counter?

Kamm basically emptied everything in her commander’s computer. She wasn’t selective. She didn’t home in on a particular issue (which would have been bad enough). Unlike a whistleblower, which she claims to be, Kamm snatched everything indiscriminately. That was an unmitigated breach of her oath.

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Yemini Takes Out Blau's Assassinations Article

TS
CAMERA/Snapshots
18 April '10

In his 2008 article in Ha'aretz, Israeli journalist Uri Blau used illegally obtained military documents obtained by soldier Anat Kamm to accuse the army of committing war crimes and violating a High Court ruling by assassinating West Bank terrorists. As pointed out recently in Snapshots, a letter by former Attorney General Menachem Mazuz destroyed Blau's claims that the killings violated the court ruling.

Now Ben-Dror Yemini of Ma'ariv has thoroughly decimated Blau's allegations. In "Libel Manufactured by Ha'aretz," he writes:

The headline, at the time, was "The chief-of-staff and IDF leadership authorized killings of wanted and innocent men.

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Kam You Get Any Dumber?

Paula R. Stern
A Soldier's Mother
16 April '10

I'm reading an article published in the Haaretz news site about Anat Kam, the idiot woman who stole 2,000 secret and top secret documents while working for a top level military commander...and now wants the world (or at least the courts) to believe she didn't do anything wrong. The full article in which Anat Kam admits to having stolen the documents can be read here (please make sure not to click on any advertising links on the page...I would hate to think I helped Ha'aretz in any way!) I rejected to comments posted to my blog by the once-again brave "Anonymous" trying to alert us to this article and suggesting if true, that he (the poster) fully supports Kam...I guess as dumb as Kam is...there are still even dumber...but as to the full nature of Kam's arrogance and stupidity...here are some example:

She said she stole sensitive military information because: "certain aspects of the IDF's conduct in the West Bank that I thought were of interest to the public." Really, this naive, stupid 20-year-old girl thought she had the right to decide what was of interest to the public? Amazing, the arrogance.

Anat Kam says she turned to Israeli journalists (as opposed, one would assume, to Israel's legal system) because "the censorship would not allow the publication of information classified as top secret or that is dangerous for publication." Gee, can you imagine? A country not allowing the publication of top secret and dangerous for publication items...who would have imagined that?

She talks of her wish to "serve" the nation: "I didn't have the chance to change some of the things that I found it important to change during my military service, and I thought that by exposing these [materials] I would make a change." Gee, again...here I was thinking that the purpose of national service was to SERVE the nation...not change it, not reform it into the nation you, in your incredible ignorance and arrogance, think it should be.

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The Haaretz Spy Scandal

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
16 April '10

Over the past two weeks Israel has been rocked by a major espionage scandal in which the Haaretz newspaper plays a central role. To understand the significance of the scandal, it is worthwhile to preface a discussion of it with a look at a smaller story Haaretz developed this week.

On Sunday, Haaretz's Amira Hass reported that in January, the IDF published a new military order that paves the way for the mass expulsion of illegal aliens from Judea and Samaria. The story sported the disturbing headline, "IDF order will enable mass deportation from West Bank."

In a follow-up on Monday, Hass reported that 10 self-described human rights organizations (all funded by the New Israel Fund) sent a joint letter to Defense Minister Ehud Barak asking him to rescind the order. She noted, too, that, "the international media also has taken great interest in the story."

And indeed, on Wednesday, a Google news search for "IDF West Bank deportation order" drew nearly 20,000 results.

Also on Monday, Haaretz published an editorial based on Hass's stories. Titled, "IDF bid to expel West Bank Palestinians is a step too far," the editorial asserted, "Implementing this new military order is not only likely to spark a new conflagration in the territories, it is liable to give the world clear-cut proof that Israel's aim is a mass deportation of Palestinians from the West Bank."

That is, Israel is fomenting a war and Israel deserves to lose that war because it is the villain.

On Wednesday, Haaretz reported that Jordan had joined it in condemning Israel.

That's quite an accomplishment for an Israeli newspaper with a negligible share of the domestic market.

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Awakening the Left

The lifting of the gag order on the Anat Kamm affair should prompt some serious introspection on that side of the political spectrum.


