By Ido Liven

Anat Kamm in court October 2011 (Activestills)

As the Hebrew proverb goes, “be a tail among lions rather than a head among foxes.” In Freedom House’s latest report, Israel’s state of press freedom demonstrates just that. In the organization’s 2012 report, Israel scored 30 on a scale of 10 to 97, putting its press freedom status at the bottom of the better “free” category. In the 2013 report, released on May 1, the country lost one point, enough to downgrade it to the top of the next lower category of “partly free,” together with Chile, Namibia and South Korea.

Several recent developments have rattled the country’s press freedom status, and have helped to raise important questions regarding both institutional censorship and self-censorship.

At least in the legal sense, Israel’s relationship with the press would seem to put it at odds with other modern democracies. 65 years since its establishment, Israel has never put into law either freedom of expression or freedom of the press. Moreover, a Press Ordinance, inherited from the pre-state days, stipulates that newspapers and their chief editors require a license, and even empowers the state to shut down publications at its discretion. A number of new laws and bills – such as an anti-boycott law, and a proposed amendment to the libel law – have been called a further threat to freedom of expression and the press.

***

Internationally, Israel is known as a major news hotspot, but those reporting from the country, predominantly on the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian conflict, are at times restricted. Press freedom and human rights advocates often point to Israel’s conduct in the occupied Palestinian territories as inhibiting journalists – Palestinian and international alike – from operating freely. Moreover, Palestinian groups as well as the Foreign Press Association have accused the Israeli army of harassing, arresting and attacking reporters and avoiding carrying out thorough investigations into such incidents. Recent press freedom assessments harshly criticized Israel for targeting media personnel during Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza in 2012, specifically for killing a crew from Hamas’ Al Aqsa TV.

Consequently, Reporters without Borders’ (RwB) latest Press Freedom Index ranked Israel at a record-low 112th place. The 20-position drop in the index was explained by “the Israeli military’s targeting of journalists in the Palestinian Territories,” which as the report itself indicates, previous reports classified separately.” A separate, and even lower score remains for Palestine.

And while attention should be called to this worrying assessment, very few Israeli media outlets deemed it newsworthy. “It would be good if this index makes for a moment of self-scrutiny for Israel’s media makers,” Israeli media watchdog Keshev stated in a blog post. “Instead of focusing on our place compared to that of Albania [ranked 102nd – I.L.], it would be better to address the reasons for the decline in the degree of freedom and independence of the Israeli press – this is what we should really be concerned about.”

Journalists run from stun grenade in West Bank.

But this situation seems to stand in stark contrast with the overall climate in which news is produced in the country. “Israel enjoys a lively, pluralistic media environment in which press freedom is generally respected,” states Freedom House’s 2012 report. “Some [newspapers] freely criticize government policies and aggressively pursue cases of official corruption,” it adds.

Indeed, there are countless examples of the crucial role the media has played in shaping the discourse in Israeli society and its democratic characteristics. Investigative reports have been instrumental in exposing political corruption, military wrongdoing, human rights violations and more –in fact, it is in this light that repeated attempts by some lawmakers to tame democracy’s watchdog, supposedly in a bid to enforce responsibility, should be understood.

Though, one issue has always been a media hot potato. In a country that sees itself as constantly facing an existential threat, any information that can be interpreted as a challenge to national security becomes highly contentious. A military censor is therefore tasked with ensuring media outlets in Israel do not disseminate information that could compromise national security.

In a 2009 study, Israeli journalists ranked the military censor third (after editors and news organizations’ legal counsels) among factors they considered to be inhibiting their professional freedom.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the relationship that has evolved between the Israeli media and the military censor is not one of oppression. Through the years, the working relationship between the media and the censor has been streamlined, a result of court rulings and mutual agreements. “The 35 military censors are not faceless, inaccessible bureaucrats who work behind walls,” Aluf Benn, editor-in-chief of Haaretz wrote in a recent op-ed in The Guardian. “You know them personally and you can negotiate the wording to let the story pass.”

Moreover, journalists today tend to submit materials for review only if they fall under an agreed-upon list of “sensitive topics.” At the same time, in line with court rulings, the censor’s working principle is only to disapprove information that could clearly pose an “imminent and immediate danger” to national security if published.

Ultimately, many officials, including former Supreme Court justice and current president of Israel’s Press Council Dalia Dorner, have argued that having materials vetted by censors prior to their publication effectively relieves the journalist of legal responsibility. (In the case of Haaretz reporter Uri Blau, however, a censor’s approval did not prevent his indictment.) Paradoxically, this has led media scholars to conclude that the military censor has become imperative in protecting freedom of the press in Israel.

However, a few cases, the latest being this year, have raised serious doubts over the censor’s role.

Most recently, the case of Prisoner X – the Australian-Israeli Mossad agent who committed suicide in his prison cell after being secretly incarcerated for reportedly compromising national security –brought into question the relevance of censorship in today’s world of globalized media, primarily the Internet. In its aftermath, Israeli authorities’ repeated attempts to prevent the case from being reported by Israeli media – before and after the Australian investigative report that broke it– should have prompted news consumers and newsmakers alike to demand a revisiting of the founding principles of both the military censorship and gag orders. Instead, it exposed the Israeli media’s underbelly.

