WAWA/WeAreWideAwake is my Public Service to America as a muckracker who has journeyed seven times to Israel Palestine since June 2005.
WAWA is dedicated to confronting media and governments that shield the whole
truth.
We who Are Wide
Awake are compelled by the "fierce urgency of Now" [Rev MLK, Jr.] to raise
awareness and promote the human dialogue about many of the crucial issues of our
day: the state of our Union and in protection of democracy, what life is like
under military occupation in Palestine, the Christian EXODUS from the Holy Land,
and spirituality-from a Theologically Liberated Christian Anarchist
POV.
"Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all...and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave...a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils." George Washington's Farewell Address - 1796
"My aim is to agitate & disturb people. I'm not selling bread, I'm selling yeast." Unamuno
"Imagine All the People Sharing All the World." John Lennon
"If enough Christians followed the gospel, they could bring any state to its knees." Father Philip Francis Berrigan
"You can stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won't back down." Tom Petty
"If I can't dance, it's not my revolution." Emma Goldman
"We have yet to begin to IMAGINE the power and potential of the Internet." Charlie Rose, 2005
Only in Solidarity do "We have it in our power to begin the world again" Tom Paine
"Never doubt that a few, thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead
"You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free." John 8:32
DO SOMETHING!
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We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that, among these, are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; and, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. -July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence
April 3, 2010: What the Shin Bet and Israeli Court Cannot GagUPDATED: April 10, 2010 @ end: from Haaretz
"The Shin Bet, you know, like the FBI and the
Mossad, is
like your CIA,"-Mordechai Vanunu explained to me in June
2005 during my first of seven trips to east Jerusalem. That was back
when I was only an American
citizen writing a book based on
the memories of a 1948 refugee from the Galilee, a Palestinian Muslim who became an American citizen. Three weeks after that
first trip to Israel Palestine, I became a citizen journalist because
somebody
had to report what the media was ignoring.
On March 27, 2010, the U.S.
based, "Global News Service of the Jewish people" the JTA, Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that Anat Kam, a 23 year
old journalist has been held under secret house arrest by Israel since last
December based on allegations that during her military service she
leaked classified documents suggesting the Israeli Forces violated laws dealing
with targeted killings.
Kam was arrested in
December 2009 and charged under Israel’s espionage and treason laws while she
was working as a reporter for the Israeli site Walla, which had been partially
owned by Haaretz until the week prior. The
charges stem from when Kam served in the Israeli army, and it is alleged she
photocopied sensitive documents.
“Bloggers speculated that the documents she allegedly photocopied
served as the basis for a November 2008article Haaretz story suggesting
alleged army violations. Kam has denied the charges and her arrest has been
under a gag order in Israel.
“The
military censor, which prevents publication of information that could harm
Israel’s national security, approved the Haaretz story for publication. By contrast, Israeli courts have gagged not only
the details of Kam’s arrest, but news of the arrest itself.” [1]
On April 1, 2010, The
New York Times followed up with the JTA/Jewish Telegraphic Agency,
because the JTA, "is not subject to the
gag order...According to people familiar with the case, who spoke on condition
of anonymity because of the gag order, Kam is accused of copying classified
documents while she was a soldier and leaking them to the Haaretz daily.
The newspaper published a story that accused the military of defying an Israeli
Supreme Court ruling against killing wanted Palestinian militants who
could have been captured alive. A November 2008 Haaretz story suggested
the military had unilaterally loosened its rules of engagement and marked
militants for assassination…
“Despite the gag order, Israeli media appear to be
well-acquainted with the case. Yediot Ahronot, another Israeli daily,
hinted toward the brewing saga for the first time Thursday with a story
headlined ‘What does the Shin Bet not want you to know?’ and directing readers
to the JTA's article on the Internet. The Shin Bet, Israel's internal
security agency, declined to comment…
“Israeli courts are typically wary of allowing publication
of material deemed sensitive to national security. While the mainstream media
formally comply with the rulings, they often get around restrictions by citing
foreign reports, and material often finds its way to the blogosphere.
“The secrecy surrounding Kam's detention is reminiscent of
the arrest of Mordechai Vanunu [who] was kidnapped by Israeli intelligence
agents in Rome and taken back to Israel to stand trial behind closed doors…Some
details of the Vanunu affair are still under wraps domestically.” [2]
Haaretz's has filed a request to lift the gag order
and court is scheduled for April 12, 2010 to hear the plea regarding the Kam
affair.
