I hope I’m not sounding like a broken record when I point out that European media are far more interested in what progressive American Jews have to say about the Israeli-Arab conflict than American media, including Jewish media.  I’ve been interviewed by Dutch, Swiss and Turkish reporters.  Not once by a major American newspaper or NPR.

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After I read every Hebrew source about this affair and wrote my own post, a number of these sources disappeared.  It turns out that Anat Kam herself and others on the Israeli left have urged those who have published to remove their material.  Indymedia Israel did this (see cached version).  Kam asked the Hebrew Wikipedia to remove the article about her and it did.  As a member wrote quite sensibly (in Hebrew) in response:

If Shimon Peres told you to remove his Wikipedia article, would you?

For a few days I also did so after an Israeli peace activist told me that Kam was negotiating with the Shin Bet and hoped if little was made of this affair that she might get off with no jail time.  I took my post down.  Then I wrote to Avigdor Feldman asking him to confirm that he wished me to do so.  I never received a reply.  I republished my post.

Aside from the Shin Bet’s egregious behavior, several developments in this case have troubled me.  First, I discovered that Anat Kam had published a tart dismissal of the Israeli conscientious objector movement.  I wondered how someone who allegedly leaked top secret documents discrediting the Israeli army’s policy on a item of major national security significance could also disparage the very peace movement which these memos would assist.

I also noticed that at a Hebrew language website which had archived all online sources dealing with this case, someone sounding very much like Kam, but using the pseudonym “Noa,” railed against the website owner for maintaining the archive.  I should add that I have other confirming evidence that the commenter was Kam.  Among other disparaging statements she made about him:

You know Anat Kam?  You tried to make contact with her?  Or did you take on yourself the decision to be the Prince of Human Rights and Democracy and to claim you know what would be best for her?

…And further, I haven’t even begun to count to the number of times you were an accomplice to violations of the gag order (linking to articles which commit such a violation makes you into a criminal accomplice.  It’s a good idea to examine the law from time to time.)”

On reading this, Aryeh Amihay, owner of the website took the entire archive post down.  He too was intimidated by the veiled threat in the comment.  So someone will have to explain to me how this sort of behavior serves anyone’s interests, even Kam’s.  I fully understand that she is only 23 years old, faces very serious charges, and is under enormous pressure from the security establishment.  I understand how this can turn one from being a principled person attempting to do good into someone seeking to save their own hide.  In fact, I had experience with another whistleblower who, after being caught, acted in almost precisely the same way.  This appears to be part of human nature, the instinct for self-preservation.  So I am trying not to be judgmental on that score.  But this seems to go far beyond what is required under the circumstances.

So I’d recommend that those on the Israeli left who’ve cooperated with the wall of silence reconsider their decisions.  I continue to believe that silence doesn’t serve the greater good of Israeli democracy.  I don’t even believe it serves Anat Kam’s interests, but as she herself says, that’s for her to determine.

I don’t know what motivated Anat Kam allegedly to leak the IDF memos.  I would hope her actions were based on a citizen’s disgust with the army’s brazen disregard for the rule of law.  But it occurs to me, and I freely concede and even hope I am wrong, that the leak may’ve been motivated by an aspiring journalist who found herself in a position to advance her career by making such material public through Israel’s leading daily newspaper, Haaretz, and a respected investigative journalist, Uri Blau.

There are aspects of this case which still have not come to light.  Anat Kam is not the alpha and the omega of this story.  More than this, I can’t say at this time.  I look forward to being able to say more at a later date.

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Diehl reports that Bibi Netanyahu, cognizant of his missteps with the Obama administration over the past week or so, has thrown a few sops to the angry Americans. Among them is this one which would make me laugh my head off if it wasn’t so friggin’ sad:

Coupled to that would be an Israeli pledge to avoid publicizing further construction decisions in Jerusalem. The result would not be a freeze, but something like a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for settlements.

As in “what you don’t know won’t hurt you?” But the problem is that Obama will know because there are Israeli NGOs like Peace Now and Ir Amin that record every planning approval and housing start for new settlements. This is a piece of garbage that should insult Obama. What do the Israelis take Obama for?  Do they think American opposition to settlements is something cosmetic that can be papered over with such narischkeit??  Even Diehl has the good sense to write:

It’s not clear whether Obama will accept such a fudge

“Fudge” indeed. I can think of other more colorful words for it. But the fact that a Jewish fundamentalist government (remember homosexuality is banned in the Bible) is likening settlements to being gay without even realizing it is doing so tickles me. If I was gay I’d be angry beyond belief to have my sexual orientation yoked to such a nasty habit (settlement building, that is).