Haaretz, however, did stand out. “I don’t want to know more than my readers,” the newspaper’s chief editor Aluf Benn later wrote in The Guardian, explaining his refusal to participate in the Editors’ Committee meeting called in the wake of the affair. “If [Mossad chief Tamir Pardo] wants to explain, he should talk to the public, not to turn editors into intelligence ‘assets’.”

Press Council President Dorner voiced similar criticism. “Self-censorship is something that cannot be acceptable nowadays. I thought the Editors Committee no longer exists. I was surprised, negatively,” she said on public broadcast radio.

The complete blackout imposed on Israeli media by a blanket gag order, critics argued, was both outdated and counterproductive. Originally, the purpose of state censorship was to prevent information that could compromise national security from reaching hostile entities. But, as Dorner and others have pointed out, this very case proved the futility of such measures when media elsewhere in the world were reporting the entire case. “This is passé and pathetic,” former head of the Mossad Danny Yatom told daily newspaper Maariv, “and the fact is that they understood it themselves and one day after the affair was published around the world, it was published here as well.”

A few weeks later, in a panel session at Bar Ilan University dedicated to press freedom in light of the Prisoner X affair, chief censor Brig.-Gen. Sima Vaknin-Gil acknowledged, that “censorship and democracy do not go hand in hand.” However, she later stressed that she does not take freedom of expression or the public’s right to know into consideration “in any instance where a person is sent secretly, or in any other way, in the service of the state.”

Uzi Arad, a senior strategist and formerly a national security advisor to the prime minister, expressed a similar view of the military censorship as a so-called necessary evil. “This is an anti-democratic, arbitrary instrument but it protects things we would like to protect,” he told Maariv. “We’re in the midst of a security struggle that hasn’t changed in the past decades, and in such reality one has to protect secrets,” explained Shlomo Gazit, former head of the Military Intelligence Directorate.

Even prior to the Prisoner X affair breaking, a number of media outlets reportedly worked to challenge the gag order in order to remove it altogether or at least relax it, but to no avail. “The weak and burdened-with-guilt-feelings in Israeli press – the one seen by broad circles in the public as unpatriotic exactly because it fulfills its roles – does not deserve to boast the achievement of [the eventual] publication,” wrote Hanoch Marmari, former chief editor of Haaretz and today chief editor of media journal The Seventh Eye. “The press has submissively accepted the iron wall that had been installed around this awkward case.”

Occasionally, Israeli journalists do admit, or even approve of practicing self-censorship. In 1982, at the outset of the First Lebanon War, an op-ed in the daily Yedioth Ahronoth called on journalists, and the public, to avoid criticizing the government during wartime. The column’s title, “Silence, we’re shooting,” became a maxim.

Speaking at the Bar Ilan University panel, Israeli public broadcast radio’s longtime military correspondent Carmela Menashe acknowledged the common practice of self-censorship. “This hug [journalists] get from the defense minister or the chief of staff, who sit with them and eat with them, encourages some of them to censor themselves and not print things,” The Jerusalem Post quoted her as saying.

According to data from the military censor published in The Seventh Eye journal in March 2012, Israeli journalists tend to voluntarily employ stricter censorship than that of which is institutionally demanded. The information showed that between 2002 and 2011, censors intervened in 17 to 20 percent of the texts media submitted annually (with the exception of 2004 where the rate stood at 25 percent). During the 2006 Second Israel-Lebanon War, the intervention rate reached between 30 and 24 percent. In other words, the vast majority of news material was submitted for censor review, not necessarily because it contained sensitive information, but simply because journalists preferred to shift responsibility to the authorities.

***

Yet, despite Prisoner X being a highly unusual case, it was hardly unprecedented – neither in the way state authorities handled the person at the center of the row, nor in the way they dealt with its coverage in the media.

In Israeli society today, the de facto preponderance of so-called immediate national security threats means that any criticism of Israel’s defense apparatus is considered a threat to national security, even if there is little evidence to suggest such risk. There is no way to generalize, but free press does not seem to be as readily associated with the public interest as national security is – among journalists and the general public.

Therefore, perhaps more worrying than the institutional and legal instruments that at once enable censorship and do not safeguard press freedom but do enjoy public support, is the multiple forms of self-censorship – or rather, a genuine and understandable fear of consequences for confronting authorities – that are deeply ingrained in the journalistic practices and conventions of Israeli media. For a media (and public discourse) that fames itself of being particularly critical, and rightly so, this really is a peculiar situation. But one has to consider where public discontent is effectively channeled to.

If there is one thing that illustrates this awkward equilibrium, it is the aphorism “according to foreign sources.” Under this rhetorical fig leaf, Israeli media publish information they consider as being in the public interest but are restricted by state censorship from directly attributing it to Israeli sources. Perhaps the most longstanding example is Israel’s policy of deliberate ambiguity on possession of nuclear weapons.

It’s not that these publications are not credible – otherwise Israeli media would not cite them – it’s just that their reports are not considered as official as Israeli sources.

And international media has been playing a key role in this context. Israeli journalists who do recognize the military censor as a hurdle to publishing information of profound public interest (also on the international level) leak it to media abroad, and run a story “according to foreign sources.” The Prisoner X story is one such example.

However, going beyond this code-phrase, once journalists acknowledge the supreme importance of the public interest, they must also recognize the importance of transparency, not only from the subjects of coverage but also of their own work. There is no real reason why gag orders should not be made public.

