As the row over the Anat Kam whistleblower case continues to grow, Israel’s military today claimed that they were forced to make unspecified “operational changes” in the 2008-09 invasion of the Gaza Strip to protect the invading troops from harm.
The claim appears to be an effort to defend heavy-handed tactics against Kam, including holding her secret house arrest since December and forbade any Israeli news outlets from reporting this fact until yesterday. The behavior has led to questions about Israel’s censorship regime.
Kam is facing charges of “treason” for having leaked some 2,200 classified documents while serving as a conscript in the Israeli military. According to Haaretz, the Israeli spy agency Shin Bet signed a deal with the paper, under which the documents would be returned and no action taken against either Kam or reported Uri Blau.
Blau, for his part, has vigorously defended the leaks, saying that the government’s reaction is mostly a function of the leaks being “inconvenient for the establishment.” The leaks mostly centered around the military flouting court orders against “shoot to kill” operations in the West Bank. Blau is currently in hiding in Britain, and Israeli officials claim he is still in possession of “hundreds” of the classified documents.
The claims from the military today are particularly surprising, as Haaretz has noted that every single one of the articles published on the basis of the leaks had to be screened by the military’s censors, and every single one was okayed. Despite this, members of parliament have called for action against Haaretz, up to and including closing the newspaper down entirely on national security grounds.
The military censor approved the Haaretz story for publication. The Israeli courts gagged not only the details of Kam’s arrest, but news of the arrest itself.
The Kam affair highlights Israel’s extra-judicial killings which violate international law and have caused death and injury to thousands of Palestinian civilian bystanders. Israel’s judiciary approved 'targeted killings' 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.
"The 'collateral damage' during the assassinations included 228 civilian bystanders – 77 of them children."
http://wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_co…
I hope Blau has access to a scanner and an internet connection. They still have those in Britain, right?