The Great Israeli Spy Story
Anat Kam (transliterated from the Hebrew as Kamm), is a former member of the armed forces of Israel (IDF), one of the most powerful military organizations in the world.
The IDF is also an organization that apparently believes it is above the law.
Ms. Kam, a journalist in civilian life, was placed under house arrest last year.
Courageous Israeli Journalist
The charge was espionage.
She suspected her superiors were committing illegal acts, including crimes against humanity. That bothered her deeply. Although she is just 23, her conscience compelled her to act and she did – fearlessly.
(Ms. Kam worked for the Israeli General, who is in charge of The Occupied West Bank: General Yair Naveh).
What she did, in her capacity as a member of the IDF, was to copy secret documents that proved her suspicions and secretly make them available to the Israeli media: specifically the Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz and specifically the reporter, Uri Blau, who used the documents as the basis for a series of articles starting in November of 2008.
(Blau is now in hiding somewhere in Europe)
When the Israeli secret police deduced the source of some of Mr. Blau’s information, they arrested Ms. Kam and placed her under house arrest. She has been under house arrest now for 4 months.
(She is subject to a prison term of 14 years)
Immediately a gag order was instituted and all Israeli media were prohibited from reporting on the matter.
This is a huge story made possible by the existence of the Internet. According to Richard Silverstein, a blogger who first brought the story to international attention -
“The real issue that we mustn’t lose sight of is that Anat Kam’s boss, General Naveh, the IDF commander for the West Bank, approved targeted killings of Palestinians in contravention of a Supreme Court ruling. Not only that, but he then lied about the nature of the killings in order to cover-up his original act.”
Because of the gag order, the full extent of the story was unknown, even in Israel, until the Israeli authorities realized that they could not gag the world and lifted it -partially – on April 8th.
Check out Richard Silverstein’s blog