Israeli journalist Uri Blau (Activestills)

And this should also be the case when journalists recognize, often following (online) public pressure, that censorship is being abused beyond its mandate. Yedioth Ahronoth‘s coverage of Anat Kamm’s arrest, when the newspaper ran a story with whole passages blacked out, proved this is possible. But it was also the exception that proved the rule – not on the part of the military censor, but on the part of the media.

Calls to scrap the military censor altogether have been scarce. Suggestions for reforming it – for instance, by moving it to the Prime Minister’s Office – or for exploring alternatives, have been even more rare. “I wouldn’t dare to demand such reform today, knowing that anything achieved would only aggravate control and perpetuate the censoring body,” wrote Marmari. Haaretz’s chief editor Benn concluded, “As long as ‘state security’ is sacred in the public mind, we will have censorship.”

Moreover, abolishing institutional state censorship is unlikely to improve press freedom: self-censorship might become even more rife among journalists and media outlets that wouldn’t want to take risks. Nevertheless, self-regulation and adherence to professional values would be much better than legal regulation and official censorship. And here is the bottom line: self-regulation, when dealing with issues that could potentially challenge national security, must be weighed against the public interest.

The common assumption that the public interest and national security are always one and the same simply doesn’t hold water. Israel has already seen several cases over the years – not only the Prisoner X story, the Uri Blau case, or the milder experience of blogger Eishton – where censorship or persecution have been invoked essentially as kneejerk reactions, in bids by the government and state agencies to save face, and for not for purposes of state security.

Ido Liven is an independent journalist covering mainly environmental issues and foreign affairs for Israeli and international publications. 

Related:
‘Prisoner X’: Censorship and gag orders in the age of new media
Blogger offers army deal: Release information, and I’ll go to prison willingly

Entrance to Ayalon prison facility, near the city of Ramla, where Ben Zygier was held (photo: Activestills)

These are the main details which have been made public in the affair of Ben Zygier, also known as ‘Prisoner X’: Zygier was probably recruited by the Mossad in the years following his immigration to Israel; the Australian secret service grew suspicious of Zygier after he changed his name and took out new passports four different times; according to the latest reports, Zygier gave the Australians details regarding the identity of Mossad agents and of at least one operation in which he was involved.

Zygier was arrested in Israel upon his return from Australia in 2010. His identity and the details of his arrest and trial were kept secret, but his family was informed. Reports on his arrest in the Israeli press were censored and Knesset members who asked for details about his case were made to believe that he was well taken care of.

After more than nine months in which he was detained in complete isolation, Zygier’s lawyers presented him with a plea bargain carrying a very long prison sentence. At that point, he asked to meet famous human rights attorney Avigdor Feldman, whom he probed about alternative options. The following day, he was found dead in his cell. His death wasn’t reported by the Prison Service through the usual channels, and media stories were censored yet again.

A complete media blackout was maintained until details of the case were published by Australia’s ABC news network last week. I wrote about the censorship effort here. It is worth noting that as more and more details emerge, it is becoming less and less likely that the publication of the Zygier affair will put the lives of Israeli agents in danger today. The whole affair seems more like an attempt to cover up the Mossad’s and – more troubling – legal system’s failures, starting from using friendly countries’ passports for covert operations and all the way to the secret trial, isolation and mysterious events surrounding the prisoner’s death. The last bit is important: “legal sources” spoke to the Israeli media last week, promising that this was a “unique case,” with unique circumstances, which led judges to permit the state to keep him isolated and his identity secret. Yet this one-in-a-million prisoner was not guarded with extra care. Rather, he allowed to die so easily.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg — the common-sense part of the issue. The heart of the matter lies with the security establishment’s special status in Israel, and with the liberties the heads of the security agencies take.

Anat Kamm in court October 2011. Kamm’s house arrest was kept under gag order for three months (Activestills)

Here are a few other famous cases that occurred around that time period (2010).

In December 2009, shortly before Ben Zygier was arrested, former soldier Anat Kamm was arrested and later secretly put under house arrest. Kamm was found to be the source that leaked 2,000 documents from IDF Central Command (the eastern command, not the chief of staff) to Haaretz reporter Uri Blau. Blau used two of those documents in an investigative report suggesting that senior IDF officers, including former Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, initiated unlawful assassinations of Palestinian militants.

The gag order covering Kamm’s arrest included, as usual, a clause banning publication of the gag order itself. Only after details of the arrest were made public outside the country was the gag order lifted. Kamm was put on trial, and she is now serving a 4.5 year-prison sentence.

Reporter Uri Blau moved to London to avoid imprisonment. He later returned and despite an agreement reached between Haaretz and the Internal Security Service (Shin Bet), was put on trial for obtaining secret documents. Blau is now serving a four-month community service sentence.

The Kamm investigation was carried out by the Internal Security Service, which was led at the time by Yuval Diskin. There is also reason to believe that Diskin, a friend of then-Mossad chief Meir Dagan, was involved in the arrest and secret imprisonment of Zygier, since it took place on Israeli soil. The two of them were also close political allies of IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi.

Writing about the Diskin-Dagan-Ashkenazi connection, Makor Rishon journalists Amnon Lord and Haaretz‘s Amir Oren bring up another affair from 2010: the Shabak decided to revoke National Security Advisor Uzi Arad’s security clearance, which led to his resignation from the Prime Minister’s Office. Arad was accused of leaking information but was later cleared; he never regained his position. At the time, Arad was among the most vocal supporters of an attack on Iran, and a known rival of the Dagan-Diskin-Ashkenazi trio.