The other sad thing about this charade is that Bibi actually has the gall to call this proposal a “confidence building measure.”  He really believes attempting to build settlements in secret will improve U.S.-Israel relations.  One of my readers, Shirin, likes to call such Israeli attitudes narcissistic in the extreme.  I agree with her.  Israeli leaders only think about how they can manipulate American presidents into getting what they want.  Don’t ask, don’t tell in a settlement context is pure manipulation.

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NOTE: On March 14th, I was the first blogger or journalist to report this story outside Israel.  Subsequently, an Israeli peace activist informed me that Anat Kam’s attorney and friends have asked others not to publicize her case.  In honor of that, I decided to take down this post as I did not wish to harm her defense.  I wrote to Kam’s attorney, Avigdor Feldman, and asked him to confirm that he did not wish any public discussion of her case.  He has not replied.  For that reason, I have decided to repost this story with some amplifications and editing to reflect new information I’ve learned.

*   *   *

We’re going to be getting into deep territory tonight regarding Israeli military intelligence, the Shin Bet, and their ability to make a mockery of alleged Israeli democracy and freedom of the press.

Anat Kam: 'Disappeared' Israeli journalist

An Israeli friend brought me word that Anat Kam, an entertainment writer for the popular Israeli internet portal, Walla, was secretly arrested and imprisoned, after which she was placed under house arrest by Israeli authorities.  Needless to say, this is a highly unusual development.  In fact, I can’t remember the last time this happened to an Israel journalist.  I apologize that most of the material I’ll be linking to is still in Hebrew and not yet translated.  If that situation changes I’ll be adding English language links or sources.

Though Kam denies this, Israeli sources maintain she has been fingered by the Shin Bet as the source of a highly damaging 2008 Haaretz report that noted that a number of Palestinian militants who, the IDF claimed in separate media reports, were killed during firefights were actually assassinated in cold blood.  This of course wouldn’t be news since it has happened many times before.  What was news was that in 2006 the Supreme Court laid down specific and limited procedures under which targeted assassinations may be pursued.  Haaretz revealed that the IDF was ignoring the Supreme Court’s ruling and essentially killing militants in cold-blood and covering up the fact.  It approved killings even if civilians were also likely to be killed.  It approved killing suspects who were not “ticking-bombs,” another contravention of the Supreme Court.  In fact, as recently as 2009 the IDF killed Palestinians under suspicious circumstances which Palestinians have labelled murder in cold blood, leading one to believe that targeted assassinations continue.

The Haaretz report, which presumably and inexplicably passed military censorship, displayed two IDF top-secret documents drawn up by the military senior command, which laid out the provisions for the killings and proved that they were ignoring the Supreme Court ruling.

A former intelligence agent, Jonathan Dahoah Halevi, working as a researcher for Dore Gold’s Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, examined the documents in detail attempting to trace the source.  While he didn’t specifically identify Kam, he did make clear that he believed the “Deep Throat” served in a position in military intelligence which allowed access to such documents.

Dahoah Halevi fed the story to ShalomLife, a Canadian Israeli news portal which published this rather sloppy right-wing slant on the Kam case. Dahoah Halevi was the editor of Shalom Toronto, listed as a sponsor of ShalomLife. The publisher of ShalomLife, Yossi Arbel, is also the publisher of Shalom Toronto. Some speculate that it may be an attempt by the Jerusalem Center to smoke out an Israeli journalist who will break the gag order by reporting on a story previously reported outside Israel.

On a rather humorous personal note, the author of the ShalomLife article confuses this blog with an “internet forum belonging to the Israeli left” by misattributing a quotation from this post to such an entity:

Internet forums belonging to the Israeli left have expressed support for the leak by Anat Kam, and have called it “a moral act” and “a civil duty”. One of the messages stated: “We must fight for Israeli democracy even if Anat Kam cannot or will not do it herself, and even if the Israeli press cannot or does not want to do it itself.”

There is one especially salient, disturbing passage in the ShalomLife story, which speculates on Kam’s motives in leaking the documents:

It is safe to say that the leaker wished to advance a political agenda and arouse wider public criticism in Israel and the world towards the IDF’s focused and deliberate policies against agents of terror.

First, it is convenient for an Israeli rightist to focus on Kam’s alleged political agenda and neglect that she undoubtedly had a moral and democratic agenda as well.  Second, since the author of the Jerusalem Affairs analysis was himself a former intelligence officer and because Gold is a Likud loyalist, we can safely assume that this reflects the Shin Bet’s own views in the matter.  Which is all the more reason to fight this detention tooth and nail.  The far-right can natter all they wish about opposition to its policies being political, but the truth is that opposing targeted assassination and leaking material that documents violations of the law is a MORAL act and a the democratic duty of a citizen.  We must fight for Israeli democracy even if Anat Kam cannot or will not do so herself.  And even if the Israeli press cannot or will not do so itself.  On that note, Haaretz, who used Kam’s materials for its scoop, has so far written nothing about her predicament.  That seems to me an unfortunate editorial decision.