Vanunu was released
from 18 years in a tomb sized windowless cell on April 21, 2004 and as of this
writing he is still waiting for the right to leave the state.
A total of 1,200
pages of transcript of Vanunu’s 1986 closed door trial have been released.
Defense witness and the Sunday Times journalist who broke Vanunu’s news
in 1986, that Israel was a major nuclear power, Peter Hounam, said, "It is
clear that, as far as Vanunu's accusers are concerned, the trial is not only
about whether this decision to reveal the secrets of Israel's atom bomb
amounted to treason and espionage, it is also about whether his decision to
become a Christian was at the root of his alleged treachery".
Within minutes of
emerging from his 18 years in jail-most all in solitary-Vanunu announced,
"I am not harming Israel. I am not interested in Israel. I want to tell
you something very important. I suffered here 18 years because I am a
Christian, because I was baptised into Christianity. If I was a Jew I wouldn't
have all this suffering here in isolation for 18 years. Only because I was a
Christian man."
Vanunu told me, "All the secrets
I had were published
in 1989 in an important book, by [Nuclear Physicist] Frank Barnaby,
The
Invisible Bomb: Nuclear Arms Race in the Middle East."
At Vanunu's closed door trial, Barnaby
testified, "I found the fact that Vanunu was
able to smuggle a
camera and films into and out of Dimona and photograph highly sensitive
areas
in the establishment astonishing. I very vigorously cross-examined Vanunu,
relentlessly asking the same questions in a number of different ways and
at
different times...I found Vanunu very
straightforward about his motives for
violating Israel's secrecy laws he explained to me that he believed that
both
the Israeli and the world public had the right to know about the
information he
passed on. He seemed to me to be acting ideologically.
"Israel's political leaders have, he said, consistently lied about
Israel's nuclear-weapons programme and he found this unacceptable in a
democracy. The knowledge that Vanunu had about
Isreal's nuclear weapons, about
the operations at Dimona, and about security at Dimona could not be of
any use
to anyone today. He left Dimona in October 1985 and the design of
today's
Israeli nuclear weapons will have been considerably changed since
then…Modern
nuclear weapons bear little relationship to those of the mid-1980."[4]
In a 2003, BBC
documentary Peter Hounam noted, “Vanunu told the world that Israel had
developed between one hundred and two hundred atomic bombs and had gone on to
develop neutron bombs and thermonuclear weapons. Enough to destroy the entire
Middle East and nobody has done anything about it since.”
On January 25, 2006,
after nearly two years of speaking with hundreds, perhaps thousands of
foreigners since his release from prison, Vanunu was convicted by the Jerusalem
Magistrates Court of 15 violations of a military order that had prohibited him
from talking to non-Israelis.
Vanunu was also
charged with attempting to "leave the state" while taking a cab from
Jerusalem to Bethlehem to attend Christmas Eve mass at the Church of the
Nativity in 2004. He has no passport or visa and was only carrying a Santa hat.
The original indictment
included 22 different violations; Vanunu was charged with 19 and acquitted of
four. He was acquitted of speaking to foreign nationals on the internet and via
video and voice chats.
On July 2, 2007,
Israel sentenced Vanunu to six more months in jail for speaking to foreign
media in 2004.
On September 23,
2008, the Jerusalem District Court reduced Vanunu’s sentence to three months,
"In light of (Vanunu’s) ailing health and the absence of claims that his
actions put the country’s security in jeopardy."
On June 14, 2009,
while I was in east Jerusalem, Vanunu and he told me, “The Central Commander of
the General Army testified in court that it is OK if I speak in public as long
as I do not talk about nuclear weapons.”
On July 6, 2009,
Israeli Supreme Court President Dorit Beinish continued to deny Vanunu the
right to leave the state claiming that, "case is still generating great
interest, like any other security-related case. The media's attention he gets
is proof of that."
I phoned Vanunu after
reading that bad news and he said, "You have freedom of speech and freedom
of movement. Do what you want. But I am not publishing anything. Everything is
already on the Internet."
The very next day,
July 7, 2009, my Facebook account was deactivated while I was posting my video
interviews with Vanunu and posing the question, “Have you eyes to see and ears
to hear Vanunu on video in 2005, 2006, 2008?’
Facebook never
replied to my multiple email inquiries asking “why was I
deactivated/deleted/censored while posting to a Cause and Group I created and
was the only Administrator of?”