It doesn’t end there. In August 2010, Israel’s Channel 2 revealed a document supposedly written in the office of Defense Minister Ehud Barak – Chief of Staff Ashkenazi’s main political rival – discussing ways to promote the image of a general Barak backed, and to destroy the credibility of his rivals. But the document was forged and the subsequent investigation into the leak led directly to many of Ashkenazi’s proxies in the army’s high command. Tamir Pardo, the current Mossad chief, was also consulted by the team of generals who executed the plot against Barak. In the background of this story was a mixture of personal rivalries in the security elite and a dispute over national security policy, mainly regarding the Iranian issue.

The Israeli press has hinted at the existence of more stories from this period in which the Ashkenazi-Dagan-Diskin trio exercised power in ways that extended beyond the mandates of their organizations, to say the least. Naturally, discussing some of their actions is problematic due to the work of the military censor, which might not directly cover their tracks for them, but tends to be more active when the secret services are involved.

Yet even those details that were made public are troubling, to say the least. It could be summed up like this: around the same time period, the Shin Bet and Mossad kept two citizens in secret detention (the claim that both Kamm and Zygier agreed to the terms of their arrest, which was brought up by security officials, wouldn’t stand the scrutiny of a first-year law student. Almost any prisoner can be intimidated into giving up his rights, especially when he is so young – Kamm was 23, Zigyier was 34 – and when his arrest is hidden from the public). One of those prisoners died in his cell. This fact was also kept secret; even the Knesset Committee for Secret Services, whose hearings are closed to the media, wasn’t informed.

Around the same time, the Shin Bet got the national security advisor to resign while the army chief of staff, along with other officers, was linked to a plot that was meant to discredit the defense minister. And this is only what we know.

Former Mossad head Meir Dagan (R) with former IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi (L) (Photo: Israel Defense Forces, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

I happen to support the positions of Dagan and Diskin on Iran and I have opposed almost everything Netanyahu and Barak did in the last four years. But the bigger story here has to do with the unchecked power of the security establishment in Israel.

The courts failed miserably in all the above cases, allowing the security services to hide people from the public eye, approving a secret trial and covering up the suicide (?) of a prisoner. All the evidence suggests that Gabi Ashkenazi plotted against his elected political superior, Defense Minister Barak, not to mention the orders he gave regarding the targeted assassinations that were at the heart of Uri Blau’s piece. The prosecution failed to investigate or clarify those issues.

The media failed too. In some cases, it was prevented from properly covering those affairs. Mostly, it was simply played. By the time the true details emerged (all the information in this post is from public sources), the public had long forgotten about the affairs at hand.

More importantly, the media and the public simply didn’t want to know. The aura around the security establishment is so far-reaching that it’s almost impossible to criticize those institutions. You can write almost anything you want about politicians in Israel but only a failed war is considered reason enough to judge the chief of staff, and the security services are almost always right. The effect of the security establishment on policy is immeasurable, to the point that it sometimes operates as a shadow government (add 2010 to the list that includes the Six-Day War and the first weeks of the second Intifada, among other things). Some members of Knesset have called for a formal independent inquiry into the Prisoner X affair. I doubt they will get it.

One final note. Former Mossad head Meir Dagan became an international hero due to his opposition against war with Iran (including an admiring profile in The New Yorker); former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin is the star of the film The Gatekeepers, where he assumes the role of the philosopher-in-chief, criticizing Israeli strategy on the Palestinian issue. Ashkenazi, they say, is about to join the Labor Party, and perhaps try and lead the peace camp.

Yet it is not only that these are no men of peace — they seem to lack the most basic respect for democracy, civil rights and freedom of the press that is required in their positions. Their actions make them the problem Israeli society is suffering from, rather than the solution.

Kamm is presently serving a four and a half-year prison sentence following a plea bargain in which she admitted to possession and transfer of classified documents.

The decision today marks a crucial milestone in a process that has been dragging on for more than two years, as prosecutors considered the implications of indicting a journalist for doing something well established in his trade. Almost every journalist with claims to be anything but a stenographer for the army spokesman has held onto classified information – written or otherwise – that was received outside official channels, without authorisation.

Although Blau, in the early days of the investigation into the leak, had already given over to the state all the documents he used to publish the story on summary executions, the state demanded the rest of the cache. During the investigation, Blau spent time in political exile in London, waiting while his lawyers negotiated with the state the terms of a deal under which he would not be prosecuted. Once the deal was struck and Blau did his part, however, the state got greedy, and demanded full access his entire archive, amassed over a decade of investigative work. Then it said it might prosecute him anyway. Blau remained in limbo, his ability to work severely curtailed: few sources would go out on a limb for a journalist likely to be tightly monitored by the security agencies. He only began writing regularly a few months ago, publishing a few stories on the behind the scenes workings of the Israeli right, mostly through deft use of freedom of information requests.

Obtaining and retaining classified information is the bread-and-butter of a civilian journalists monitoring the country’s most powerful and insulated institution – the military. Although Israel has no laws to protect journalists, in most cases (barring one prosecution concerning the revelation of cooperation between the Israeli and Morrocan intelligence agencies half a century ago, and an attempt to prosecute a senior military correspondent after the Gulf War for revealing the regrettable fact the much-lauded “Patriot” missiles failed to intercept a single SCUD), the state has not gone after journalists for doing something so essential to their work – until now.