Michael Freund
Fundamentally Freund/JPost
15 April '10

The Anat Kamm affair has sent shock waves throughout the military and political establishments. Allegations that the young soldier stole reams of sensitive IDF documents and passed them to Haaretz reporter Uri Blau raise serious questions about basic security procedures and information controls in the army. Sweeping changes will need to be implemented to ensure that such an outflow of documents does not recur, and one assumes that the military brass has already taken steps to plug the leaks.

But of all the secrets that Kamm may have revealed, few are likely to be as explosive as the real bombshell she has unwittingly uncovered. Kamm has cast a spotlight on a critical question that does not get nearly as much attention as it deserves: Why does the Israeli Left seem to produce so much treachery against the state?

Indeed, the sad fact is that if the charges against Kamm are true, she is but the latest in a long line of ideologically-driven left-wingers who have betrayed the country.

Remember Mordechai Vanunu, the former nuclear technician who disclosed details of Israel’s atomic-energy program to The Times of London in October 1986?

Or how about Marcus Klingberg, one of the country’s top military scientists, who passed data to the Soviets out of ideological conviction before his arrest in 1983? And then there is Tali Fahima, who was convicted in 2005 for her contact with Zakaria Zubeidi, a Palestinian terrorist from Jenin who headed the local branch of Fatah’s Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades.

There are plenty of other such examples, which only leads one to wonder why some on the Left seem to have no compunction about committing duplicitous acts which harm the state.

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The Kam Case: Freedom of Expression or Freedom of Baloney?

by Uri Heitner, Yisrael HaYom


Yitz
Shilo Musings
13 April '10

The following is my translation of an editorial which appears in today’s Yisrael HaYom newspaper in Hebrew.

Immediately upon exposure of the Kam affair, it was clear that for certain groups in Israeli society, a new hero was born. I knew that Kam would be portrayed as a heroine: a knight of freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom for the struggle against the ‘corrupt occupation’ and so forth.

Indeed, since publication of the affair, we’ve read dozens of articles about an important journalist who sits in detention because she revealed the war crimes of Israel. The second journalist involved, Uri Blau, has informed us, without the least bit of modesty, that he did not struggle at all on his own behalf, rather but on behalf of Israel.

Articles of support maintain that the great sin of Kam amounts to the fact that she has a world-view that led her to reveal illegal acts of Israel. Or, alternatively, some argue that she just did her duty of conscience, and that the problematic factor here is the IDF, whose injustices she has exposed.

Well, even if we are a ‘baloney-ridden’ State, such a concentration of nonsense has not been seen here in a long time. Then there is nothing further from the issue of freedom of expression and freedom of the press than this case.

The "journalist" that was arrested, is rather an Internet website gossip columnist. There is no connection at all between her vocation and her arrest.

After all, she was not arrested for her work as a ‘journalist’, but for what she did as a soldier. As a soldier, she stole classified documents, kept them, and passed some on. This is the truth under the false code of "free press".

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Israel’s Lefty Rag Haaretz Defends Treason and Espionage

P. David Hornik
Pajamasmedia.com
13 April '10

The partial lifting of the gag order on the Anat Kam espionage affair, which had already been exposed to the world media in March by Judith Miller, is stirring up a storm in Israel. The charge sheet accuses Kam of “divulging secret information with the intent to harm the security of the state,” which falls under “serious espionage” and carries a maximum life term. Haaretz, Israel’s left-wing daily, is at the center of the storm — and tying itself in knots to defend Kam, its journalist Uri Blau, and itself.

First, to recap: Kam, born in Jerusalem in 1987 and a gifted student, served as an office clerk under the then head of Central Command, Yair Naveh, from 2005 to 2007. She’s charged with illicitly copying about 2000 computer documents — 700 of them classified secret or top secret — and taking them with her when she left the army. The charge sheet says the documents contained, among other things, “plans of military operations, summaries of discussions within the IDF, deployment and order of battle … of IDF forces … , IDF situation estimates, IDF targets, and so on.” Security sources say they could have cost soldiers’ lives and posed a grave danger.