On December 14, 2009
Vanunu returned to the Israeli Supreme Court and I phoned him and learned he
expected their decision regarding the three month sentence "in a few weeks"
and he was confident he will be freed as "they have no case against
me."
On December 21, 2009, Uzi Eilam, a former head of Israel's Atomic
Energy Commission stated Vanunu "served the regime because his revelations
helped Tel Aviv intimidate others...I've always believed he should be let go. I
don't think he has significant knowledge to reveal (about Dimona) now."
[3]
On December 29,
2009, Israel arrested Vanunu again. His attorney Avigdor Feldman said,
"Vanunu was arrested (for) a relationship between a man and a woman, with
a Norwegian citizen, He is not being accused of giving any secrets."
Vanunu was placed
under house arrest for three days and it will be six years on April 21, 2010
that Vanunu has waited for the right to leave the state and begin a life.
Israel's statehood
was contingent upon upholding the UN UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Article 19:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion
and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without
interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any
media and regardless of frontiers.
Article 13: Everyone
has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each
state.Everyone has
the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his
country.
Vanunu has waited
twenty-four years for governments and media to follow up on his 1985 photos of the Dimona
and 1986 testimony regarding Israel's development of up to two hundred atomic
bombs and the fact that Israel was already in process of developing neutron
bombs and thermonuclear weapons.
Much more than
enough to destroy the entire world and nobody has done anything about it since.
London - An Israeli journalist is in hiding in Britain, The
Independent can reveal, over fears that he may face charges in the
Jewish state in connection with his investigation into the killing of a
Palestinian in the West Bank.
Uri Blau, a reporter at Israel's liberal newspaper, Haaretz, left
town three months ago for Asia and is now in London. Haaretz is
understood to be negotiating the terms of his return to Israel with
prosecutors, according to an Israeli source, who declined to be
identified, because of the sensitivity of the situation.
The news of Mr Blau's extended absence comes just days after it
emerged that another Israeli journalist, Anat Kam, has been held under
house arrest for the last three months on charges that she leaked
classified documents to the press while completing her military service.
Although no media outlet or journalist has been specifically
named as the recipient of the classified information, there is
speculation on Israeli blogs that Ms Kam gave documents to Mr Blau that
formed the basis of a story he wrote in November 2008.
In his article for Haaretz, Mr Blau reported that one of two
Islamic Jihad militants killed in Jenin in June 2007 had been targeted
for assassination in apparent violation of a ruling issued six months
earlier by Israel's supreme court. While not outlawing assassinations in
the West Bank altogether, the ruling heavily restricted the
circumstances in which they were permissible, effectively saying that
they should not take place if arrest was possible.
In an unusual move, Israel has placed a gagging order on national
media, preventing them from reporting any aspect of the Kam case.
Israel's Channel Ten and Haaretz are expected to challenge this order on
12 April.
According to the court order, Ms Kam, 23, is being held on
"espionage" charges. It alleges that she passed classified documents to a
male journalist while working as a clerk in the Israel Defence Forces
Central Command during her military service.
She was arrested more than a year after Mr Blau's report, which
was cleared by military censors at the time of publication, when she was
working for the news service Walla, until recently owned by Haaretz.
Ms Kam denies all the charges. Her trial has reportedly been set
for 14 April and she could face a lengthy prison sentence if convicted.
Mr Blau did not respond to requests for comment; his friends and
colleagues refused to discuss the case in detail.
Dov Alfon, Haaretz's editor-in-chief, said in an emailed
statement: "Haaretz has a 90-year-long tradition of protecting its
reporters from government pressures, and Uri Blau is getting all the
help we can provide him with."
The move to gag Israel-based media has sparked fevered debate on
Jewish blogs, which have freely reported the story. Bloggers have railed
against the blackout, saying it represents a critical challenge to the
freedom of the press.
"I do not believe that a citizen can be arrested and tried for
suspected security offences right under our noses without anyone knowing
anything about it," wrote former Haaretz editor Hanoch Marmari in an
eloquent cri de coeur on the Seventh Eye website.
"Trials do not take place here in darkened dungeons, nor do we
have show trials behind glass or chicken wire. I have no doubt that such
a strange, terrible and baseless scenario cannot take place in such a
sophisticated democracy as our own."
RAMALLAH, Apr 2 (IPS) - An Israeli journalist remains under house arrest
and another lives abroad, after they broke news on Israeli undercover
units carrying out assassinations or "targeted killings" of
non-combatant Palestinian political opponents.