According to a Justice Ministry press release [Hebrew] announcing the decision, principles of press freedoms were taken into account in the decision to indict Blau, but the nature and quantity of the documents, along with Blau’s attempts to hold onto them, led the attorney general to the conclusion that there was “no correlation whatsoever” between Blau’s possession of the documents and proper journalistic practice. ”Blau held, knowingly and without supervision, hundreds and thousands of documents classified as ‘secret’ and ‘top secret,’ which were stolen from the Central Command by the soldier Anat Kamm, and he violated his obligation – and later his obligation before the state authorities – to stop holding them… Their exposure to, or potential acquisition by hostile entities would have caused damage to the security of the state and endangered the lives of IDF soldiers,” reads the press release.

Danny Zaken, Chairman of the Jerusalem branch of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), released a statement condemning the decision. “The decision of the attorney general to file an indictment against Uri Blau brings Israel back a generation, and casts into doubt its definition as a real democratic state. The decision joins a string of legislative moves designed to harm the status of journalism and its critical role in ensuring the existence of a democratic regime. Uri Blau’s articles went through the censor, and the Haaretz journalist did what any good journalist must do: expose to the public what is being hidden from it, for it to judge.

“It is disappointing that the attorney general is joining the ranks, through his decision, of those who hurt freedom of expression, instead of being the one to defend it from governmental forces seeking to restrict it. The Union will work to reverse the decision and will use all of the tools at its disposal to protect Blau and free journalism in Israel,” the statement continued.

Noa Yachot contributed to this report

For background on how the case unfolded:
TIMELINE: The Anat Kamm affair

A few days earlier, on Sunday, I appeared on Al Jazeera International to discuss the immediate implications of Kamm’s sentence. Watch it below.

Finally, for Hebrew readers – on Monday I had the chance to elaborate some of the arguments made in my last week’s post about Palestinian prisoners in a Haaretz op-ed.

Sunday morning, Anat Kamm—the former soldier who leaked classified documents to Haaretz reporter Uri Blau—was sentenced to four and half years in prison and a year and a half of probation. This is in addition to the two years Kamm already spent under house arrest.

Speaking to reporters, Prosecutor Hadas Forer-Gafni commented:

I think that you all heard in the court how severely we view this case. The court also viewed it severely [and] mentioned the danger in the documents. The sentence needs to be taught in every school and the army’s basic training so that every soldier who thinks of leaking some classified army document will be careful because this is the punishment that he can expect…

The judges also seemed to hold Kamm’s case up as a potential warning to other soldiers who might consider leaking information in the future, remarking during the sentencing:

If the IDF cannot fully trust its soldiers, it will not be able to function as an army…The transfer of documents while violating basic duties constitutes a violation of the most severe criminal norms.

While her defense attorneys initially portrayed Kamm’s move as an act of patriotism, calling Kamm a “mainstream, Zionist, Israeli girl, the salt of the earth,” Kamm herself has since chalked up the move to “stupidity.”

Much of the Israeli public considers Kamm a traitor. Talkbacks left on Hebrew-language websites called her a “traitor,” said the “light sentence” was “a shame” to the state, and overwhelmingly called for a harsher punishment. One reader commented that she should receive 100 years sentence; some called for a life sentence; and others called her an “enemy within.” Some decried her as a “left winger”—a word that has become increasingly synonymous with “traitor”. Another wrote:

Anat Kamm is proof that the extreme left is dangerous to state security.

Some of those who left talkbacks also criticized the judges, saying that the “light” sentence caused them to lose faith in the justice system. One remarked:

Friends, the time has arrived for us to organize a protest against the court.

The comments seem indicative of the overall mood in the country, which has shifted to the right in recent years.

***

While Kamm’s sentencing might bring a sense of closure to the case, many questions remain: how did Uri Blau’s report on the targeted assassinations of Ziad Subahi Mahmad Malaisha and Ibrahim Ahmed Abd al-Latif Abed pass the military censor in the first place if it was, indeed, dangerous to state security? What made the Israeli army change its mind about the story and the information it contained? Is it appropriate for the army to give a green light to an article, only to backpedal on this decision later and to go after both a journalist and his source? How can journalists operate, freely, in such an environment?

Throughout the Kamm-Blau affair, another issue has been largely forgotten—two men were assassinated by the army in circumvention of a Supreme Court hearing. This raises additional questions, of course: is it appropriate for the army and the state to consistently ignore Supreme Court rulings? What does that disregard say about the health of Israeli democracy? Again, what are the implications for the freedom of press?

And while the prosecutor called the leaked documents “dangerous,” she failed to mention the danger of an army that seems to answer to no one, not even the Supreme Court.

With the country continuing its march to the right, none of these issues will go away any time soon. But, as journalists and potential sources feel paralyzed and anti-democratic trends continue, the ability to ask such questions publicly could disappear.

Related articles:

Court sentences IDF whistleblower Anat Kamm to four and a half years in prison

TIMELINE: The Anat Kamm affair

The Tel Aviv District court has sentenced Anat Kamm to  four and a half years in prison. The sentence writes the final line in a campaign of  scapegoating that has already caused deep and lasting damage to independent Israeli journalism.