In 2008 Kam, then a student at Tel Aviv University and a journalist for the Walla news site, delivered a large amount of the documents to Blau. He, in turn, published in Haaretz some stories based on them that were cleared with the military censor. The stories involved assassinations of terrorists in the West Bank who, allegedly, could have been arrested; the Israeli Supreme Court had ruled that in such cases, the terrorist has to be arrested rather than killed. (Meanwhile, on Sunday the IDF spokesperson said Blau’s claims in these articles were “upsetting and distorted.”)

When sources in the defense establishment saw the stories, they worried about where they could have come from. The Israel Security Agency, better known as Shin Bet, eventually worked out a deal with Blau where he returned his documents and was promised they wouldn’t be used to incriminate him or his sources. A few months later, in December 2009, the Shin Bet identified Kam as the source of the documents — but the problem was that she admitted to giving Blau far more documents than he had turned over.

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The Most Dangerous Woman in Israel*

Fresnozionism.org
08 April '10
Posted before Shabbat

A female soldier takes documents allegedly showing that the IDF violates supreme court decisions on procedures for targeted assassinations, gives them to a reporter who writes a shocking story; the Shabak [General Security Service] places her under house arrest and slaps a gag order on the press.

A shocker: Interference in the public’s right to know, the army using its power to hide despicable violations of the law, the persecution of a honest whistle-blower. A perfect subject for a true-to-life Hollywood treatment: courageous, attractive young girl risks her freedom and perhaps her life to follow her conscience, the dashing reporter, too, is in danger — but they do the right thing anyway, and fall in love (this didn’t happen in real life as far as I know but is a must for a successful movie), tragically, ultimately to be crushed by the massive power of the military and secret police.

The world media and the left-wing Israeli media concentrated on her ’secret arrest’ and the ’suppression of free press’ angle.

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A Message to Anat Kam, from Israel's Soldiers

Paula R. Stern
A Soldier's Mother
08 April '10

Anat Kam is a journalist. Her interest is in telling a story and selling copy. The more she sells, the more her editors value her.

Anat Kam is a 23-year-old Israeli woman who betrayed the position she was given during her army service. She served as the assistant to the bureau chief of OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh between 2005 and 2007. During that time, she copied or stole some 2,000 classified documents that, according to the Jerusalem Post, "contained top secret information concerning General Staff orders, personnel numbers in the Central Command, intelligence information, information on the IDF doctrine and data pertaining to central sensitive military exercises, weaponry and military platforms. The files also contained details on what the Central Command does in the event of a major escalation – how it deploys forces to the West Bank and where it stations them there. (http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=172658)

What she did with the documents is even worse. She gave them to Haaretz reporter Uri Blau, who is now hiding out in London, refusing to return other documents he is suspected of holding. This in itself is a crime - holding stolen, property...no?

What is interesting to me is the glorification of this woman, this thief who ran to the media after betraying the trust she was given. Perhaps even more interesting is how quickly her lawyers and others want to claim that accusing Anat Kam of treason is a betrayal of all Israel's media and that she is honorable...no, she is not.

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Treason and Treachery by Israel's Leftists

Walla Gossip Reporter Anat Kamm
Soldier/Spy/Traitor

Jameel
The Muqata
08 April '10

Today, an Israeli court ordered that the media blackout be partially lifted on the highly secretive case we reported on the other day.

Some of the newly released details are rather sordid and reveal the mindset of some of Israel's ideological leftists -- Anat Kamm, a soldier spy who illegally stole and copied to CD highly classified documents -- over 2000 of them, while serving as a soldier in the IDF's Central Command.

After leaving the IDF, Kamm became a gossip columnist for the Walla news/gossip site and passed the documents to a leftwing, agenda-driven reporter with Haaretz, Uri Blau.

Using these stolen, classified documents, Blau wrote an article in Dec. 2008 which discussed the killing of Palestinian terrorists by the IDF. Blau alleged that the army had held discussions which revealed that the IDF ignored High Court rulings in regards to the targeted killings. Blau claimed the killings were carried out following orders issued by the IDF, even in cases in which the wanted terror suspects could have been arrested.

In September 2009, Blau, via his attorney, handed the Shin Bet 50 of the stolen documents he had received from Kamm. Yet the IDF and Shin Bet's investigation revealed that Kamm had copied and later transferred more than 2,000 documents to the Haaretz reporter -- and Blau had lied to the Shin Bet when he said the 50 files was "all he had."

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