Anat
Kam, 23, who used to work for the Israeli news site ‘Walla’, was
arrested last December for allegedly copying secret Israeli Defence
Force (IDF) documents during her compulsory military service.
These documents outlined how Israeli assassination squads would plan the
killing of Palestinian political leaders and fighters months beforehand
and then pass their deaths off as "mishaps" during "failed" attempts to
arrest them.
Uri Blau, a reporter from the daily ‘Haaretz’, then wrote a piece on the
copied documents and is refusing to return to Israel from Britain
fearing that Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, will
arrest him if he does.
Due to a military gag order the news has remained suppressed even as
Israeli journalists fight the suppression order in court.
The news was broken several days ago by Donald McIntyre from Britain’s
‘Independent’.
The controversy has highlighted Israel’s extra-judicial killings which
violate international law and have caused death and injury to thousands
of Palestinian civilian bystanders despite the country having no death
penalty.
Israel’s judiciary has approved "targeted killings" but only of
militants who were allegedly involved in carrying out or planning armed
attacks against Israeli soldiers or civilians both within the
Palestinian occupied territories and in Israel proper.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) in Gaza says that during
the period September 2000 to March 2008, 500 Palestinians suspected of
being involved in military resistance to the Israeli occupation were
executed.
However, the "collateral damage" during the assassinations included
another 228 civilian bystanders - 77 of them children. Eleven
Palestinians have been assassinated in the last two years.
"Israel is using disproportionate force. Civilians are paying the price.
In the overwhelming majority of cases the targeted individuals could
have been arrested and brought to trial without being killed. Many of
them have been killed in cold blood," Jaber Wishah from PCHR told IPS.
"International law’s right to life says that state authorities are
obliged to follow due process when they are in a position to arrest
individuals," says Michael Kerney from the Ramallah-based rights
organisation Al Haq which researched and documented many of the
killings.
"Everybody is entitled to a fair trial and no state can dismiss this,"
Kerney told IPS.
Some of those targeted have included individuals who were "pardoned" by
the Israelis after having agreed to give up armed resistance to the
occupation.
Last December three pardoned members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a
military offshoot of the Palestinian Authority (PA)-affiliated Fatah
movement, were shot dead in Nablus in the northern West Bank following
the death of an Israeli settler.
According to their families and the subsequent investigations of human
rights organisations they had already surrendered and were unarmed
despite Israeli claims that they had refused to surrender.
"By failing to produce any evidence linking the targeted individuals to
attacks allegedly committed by members of the Palestinian resistance, as
well as failing to utilise peaceful means in order to arrest and detain
suspects, the soldiers assumed the role of both judge and executioner,"
reported Al Haq.
Furthermore, unarmed Palestinians, who have not been involved either
politically or militarily in resisting the occupation, also continue to
die in what some have called deliberate premeditated murder.
Several weeks ago four Palestinian teenagers were shot dead amidst
dubious circumstances in two separate incidents in the villages of
Awarta and Iraq Burin near Nablus.
According to medical reports they were shot at close range with live
ammunition after clashes between Palestinian youngsters and Israeli
soldiers had broken out.
However, the individuals concerned had not been involved in the clashes
according to several investigations carried out by Al Haq, PCHR and
Israeli rights group B’tselem.
One was shot in the back and another had a bullet lodged in the back of
his skull despite Israeli soldiers saying they had only used non-lethal
ammunition.
The Israeli military police declared they would investigate the
incidents following contradictory testimony given by the soldiers
involved.
However, when IPS visited one of the sites a week later with family
members, approximately 20 spent cartridge cases, bloodied gloves, a
saline solution kit and other bits of evidence lay on the ground
undisturbed.
None of this is new. Israel has a history of assassinating political
opponents predating its official establishment.
In 1944, the Israeli terrorist group, the Stern gang, assassinated
Britain’s Lord Moyne, the military governor of Egypt, accusing him of
interfering with Jewish migration to Palestine.
In 1948, Count Folke Bernadotte - a Swedish diplomat who had secured the
release of 15,000 inmates from Nazi concentration camps while he was
vice-president of the Swedish Red Cross – was also murdered by the Stern
gang.
Stern gang members believed Bernadotte, as the U.N.’s Palestine
mediator, to be too sympathetic to the Arabs. Yitzhak Shamir, later to
become an Israeli prime minister, was one of the Stern gang’s leaders.