Anat Kamm at the Tel Aviv District Court on Sunday (photo: Activestills)

Anat Kamm, the journalist who leaked over a thousands pages of classified IDF documents to Haaretz journalist Uri Blau was sentenced on Sunday by the Tel Aviv District Court to four and a half years in prison. The documents, which Kamm copied while serving as a conscript clerk in the office of then-GOC Central Command Yair Naveh, contained a trove of information, including internal correspondence giving rise to suspicions of war crimes and direct violations of Supreme Court orders committed by senior IDF command. Kamm, who worked as a reporter for new portal Walla from her discharge and until her arrest, was already convicted through a plea bargain last year, with the prosecution agreeing not to ask for more than 9 years in prison for the journalist. A source close to Kamm’s defence team told +972 they are hopeful their client will not be handed a sentence longer than three years imprisonment; I must say I myself expected closer to seven years inside.

As can be seen from the exhaustive timeline compiled by my colleague Noa Yachot, there is a direct line running from the occupation, to executions without trial of suspects who could be detained, to a wider and deeper contempt for the rule of law and the Supreme Court, to the gagging of the press and to persecution of journalists. Kamm’s case is unique in weaving all these elements into a single story; but its real danger lies, of coures, in the unprecedented clampdown on a journalistic source – even more disproportionate than the sadistically vindictive persecution of Mordechai Vanunu.

I suppose considerable time will pass before we know when and how Kamm, out of all leakers, was chosen to be made an example of. But the chill effect on Israeli investigative journalism is undeniable. After years of dealing with the army, with leaks serving as bread and butter of defence journalism – in many cases informally sanctioned leaks, but leaks nonetheless – the army has decided to redefine the rules of the game. The double gag order on Anat’s case – it went unreported for nearly six months – and the media’s compliance with it were bad enough; the reluctance by the media to collectively stand up for Kamm and Blau is worse; but the most harrowing aspect of the Kamm affair is the things we don’t and will not know – the information on the state’s transgressions against its own laws and the trust of its citizens that will remain in the dark, because potential sources know now that neither law nor journalistic ethics can protect them.

Related articles:

Condemnation of Anat Kamm in aftermath of sentence reflects mood of the country

TIMELINE: The Anat Kamm affair

Anat Kamm at the Tel Aviv District Court, May 2010 (photo: Oren Ziv / Activestills.org)

December 14, 2006 The High Court of Justice rejects a petition against the IDF practice of targeted killings of wanted militants. However, the ruling – former Supreme Court President Aharon Barak’s last – restricts the practice, establishing circumstances that render such killings unlawful, including when arrest is possible or in cases where the killing would cause disproportionate harm to civilians. The decision can be found in full here.

June 20, 2007 The IDF kills Palestinians Ziad Subahi Mahmad Malaisha and Ibrahim Ahmed Abd al-Latif Abed, in what it presents to the public as a gunfight that erupted during a routine military raid in the West Bank.

Summer 2008 Anat Kamm, a 21-year-old reporter for the Walla portal’s media news website, transfers documents she had burned to a disk while serving as a clerk in the IDF to Haaretz journalist Uri Blau. (Her account of her actions as presented to the court is found here, in Hebrew)

November 28, 2008 Haaretz reporter Uri Blau publishes an investigative report in Haaretz Magazine based on the documents he received from Kamm. The report reveals that the IDF had approved well in advance the targeted killing of Malaisha, contravening the High Court ruling and intentionally misleading the public. The report was attributed to “classified IDF documents” and had been approved by the Military Censor before going to press. The pages of the report depicted scanned images of the documents Blau had acquired from Kamm.

September 15, 2009 Haaretz and the Shin Bet security service reach an agreement requiring Blau to transfer certain classified documents in his possession in exchange for the agency’s pledge not to investigate his sources. Blau handed over dozens such documents (See Haaretz editorial, How the Shin Bet Broke its Deal with Haaretz). The state later admits that it ignored the agreement it had reached with Blau.

December 15, 2009 Anat Kamm is called by the Shin Bet for questioning in relation to the documents she transferred to Blau. She is placed under house arrest that night, and a gag order is placed on the entire affair.

January 24, 2010 Maariv publishes a piece titled “How has a journalist been under arrest for a month, yet everyone is silent?” The author describes a place called “Shu-shu land” (“Hush hush land,” in English) in which a journalist, whose name and location he cannot divulge, is under house arrest while the media fails in its obligation to its colleague.

March-April 2010 Reports begin to surface abroad about a young woman under house arrest for leaking sensitive military documents to a journalist. The gag order on the case – in addition to a gag order on the gag order (!) – prevents Israeli press from reporting details of the case or its very existence. Rumors begin flying, with Israelis looking for emerging information from abroad. The story, broken by Richard Silverstein on his blog, begins to spread, and details start surfacing within Israel. Israeli media, infuriated it has been scooped by just about everyone abroad, unites in slamming the legal and security establishment for sustaining the gag order, and begins, along with the blogosphere, slowly publishing details of the case. Yediot prints a translation of an article on Israeli censorship by Judith Miller, originally published in the Daily Beast, with swaths of text blacked out:

The Independent reports that the recipient of the leaked documents, Uri Blau, who was vacationing at the time of Kamm’s arrest, is in hiding in London. As new information is released daily – with even Israeli outlets finding creative ways to report on the case despite the blackout – the gag order and the state of Israel’s free press are elevated to new levels of absurdity.

