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By Jay Bushinsky
April 22, 2010
SAVYON, Israel--Should a journalist accept and use stolen goods? I say, 'no,' whatever the circumstances or context.
This issue came up when a dubious and unwarranted gag order issued by an Israeli court was lifted belatedly and the public learned that a recently-discharged female soldier allegedly stole 2,000 secret documents from the army's Central Command headquarters.
During the month or so that 23-year old Anat Kamm was under house arrest and before she was identified by name as an employe of the "Walla" website owned by the daily Haaretz word began to spread that her incarceration was an attempt by the authorities to suppress proof of Israeli "war crimes" against West Bank Palestinians.
A story to that effect somehow found its way into the British press and echoes of it were picked up and published in the U.S. by Judith Miller, formerly of the New York Times.
It was only after Ms. Kamm was brought to court and publicly accused of espionage and treason -- the state prosecutor's inept and inaccurate definition of her alleged transgressions -- that the true details came to light.
She was said to have told police interrogators that before ending her two years as an army clerk with access to top secret military documents she managed to transfer more than 2,000 of them to her personal computer and subsequently gave all or most of them to Uri Blau, a reporter on the staff of the daily Ha'Aretz.
Blau evidently used several of them in a story published in his newspaper two years ago and kept the rest presumably for future stories.
It took two years for the "Shabak," (the Hebrew acronym for Sherut Bitahon Klali) Israel's General Security Service that is roughly equivalent to the FBI) to identify Kam as Blau's source. Its agents were said to have struck a deal with him according to which he would surrender the documents and thereby be immune from prosecution. The "Shabak" reportedly agreed to give him a new computer to replace the one containing the textual contraband.
Blau reportedly gave back 50 and kept more than 2,000.
By then, he had managed to ensconce himself somewhere in London and to stay there with all expenses paid by his newspaper. According to leaks planted in the local news media. He withheld 50 of the documents, was therefore liable to be face extradition proceedings and arrest upon arrival in Israel.
Haaretz not only backed him to the hilt, but also cast his benefactor, Anat Kam, as an "idealist" who was motivated by reasons of conscience: The purported need to expose supposedly unjustiable acts of violence by Israeli military personnel against Palestinian civilians (including murder).
If the newspaper's rationale were accepted it would be tantamount to saying that the arrest of Jonathan Pollard for stealing secret documents while serving as a U.S. Navy analyst and handing them over to Israeli agents was unwarranted and his prison sentence excessive if not inhumane. These documents evidently
related to American military assessments of Iraq's military capabilities during the regime of the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Painful as it is to say or read this, that analogy is valid. The punishment meted out to Pollard may indeed be extreme, vindictive and merciless, but the fact that he committed a crime and violated the trust invested in him cannot be denied.
Whatever Anat Kamm's personal views may be with regard to Israel's military activities in the West Bank and its treatment of the Palestinians there they do not empower her to steal classified, secret or top secret documents from the military headquarters in which she served until three years ago. And when they were offered to Blau, he should have asked how they were obtained and insisted that they be given back immediately.
Journalists, whether they work for a marginal on-line services or distinguished newspapers are not above the law. Those documents were and some of them still are stolen goods. It is unethical for them to be kept by unauthorized persons regardless of their profession.
Actually, several of them reportedly have been lost and may be in the possession
of unsavory if not dangerous individuals who might jeopardize Israel's national security.
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