"Since the outbreak of the second Intifada, Israel has increasingly
avoided accountability for the serious violations of the human rights of
residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for which it is
responsible," says B’tselem.
"This avoidance is seen, in part, in its policy not to open criminal
investigations in cases of killing or wounding of Palestinians who were
not taking part in the hostilities, except in exceptional cases, and in
its enactment of legislation denying, almost completely, the right of
Palestinians who were harmed as a result of illegal acts by Israeli
security forces to sue for compensation for the damages they suffered."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50903
Journalist accused of
leaking secret IDF documents
Tel Aviv
District Court clears for publication affair reported by foreign press
over past few weeks: Former Walla website reporter Anat Kam, 23, placed
under house arrest after allegedly stealing confidential material from
Central Command chief's office during her military service, transferring
it to Haaretz reporter
Ynet
reporters
The Tel Aviv
District Court has cleared for publication an affair reported by foreign
media across the world over the past few weeks: An Israeli journalist
is accused of serious offenses, including leaking secret information
without authorization in an attempt to compromise the State's security
and possession of classified information.
Nuclear spy Mordechai Vanunu was accused of similar offenses in
the past. The offenses are considered as serious espionage according to
Israeli law. The maximal punishment for such offenses is life
imprisonment.
The court cleared for publication on Thursday that Anat Kam, 23, who
worked as a reporter for the Walla news website, leaked secret documents
which she had stolen from the army, where she served in the office of
then-Central Command Chief Yair Naveh.
Kam's attorney Avigdor Feldman said Thursday that his client acted
out of moral concerns and not in an attempt to compromise state security
and for this reason forwarded the materials to a journalist and not to
hostile elements.
Nissim Duek, the public relations expert serving Kam said, "There is a
very big gap between the media talk and the facts which will be
revealed in court. The fact is that the court decided to place Kam under
house arrest, despite the State's motion to arrest, her and allowed her
to keep working as a reporter.
"Kam was exposed to documents together with hundreds of other junior
soldiers, how is that to be explained if those were indeed so
classified. How can one explain the fact that she was arrested over a
year after the article's publication? The security elements are trying
to paint her as an enemy of the state and she is not."
The affair began following a Haaretz report published by Uri
Blau in November 2008, which discussed assassinations of Palestinians by
the Israel Defense Forces. The article said that the army had held
discussions which revealed that the IDF ignored High Court rulings in
regards to the assassinations, and that the assassinations were carried
out following orders issued by the Northern Command, even in cases in
which the wanted terror suspects could have been arrested.
According to the article, the army's senior ranks, including the
chief of staff, approved hurting innocent people as part of targeted
assassinations.
The article, according to an indictment filed against Kam in January,
was based in part on the material she had provided.
Although the article was published in November 2008, Kam was only
arrested by the Shin Bet in December 2009 following an investigation
sanctioned by IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi and then-Attorney
General Menachem Mazuz. After being questioned she was placed under
house arrest.
According to the investigation, Kam burned the files onto a CD and
uploaded them onto her personal computer following her release from the
army.
The investigation further revealed that in 2008 Kam offered the
classified material to another journalist, but this did not result in
any published reports. She allegedly transferred all or some of the
material to Blau in September or October of 2008.
2-
The story that she's allegedly leaked to Ha'aretz correspondent Uri
Blau in 2008, implicating top military staff, including Lt. General Gabi
Ashkenazi, in defying Supreme court (2006) ruling restricting targeted
assassinations. The Ha'aretz story, in Hebrew, can be found at http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=1041551
3-
The story of Israel's obedient media, and the Internet role in bringing
it to the light. To read one version of how things went, see Gila
Svirsky's article below.
In reality, the internet response was more
complicated. We at JPN considered running a story published by Richard
Silverstein on his blog (Tikkun Olam)a few months back, but - like many
other news services - decided to avoid doing so because we were told
that Anat Kamm and her lawyer asked to keep the story under raps,
hoping it'll help her negotiate a deal with the Shin Bet (Israel's
secret service).
4- The story exploded on the scene in the last few
days, and as of today, the gag order was lifted (see below).
It's
the next day, and it's probably fair to say that in the meantime all
hell broke loose. Here are a number of additional links, most of them
provided by Rela Mazali.
This isn't just a war for my
freedom but for Israel's image
By Uri Blau
"When
you're warned 'they know much more than you think,' and are told that
your telephone line, e-mail and computer have been monitored for a long
time and still are, then someone up there doesn't really understand what
democracy is all about, and the importance of freedom of the press in
preserving it."