Graffiti on Rothschild Blvd in Tel Aviv instructing passersby to ‘Google Anat Kamm’ (photo: Ido Kenan / the7eye.org.il)

April 8, 2010 The court finally accepts a request by Haaretz and Channel 10 to lift the gag order. A flood of information is unleashed. It emerges that Kamm has been indicted on aggravated espionage charges, with intent to harm the security of the state. The original indictment, translated by Dimi Reider into English, can be found here.  The next day, Blau publishes a first-person account of his experience from exile.

October 2010 A deal is struck enabling the return of Uri Blau from England, upon which he undergoes questioning by the Shin Bet. The deal requires him to hand over more documents in his possession.

February 3, 2011 Kamm’s defense and the State Prosecution strike a plea agreement in which she agrees to confess to the possession and transfer of classified documents, but is not charged with “intent to harm state security.” (In Israel, even the first charge falls under the Espionage Law, a fact decried as draconian in a column by legal scholar Dr. Mordechai Kremnitzer.)

February 6, 2011 The Tel Aviv District Court accepts the plea deal; Anat Kamm is convicted of the charges against her.

March 23, 2011 The Justice Ministry announces its intention to charge Blau with possession of classified information without authorization, pending – to this day – a hearing before the attorney general.

October 30, 2011 The Tel Aviv District Court sentences Anat Kamm to four and a half years in prison.

May 30, 2012 With Kamm in jail, Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein decides to indict Uri Blau for possession of classified documents.

Earlier this week, Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein informed Haaretz reporter Uri Blau he will hold a hearing for him at the end of the month, to decide whether to put him on trial. This step would have disastrous ramifications for Israeli freedom of the press, wounding it behind recovery. At the bottom of the post is a petition to the Israeli Attorney General, urging him not to press charges against the journalist; you can read more about the campaign on Noam’s blog.  As of 7 May, nearly 200 Israeli journalists have already signed the Hebrew version of the petition. Now it’s time for their colleagues from around the world to add their names.

Who is Uri Blau?

Although young, Uri Blau is one of the key investigative Israeli journalists of his generation. He has such notches on his belt as the reports on suspected money laundering operations of Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman (the latter is likely to be indicted later this year, largely thanks to Blau’s reporting), the Israeli military’s deliberate violation of Supreme Court orders, and, only yesterday, an investigation of a government-supported organization in Jerusalem, which serves, it appears, as a front for a radical right anti-intermarriage gang and employs former members of terrorist organization Kahane Chai.

Why is he being put on trial?

The state wishes to prosecute Blau for holding on to classified documents without permission. The documents were command meetings minutes and orders showing senior IDF officers deliberately violated orders of the Supreme Court. These documents have been seen and cleared for publication by the Israeli military censor, and Blau returned the documents to the military as soon as as the story was out in print. I’ve written elsewhere about the technicalities of the case and how it relates to the prosecution of Blau’s source, former soldier Anat Kamm. It’s worth noting the conduct of Haaretz and of Blau himself have been criticized, especially in regard to their relationship with Kamm. Nevertheless, this is certainly not a reason for Blau to go to jail, and for journalism to take such a blow on his behalf.

A decision to indict Blau would be an end to independent journalism on military and security affairs in Israel, and quite possibly investigative reporting of corruption, too: In both cases much of your key evidence comes in the shape of private or classified materials, with the gravity of the offense and outrage they document outweighing the much lighter offense you might be committing by accessing and publishing them.

Why is this such a big deal?

No journalist in Israel has ever been prosecuted for perusing classified material without permission – a key instrument in journalistic work. If Blau is sent to prison, no journalist may dare to use that instrument again – and Israeli journalism will lose one of its strongest and most critically important functions – both for its role as a keeper of Israel’s democracy and for the role it plays in international affairs around the Middle East.

What can we do to help?

What follows below is my translation of the Hebrew petition, which has been endorsed by the campaign. If you are a journalist, commentator or editor, please take a stand with your Israeli colleagues and email kelev.shmira@gmail.com with your name and affiliation to add your signature (“freelance” is also fine).  This is a moment of critical, unprecedented importance for the freedom of the Israeli press. Please also circulate it among your contacts and colleagues.

The petition itself:

Dear Mr. Weinstein,

We – journalists, commentators and editors from around the globe, fearing for the professional freedom of our Israeli colleagues – call upon you to refrain from prosecuting Haaretz journalist Uri Blau for unlicensed possession of classified materials. Some of us have our reservations regarding the conduct of Mr. Blau and Haaretz in the affair. But all of us are concerned with the ramifications a decision to prosecute Mr Blau would have for the vitally important work of the Israeli media.

On March 23, the Israeli prosecution service announced it intends to charge Mr Blau with “retaining secret information by an unauthorized person (without intention to harm the security of the state)”, pending a hearing before the Attorney General. Trying a journalist for possession of classified  secret documents would gravely infringe upon the freedom of the Israeli press. Such a move would immediately constrain our Israeli colleagues’ freedom of action, and their ability to expose corruption and other wrongs afflicting their society.

Putting Mr. Blau on trial would set a precedent that would damage investigative journalism, the very essence of free media, beyond repair. It is impossible to expose corruption without using documents – including classified documents – to build up the factual infrastructure for the report. In this specific case, we should stress that the report based on the documents in questions was submitted to and confirmed for publication by the Israeli military censorship, We call upon you not to prosecute Mr. Blau, and to make do with the fact that Mr Blau had already returned all the classified documents in his possession to the state, as per an earlier agreement between Haaretz and the Israeli security services.