The Israeli sources who have written about this note that there is a military gag under preventing reporting not only about the alleged leak, but that Kam was arrested at all.  I call this censorship of infinite regress.  Which may explain why Haaretz has been silent. One hopes the Israeli press will find their voice and do their duty as journalists regardless of the strictures of the national security state.

Those who believe in Israeli democracy should explain how a citizen can disappear without a trace.  Is this China, where the government denies it even is detaining a troublesome dissident who has disappeared?  Is this the face Israel wants the world to see?  Does the security apparatus have the right to run roughshod over whatever civil liberties citizens retain?  I should add that this isn’t quite as bad as China.  Some people now know what happened to Anat Kam.  She is safe although under detention.  But other than that, there are a lot of what Don Rumsfeld was fond of calling, in that inimitable way he had with the English language, “known unknowns.”

Apparently, it took over a year, but they have finally closed in on Kam as the culprit.  They have really put the fear of God into her.  As Israeli bloggers and activists have become aware of this incident and written about it publicly, associates of Kam have approached them asking that they desist.  Each individual has to consult their conscience in situations like this.  But I personally can see no benefit to Israeli democracy or even Kam herself by keeping silent.  Undoubtedly, intelligence agencies have threatened her with horrible punishments if she doesn’t maintain absolute muteness.  As a 23-year-old relatively unfamiliar with the school of hard knocks that is the Shin Bet or military intelligence (where she presumably worked and which presumably investigated the leak), she’s quaking in her boots.  Who could blame her?

But I think that others need to have different priorities.  Even if Kam doesn’t want to, or can’t fight for herself we must do so ourselves.  And again, we do this for the sake of Israeli democracy.  We do this to attempt to draw red lines and prevent the intelligence services from crossing them.  For we know that the Israeli national security state puts little stock in the rights of its citizens–witness the trampling of the rights of those whose passports and identities were stolen by the Mossad in carrying out the Dubai assassination.

We must make common cause with those Israelis and human rights NGOs who fight against such outrages.  As such, a measure of thanks is due the Israel Democracy Institute and its ejournal, The Seventh Eye, which has featured fine reporting on this matter.  Sol Salbe has directed me to an excellent archive of linked online articles about Kam’s situation.  Indymedia Israel also wrote up the story (web page now taken down) providing additional information.  Maariv published a highly allusive piece by Kam’s apparent boss, which reminds me of samizdat of decades past, which satirized the political culture of authoritarian regimes through allegory, indirection and oblique allusion.  Here is the first sentence:

How can a journalist be detained for over a month and everyone stays silent?  The journalists in Shoo-Shoo-land must be nonentities, otherwise it would be impossible to explain how in the past month not a single one of them wrote a single word on the journalist’s detention.

Let’s not forget that we’re talking about the Only Democracy in the Middle East™ here.  And lest we forget how the Shin Bet has dealt in the past with similarly damaging incidents, we need only remind ourselves of the Kav 300 Affair.

I wonder why the spooks did not target Kam sooner since she leaked the documents over a year ago.  Possibly, she was working on a current story they didn’t want to see the light of day and this prevented her from reporting it.  Or perhaps, the current political climate in which the far-right is running roughshod over the rights of peace and human rights activists with the approval of the government has emboldened the intelligence establishment to light out after practicing journalists.  It may also be possible that Kam is part of a larger constellation and the investigation includes her, but goes beyond her as well.

We must fight back.  We must help Israeli democrats turn back this assault on freedom of the press, free speech, and democracy.

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Under the majority’s view, I suppose it may be a First Amendment problem that corporations are not permitted to vote, given that voting is, among other things, a form of speech.

…We need to be a registered voter to run in the Republican primary, which is the place we feel would be most hospitable to a corporate candidate. At least initially, but I guess down the road, you know, the logic of the decision again plays out, and the parties really won’t be so relevant.

Hensal here bemoans the fact that politicians have bid up the price of political influence.  Instead, he urges voters to save money by installing a company directly in Congress and so avoiding the middleman:

Well, we just believe that we should take the middleman out of politics. If you’re going to let the ability to have unlimited money flow from corporations, you know, into campaigns, well, you’ll just have greedy politicians sort of bidding up the price to do politics.

…The consumer would suffer over time, you know, paying a politics tax. So we’re just advocating taking the middleman out and directly electing corporations…

I love this killer campaign slogan:

…Clearly our one of our campaign themes is to put people second or even third, but we do, for now, need to make sure we have some votes.