In Israel, reality hides
under a 'top secret' stamp
By Akiva Eldar
"The label
"highly classified" does not automatically turn a document into a
security concern, the leaking of which constitutes espionage or treason.
In most cases, the designation is intended simply to ensure that the
file's contents do not reach the public's view. … To manage an
occupation, a nation must raise obedient soldiers and officers [and, my
addition: the obedient public that keeps on producing these soldiers and
officers, Rela] - the kind who sit quietly while ideas are floated on
how to circumvent the rulings of the supposedly leftist High Court, how
to keep prying journalists at bay and how to deceive the meddlesome
state comptroller."
Legal Analysis / Key charge against Kam carries life sentence
By
Ze'ev Segal
"The stringent statutes [being applied to this case,
Rela] are essentially carbon copies of criminal laws enacted during the
pre-state British Mandate in 1936. While the current laws were adopted
for Israeli jurisprudence, this was done with minimal alterations. The
current statute does not explicitly recognize the defense claim - that
revealing classified information is permitted in cases where the data is
of vital public interest. …
Passing classified information to a
media entity is considered "espionage," despite the fact that this term
is only applied to cases where information is passed on to an enemy."
"there isn't a single military correspondent who doesn't commit
this crime of espionage on a daily basis. … We can assume that the
senior member of the defense establishment who wanted to use Section 113
against me did not really think that I was a spy, but intended to scare
me and to convince me that I had better not continue to publish
criticism of the body that he headed. … [Uri Blau] is being singled out
because the article he published in Haaretz, which is what first brought
the entire affair to light, was critical and exposed improper behavior
on the part of senior officials in the defense establishment."
Here is a partial
translation by "The Magnes Zionist":
1. It's not espionage. Anat
Kamm has been accused of spying, no less. But Shabak Chief Yuval Diskin
does not claim that the Uri Blau Haaretz articles damaged Israeli
security. (He can't, can he? After all, it passed military censorship)
So he can only refer to the "thousands of documents" that Kamm has
confessed to stealing, and which she passed to Uri Blau (according to
Diskin). And what is the argument? "Those documents are full of security
and operational secrets that would endanger the lives of soldiers were
they to fall into enemy hands." But they haven't fallen into enemy
hands, so this is not espionage, nor is there intent. They were leaked
to a journalist who has them in his possession (according to the
Shabak). So whatever Kamm did, it was not espionage.
2. The
Shabak's history of exaggerated accusations. Gurvitz points out that
Diskin in his briefing said that the media should not compare Kamm to
Tali Fahima. And why not? Because in several well-publicized cases, the
Shabak and the media initially painted the accused as endangering the
security of the state -- only to see that accusation wither away. Tali
Fahima was accused of being an enemy agent, and planning terrorists
attacks. When the trial began, the prosecution said (generously) that
they would not seek the death penalty. Pretty good move, since she ended
up getting a few years in jail. And let's not forget Sheikh Raad Saalah
who was arrested in a big public way for contacting foreign agents, and
ended up being convicted of some minor money crimes. In other words,
the tactic scare the accused to death, then get a plea bargain. Gurvitz
asks how credible is the charge that Blau has in his possession
documents that will damage IDF soldiers, and he is refusing to return
them? It seems more likely that he has potentially damaging documents
to the IDF brass.
3. Discrimination based on rank. Gurvitz
points out that other IDF brass have removed documents from bases, and
in one case, Elazar Stern, the head of the Education Corps leaked
classified documents to Yair Lapid, a columnist. Some of these people
were disciplined; Stern had to pay damages to the soldier whom he had
ratted on; but nobody has been brought up on charges of espionage. Many
other lower ranks of soldiers have "informed" against their superiors to
human rights organizations, and their military careers have ended as a
result (Gurvitz did that himself during the first intifada.) But none of
these were considered more than minor offenses.
Israel
pulls gag order on Kamm case April 8, 2010 WASHINGTON (JTA ) --
Israel's defense establishment agreed to lift a months-long gag order
over an Israeli journalist's secret house arrest.
Representatives
of the Israel Defense Forces, the Shin Bet internal security service
and the State Prosecutor's Office on Thursday asked Tel Aviv District
Court for a partial removal of the gag order that has been in place for
the last three-and-a-half months,.The request was granted.