Prosecuting a reporter in such circumstances, for the first time in Israeli history, is a careless step down a slippery slope, at the bottom of which lies an end to the ability of Israeli journalists and media to fulfill their task as the guardians of democracy.

With great concern,

The undersigned:

Email Kelev.Shmira@gmail.com to add your signature.

Click here to go to the campaign website for the latest signatures – they will be updated once a day.

Following the procedures against Blau, dozens of Israeli journalists have signed a petition, demanding not to put Haartez’s reporter on trail (my translation from Hebrew).

We – journalists and media people who fear for our professional freedom – call upon the Attorney General not to prosecute Haaretz’s journalist Uri Blau for holding classified documents. Some of us have our reservations regarding the conduct of Blau and Haaretz throughout the affair. Yet we are all concerned about the consequences of the Attorney General’s decision regarding the work of all journalists in Israel.

Putting a journalist on trial for possession of secret documents constitutes significant injury to the independence of the media. The immediate significance of the decision will be in putting restraints on our ability to reveal injustice and corruption [...] This precedent would severely harm the [ability to conduct] investigative journalism, which is at the heart of the free press. It is impossible to expose corruption—in any field—without holding documents, also those that are considered classified [...]

Uri Blau, an investigative reporter, received hundreds of classified IDF documents from former soldier Anat Kamm. Blau published several pieces in Haaretz based on the documents, including one story which revealed that senior IDF officers—including Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazy—might have knowingly violated a Supreme Court decision when they ordered targeted killings of Palestinian militants even when those could have been captured alive.

The story was approved for publication by the Army Censorship.

Later on, the Internal Security Service (Shabak) conducted an investigation which led to Anat Kamm, a former soldier at central command HQ, as the source for the leak. Kamm has been under house arrest for more than a year now. She recently agreed to a plea bargain with the prosecution which would mean up to 9 years in prison.

Following Kamm’s arrest, Blau left the country to London. Attorneys for Haaretz have negotiated his return with the Shabak; according to the agreement between the two sides, Blau will return the documents to the state. The Security Service later claimed that Blau violated the agreement. According to Blau, all the documents Anat Kamm handed him were returned to the Army. Blau also agreed to have his computer destroyed by the Internal Security Service.

Blau is to be charged according to article 113C of the criminal law (holding secret information), which is part of the espionage law.

Technically, every reporter in Israel who has witnessed or held a secret document can be charged with the same offense.

————–

The organizers of the petition against the prosecution of Uri Blau urge foreign journalists to support their call to the Attorney General. If you are a journalist or a media person and you wish to add your name to an English petition (to be published soon), please send your full name and organization to the following e-mail: kelev.shmira@gmail.com

Arbel was referring, of course, to Anat Kamm – the young journalist who, during her mandatory military service, leaked documents raising serious suspicions of war crimes and violations of Israeli law by her commander, Major General Yair Naveh, to Haaretz investigate journalist Uri Blau. Kamm has now been under a house arrest for a year and a half; a few months ago she was convicted and will almost certainly be sent to prison in the summer. Last week, the Justice Ministry announced it plans to indict Blau himself, raising new fears for an unprecedented crackdown on investigative journalism in Israel.

Kamm, who gave a landmark interview to Yedioth Ahronoth over the weekend – sadly, still not available in English – said that football helps her pass the time, and that during even as she was being convicted for “aggravated espionage,” she couldn’t stop thinking about a Liverpool-Derby game due to happen that same day. Arbel, a through and through fellow sports lover, apparently felt touched and decided to put in a good word for her; as Shlomo Mann makes clear in Israeli media journal 7th Eye, he also immediately clarified – again – that he was sypamthizing with Anat’s predicament, not with her actual act: A few minutes later Arbel told his listeners that “if my words were interpreted as support for what she’s done, I apologise.”

But despite his denounciation of Kamm’s original offence, and despite his apology – to borrow from Mann again, the last thing Arbel needs at 70 is to become a pariah – this morning Channel 10 suspended him with immediate effect.

Let’s make this clear: Channel 10 suspended a veteran sportscaster for voicing support not for an offence committed against state security – whistelblowing –  but for the whistleblower herself – a young woman who’s been effectively in prison for a year before she was even sentenced.  But dig this. Channel 10 suspended Arbel for 48 hours, which will end before his next scheduled broadcast this Tuesday.

Which means that a) The suspension is openly little more than bowing to a few dozen angry viewers b) it announced to these viewers it needs very little pressure to bow down to them c) The homage to their rage is so pitiful and cynical it will doubtlessly only produce more pressure. This has already begun; Israel’s main news site, YNET happily went to town on that one, stressing that despite public outrage, the suspension would have little effect on Arbel’s work. Rather incredibly, YNET also compared Arbel to Israeli Big Brother Producer Yoram Zak, who was suspended for a slightly different transgression:  A soundcheck in which he speculated about the prospect of putting his penis between the breasts of one of the contenders was inadvertently broadcasted.

The thesaurus provides a handsome cache of epithets to describe the Channel 10 leadership that decided on this move. But what’s truly disturbing it the social dynamic behind it: Anticipatory compliance. Channel 10 did not get a menacing phone call from a security official; the government did not move to cut off its funding; no death threats are known to have been received by the channel director families, and no serious moves towards a viewer or advertisement have been made. Rather, the channel anticipated that those who bully, threaten and yearn to censor would like to see Arbel humiliated – and independently, of its own cravenly volition, the channel rushed to please. This is much more dangerous than any official clampdown by the state.