Anat Kamm

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Anat Kamm

Anat Kamm [1] or Anat Kam, (Hebrew: ענת קם‎, born 1987) is an Israeli journalist.

In December 2009, Kamm was put under house arrest by the Shin Bet for allegedly leaking classified Israel Defense Forces (IDF) documents to a reporter while she was a soldier. Information from the leak suggested that the military had defied a court ruling against assassinating wanted militants in the West Bank, who could potentially be arrested safely.[2][3][4][5][6][7] Facts surrounding the case were subjected to widely criticized and publicized gag order. The Shin Bet alleged that Kamm copied over 2,000 classified documents during her military service at the IDF and leaked some of them to the Haaretz journalist Uri Blau.[8][9][10][11][12] 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".[13] 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".[14]

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[edit] Early life

Anat Kamm at the Eilat Journalism Conference, December 2008

Kamm was born in 1987 in Jerusalem and in her youth studied at the Hebrew University Secondary School. In her youth, she also began writing for journalism in a local newspaper called "Jerusalem" (which is now called "Yediot Jerusalem"), while she also wrote for the youth channel of the Israeli website Walla!.

In 2005, Kamm started her military service in the Israeli Defence Forces. In July 2005, she was assigned to work as a clerk in the office of the commander of the Israeli Central Command. In January 2006, she began her training at an officer's course but was eliminated eventually and afterwords was assigned to work as an assistant in the office of the commander of Israeli Central Command, Major General Yair Naveh.

After she finished her military service, she began to study for a Bachelor’s degree in History and Philosophy at the Tel Aviv University. In August 2007, she began working as a reporter for Walla!, an internet news portal owned, until March 2010, by Bezeq and Haaretz group. She was employed there until March 10, 2010 when she announced a leave of absence.

[edit] Classified documents theft affair

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

“This is an arrest operation,” the document said, attributing the quote to Naveh. “But in case [the soldiers] identify one of the senior leaders of the Islamic Jihad, Walid Obeid, Ziad Malaisha, Adham Yunis, they have permission to open fire in accordance with their appraisal of the situation during the operation.”[17]

The Chief of General Staff, Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi was angered by the leak of highly classified documents, and ordered an investigation about its source[18].

Following a petition for investigation by two Israeli leading human rights attorneys[19], the Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz responded in a letter challenging the allegations made by Blau:

Regarding the killing of Malaisha, Mazuz wrote, “The IDF operation met all the conditions laid down in the Bagatz ruling regarding ‘targeted assassinations.’ The attack took place after the possibility of arresting the fugitives was ruled out as being impossible to achieve under the circumstances and after it was made clear to the soldiers that arrest was the first preference.
Mazuz added that “the legal aspects of the operation were examined at each one of the planning stages and there is no basis to the charge that the IDF ‘ignored’ the High Court’s instructions regarding targeted assassination operations. On the contrary, the operational officers in the general staff, who had close legal consultation, were aware of the High Court instructions and stressed and carried them out in all stages of the planning and the approval of the operation.”[20][21]

According to documents released by The Tel Aviv District Court, Kamm said during her interrogation: "There were some aspects of the IDF's operational procedures in the West Bank that I felt should be public knowledge... When I was burning the CDs I kept thinking that history tends to forgive people who expose war crimes."[22] The Israeli police secured a gag order prohibiting Israeli media from reporting on Kamm's arrest and the reasons for it. The charges against Kamm do not relate to her journalistic activities as a media correspondent, but rather to being a journalistic source.[23]

Despite the fact that numerous foreign media outlets, as well as local blogs, had reported on the case and her identity, there was a gag order within the mainstream media. No printed 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 came in the Tikun Olam blog, which collaborated with Israeli bloggers and journalists to bring the story into the public consciousness.[24]

After pressure from articles in the foreign media and from the Israeli press itself which resented its muzzling, the gag order was removed on April 8 and an indictment published which accused Kamm of espionage and damaging the security of the state. She faces a possible penalty of life in prison. Reaction among some in the public has been especially harsh with some calling her a spy and traitor. Kamm's trial is scheduled to begin in May 2010 unless her attorneys arrive at a plea bargain with the prosecution.

Though the prosecution originally sought the gag order, in this case Kamm 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 asked the Hebrew Wikipedia to remove the article about her (although a deletion vote was opened before her request was made)[25], 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.[26] 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."[27]

[edit] References

  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ Israeli woman detained on military leak accusation
  3. ^ Israel gags news of soldier turned journalist under arrest
  4. ^ Israeli leak suspect held in secret house arrest
  5. ^ Journalist on the run from Israel is hiding in Britain
  6. ^ Israeli journalist Anat Kamm under secret house arrest since December
  7. ^ Israel arrests soldier Anat Kamm over targeted-killings ‘leak’
  8. ^ (Hebrew) http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART2/090/636.html#after_maavaron
  9. ^ (Hebrew) http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3871970,00.html
  10. ^ (Hebrew) http://news.walla.co.il/?w=//1660912
  11. ^ (Hebrew) http://www.mako.co.il/news-military/security/Article-100cb08f4dcd721004.htm
  12. ^ http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=172699
  13. ^ http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3871981,00.html
  14. ^ http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3871981,00.html
  15. ^ http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1041160.html
  16. ^ http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1041160.html
  17. ^ http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=172983
  18. ^ Dan Izenberg, Stamp of approval from attorney-general, The Jerusalem Post, April 13, 2010
  19. ^ http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=172983
  20. ^ http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=172983
  21. ^ http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gKA_Ee9dHFKBbMLrCqkfNDktyxlAD9F1L3C00
  22. ^ http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3874912,00.html
  23. ^ http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gKA_Ee9dHFKBbMLrCqkfNDktyxlAD9EUVCN82
  24. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07israel.html
  25. ^ 1. Discussion in Hebrew about Kamm's request;2. The deletion vote in Hebrew - Note that two of the voters cited Kamm's request as a reason to delete the article.
  26. ^ See, for example: Ilene R. Prusher, Press freedom vs. state security: Israel's Anat Kamm faces jail for leaking army files, The Christian Science Monitor, April 8, 2010; Daniella Peled, The real moral of the Anat Kamm story, The Guardian, April 8, 2010
  27. ^ http://www.rsf.org/Israeli-media-forbidden-to-report.html

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anat_Kamm"