The
gag order revolves around Anat Kamm, 23, a journalist who was arrested
last December and charged under Israel's espionage and treason for
allegedly photocopying and leaking sensitive documents during her time
in the IDF. The far-reaching gag order applies not only to the details
of Kamm's arrest but to news of the arrest itself. Israeli media only
have been able to refer to the incident as a “security-related affair.”
The
documents alleged to have been leaked by Kamm formed the basis for a
2008 Haaretz story implicating top military staff, including Lt. Gen.
Gabi Ashkenazi, the military chief of staff, in defying Supreme Court
rulings restricting targeted killings.
Though Israeli media was
banned from reporting the story, foreign media and blogs not under
Israeli jurisdiction have published details of the case. JTA reported
the story on March 27. Reportedly, the Supreme Court sent messages to
the State Prosecutor's Office and the presiding judge, Ze'ev Hammer,
hinting that situation was untenable.
“If the entire world knows
about it, issuing a gag order is baseless," said Press Council President
Dalia Dorner, a former Supreme Court justice. “Gag orders impinge on
the freedom of the press, and this is allowed if publication is highly
likely to cause grave damage to state security. But if the whole world
knows, this alone constitutes a reason to withdraw the injunction.”
Gila
Svirsky's account:
This story is a testament to the
Internet. And to Anat Kam, the whistleblower, who is widely regarded in
Israeli security circles as a traitor and will probably soon be charged
with treason.
Anat (I’ll use her first name, though I don’t know
her) is a 23-year old journalist who wrote for the popular Israeli
portal Walla. Some months ago, Anat did the unthinkable: she passed on
information that was decidedly newsworthy, but that the Shin Bet –
Israel’s security services – did not want outsiders to have. It was
a”hit list” – the names of Palestinians living in the West Bank who were
on the Shin Bet’s “wanted” list. And it was a copy of the Shin Bet
protocol stating that if these “wanted” figures are identified during
the course of a military action, permission is granted to carry out “an
interception”. Nice language for execution without trial. Reports are
that Anat photocopied this classified information while serving in the
IDF.
Anat allegedly passed on this classified information to Uri
Blau, a journalist, who published it months ago as a major scoop in
Ha’aretz. Now Ha’aretz has whisked Uri away to London to protect him
from the Israeli authorities, who would love to interrogate him about
his informant. Meanwhile, Anat has been under house arrest and held
incommunicado for at least three months.
This is a big story,
but until today no Israeli newspapers could publish it because a judge
issued a gag order at the Shin Bet’s request. But go ask Henry Miller
about banned books. Thanks to the ban and Israel’s inability to control
cyberspace, the story has taken on vastly greater proportions. Every
news outlet in Israel – newspapers, radio, TV, news portals – has
front-paged the story now that the gag order was lifted. It would never
have received such widespread attention had the Israeli authorities not
tried to hide it in the first place. And had the Internet not cloned the
story through every webpage eager to expose state secrets.
This
is not the first time the Israeli authorities have arrested suspects
and held them incommunicado for extended periods. It happens to
Palestinians all the time. The best known case of an Israeli is
Mordechai Vanunu, who blew the whistle on Israel’s nuclear warfare
capabilities 24 years ago and was tried behind closed doors. More
recently, Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Yaakov, an Israeli citizen now living in
the U.S., was arrested on a visit to Israel in 2002, and a gag order
placed on news of his month-long detention and interrogation. Yaakov, a
key scientist in the development of Israel’s nuclear weapons program,
was suspected of divulging some of Israel’s secrets, but eventually
released without charge.
So Israel has managed to draw
widespread international attention to a story it wanted to hush up. But
why conceal the fact that the Shin Bet has a “hit list” and gives
license to its commando units to carry out field executions? After all,
doesn’t the U.S. do the same thing in its own so-called war against
terror?
Israel, in my view, wanted to hide this information to
avoid the legal and diplomatic ramifications of disclosures that its
soldiers were once again breaking international law. Israel has been
playing defense ever since the Gaza Campaign, trying to keep its senior
politicians and officers out of European courts on charges of war
crimes. Most recently (December 2009), opposition leader Zipi Livni
cancelled a trip to London out of fear she would be arrested, thanks to
universal jurisdiction of human rights violations. Similar arrest orders
were deflected by other senior Israelis (Barak, Mofaz, and Almog).
Publicity about a hit list and hit squads could only add fuel to the
growing criticism of Israel and the fear among its leaders of being
arrested on a visit to Europe. Not to mention the fact that Israel’s own
Supreme Court outlawed such unprovoked assassinations just months ago.
But really, isn’t Israel still the “only democracy in the Middle
East”? Concealing someone’s arrest and the charges against her are
clearly pages from the annals of dark regimes. And the broader context
is the growing McCarthyite culture inside Israel – the silencing of its
critics, the squirreling away of its whistleblowers. We see this in the
hate campaign against Israeli human rights organizations, which has now
reached a new peak – a bill before the Knesset that would severely
hamper these organizations from receiving funds from foreign states, one
of their only sources of support as the Israeli government is not about
to fund human rights activity.
What’s not to love about
secrecy, lies, and human rights violations? Praise the whistleblowers
and all those who turned on the Internet lights, making it impossible
for the authorities to turn them off again.
Gila Svirsky Jerusalem
/ Nahariya
Jewish
Peace News editors: Joel Beinin Racheli Gai Rela Mazali Sarah
Anne Minkin Judith Norman Lincoln Z. Shlensky Rebecca
Vilkomerson Alistair Welchman
Jewish
Peace News sends its news clippings only to subscribers. To subscribe,
unsubscribe, or manage your subscription, go to http://www.jewishpeacenews.net
Harrass the IDF, not
alleged whistleblower Anat Kam
By Gideon Levy
Haaretz
Are Israelis entitled to know that the IDF's highest
ranking officers gave advanced written permission to fire at innocent
people during "targeted assassinations?" Isn't the media's supreme duty,
not only its right, to report this?
Are Israel's citizens entitled to know that IDF commanders approved
killing people even when it was possible to apprehend them, in blatant
violation of the High Court's ruling?
Aren't we entitled to know about a secret Defense Ministry report
saying about 75 percent of settlements construction has been carried out
without a permit? That public structures in more than 30 settlements
were built on private Palestinian land?
These are but few of the goings on exposed by
journalist Uri Blau and which the state wanted to conceal. Now the state
wants to settle the score with both the source and the journalist. In
fact it wants to do more than settle the score.
Shin Bet security service head Yuval Diskin yesterday openly
threatened, in the most scandalous way, that his organization will
"remove its gloves" in dealing with this affair. "We were too sensitive
to the media world ... that's the lesson we've learned from the affair,"
he said.
The lesson to be learned from the affair should be the exact
opposite. A security service that destroys journalists' computers and
threatens them has no place in a democratic state. The defense
establishment is not trying (only) to keep state secrets in this case,
but to cover-up grievous acts committed in the territories. These deeds
were committed in our name, therefore we must know everything about
them.
The violent, bullying defense establishment, which smashes
computers, wants to settle the score with those who knew and would not
keep silent; with those who witnessed the acts and would not take part
in the cover up.
The Shin Bet has won again. Instead of dealing with the outrageous
acts that were exposed, finding those responsible and bringing them to
trial, everyone is preoccupied with persecuting the messengers and
hunting down the whistleblowers. This is going on with the support of
the security service's numerous mouthpieces in the media.
Anat Kam probably overheard corrupt discussions and should have been
treated like any other whistleblower - the state should have protected
her. The same applies to the journalist who exposed corruption. The
witch hunt that came out yesterday after weeks of gagging - which also
has no place in a democracy - is moving in the wrong direction, as the
Shin Bet intended.
The GOC Central Command, in whose office the assassination meetings
took place, should be the one in the heart of the furor. Instead, it's
the one who reported them.
As usual with us, the marginal takes precedence over the primary,
covered with layers of fake security arguments. The Palestinians already
know the IDF and Border Police shoot to kill them even when they can
merely arrest them.
But the IDF and Shin Bet don't want us to know that. It has nothing
to do with security. It has everything to do with the kind of regime
we're living in.
Yesterday a new Bus 300 affair began. Bus 300 was hijacked by
Palestinians in 1984. Two of the hijackers, who were first reported to
have been killed when security forces took over the bus, were in fact
executed while in captivity by Shin Bet agents.
Then too, when the media published what happened, violating the
censorship laws, some people found fault with the media instead of with
the Shin Bet killers.
Consequently, the Hadashot newspaper, which published a picture of
one of the hijackers being taken off the bus alive, was penalized and
the killers received, eventually, a sweeping pardon. Only in time did it
come out that the media was only doing its duty, and it led to cleaning
the Shin Bet stables from lies and despicable acts of manslaughter.
It should be hoped that this time the public also understands that
illegal, villainous acts must not be covered up by smashing the mirror
(and computer).
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1161847.html
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