Murray Hill, Inc., who Robert Siegel affectionately refers to as “Murray” throughout the interview, also has its own Facebook page with this slogan:

Corporations are people, too…I think the Supreme Court majority’s decision really brings that home. I think they set aside this whole old-fashioned notion that we are somehow endowed by a creator with inalienable rights, and it’s a superstition that they just put aside and really focused on what speech is for them, which is a product.So for us, why not run for Congress? I mean, we’re challenging a political system that’s, frankly, sort of biased towards bodied people.

Here, Hensal explores the brilliant notion that corporations suffer discrimination just like ethnic minorities and are deserving of protection under the Civil Rights Act:

…We’re fighting an uphill battle, but we need to challenge these things just like civil rights movements have challenged boundaries for, you know, generations.

Political satire can provide such delicious revenge for right-wing stupidity!

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Newspaper headline with Bibi's image: We're Building in Jerusalem. Ahmadinejad: Enough talking, Mr. Obama. The time's come for sanctions (against Israel)

Folks, I’m about to let you in on a dirty, little secret: I actually agree with Tom Friedman’s N.Y. Times column today, because it contains an uncharacteristically blunt attack on the latest scandal in Israel’s relations with the U.S.:

…On his recent trip to Israel…the vice president missed a chance to send a powerful public signal: He should have snapped his notebook shut, gotten right back on Air Force Two, flown home and left the following scribbled note behind: “Message from America to the Israeli government: Friends don’t let friends drive drunk. And right now, you’re driving drunk. You think you can embarrass your only true ally in the world, to satisfy some domestic political need, with no consequences? You have lost total contact with reality. Call us when you’re serious. We need to focus on building our country.”

That’s what I said to myself when I first heard about the housing construction.  This is classic Israeli blunderbuss tactics.  They’ve done precisely this many times in the past.  That the Obama administration didn’t anticipate such a provocation as this and immediately act in the sort of strong and deliberate manner, depressed and disappointed me.  That a usually pro-Israel supporter like Friedman had almost precisely my point of view frankly amazed me.

But the fact of the matter is that Obama didn’t act when he should have.  He steamed and the anger and resentment grew.  Though it doesn’t matter that much when the U.S. got angry, it would’ve made a far stronger and more effective statement to have acted immediately.  I hate to say this but it’s like disciplining your pet.  If he eats the Thanksgiving turkey (as my dog has done) and you come home to find a carcass sitting on the floor, whacking him on the nose with a newspaper will be a lot less effective than if you catch him in the act and make sure that all hell breaks loose.  Then he knows precisely what he did wrong and not to do it again.

This goes to the ongoing weakness and equivocation of the administration in so many areas.  You simply can’t beat a poker player like Bibi (or virtually any Israeli PM) by vacillating.  And that’s what Obama has done.  He stakes out a position and gradually whittles it down so that after a few months you hardly remember what the opening position was.

Friends of mine I respect like M.J. Rosenberg and Sol Salbe are practically breaking out their Obama buttons again.  I’m not so sure it’s that time yet.  The president’s got a long way to go.

Let’s start by seeing how he handles Aipac’s upcoming national policy conference at which virtually every DC political player is expected to pay their obeisance to the Lobby.  I read one blogger wag say he expected Biden to come on all fours–perhaps a bit harsh but not terribly so.  Aipac has made its deep displeasure known regarding the Obama meltdown on the housing controversy.  Joe Lieberman reacted with typically annoying dismissiveness:

“Let’s cut the family fighting.  It’s unnecessary; it’s destructive of our shared national interest. It’s time to lower voices, to get over the family feud between the U.S. and Israel. It just doesn’t serve anybody’s interests but our enemies.”

Notice how Lieberman ellides our enemies and Israel’s and they become one, as if there is no difference between our national interests and Israel’s.  And who might that “enemy” be?  Well, since the row concerns the theft of Palestinian land and building illegal settlements on it, we can safely assume that Lieberman includes the Palestinians among Israel’s and the U.S.’ enemies.  Perhaps he might’ve been alluding to Iran, but that nation is a lot less interested in the issue of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem than the Palestinians are.  So I think it’s interesting just whose side Joe is on and whose side he’s not on.  And frankly, Joe Lieberman is on Israeli’s side and not on America’s side.  Of course, as I wrote above he sees them as being one and the same.  But they’re not.

Speaking of provocations, Israel has dropped another bomb on the Palestinians with the rededication of the gleaming Hurva Synagogue in the contested Jewish Quarter of the Old City.  This follows an earlier provocation by which Bibi named two religious sites in Hebron as “national heritage sites.”  After he did so, Palestinians began streaming to the Temple Mount in the hundreds and thousands to protest.  Israel then closed off the area to Muslim worshipers and protesters.  Now Israel has added insult to injury in such a way that it is meant either as a deliberate poke in the eye or the height of cluelessness (and what’s the difference ultimately?).  Hamas has reacted by calling for a “day of rage,” which has brought out protesters in full force.  This tit for tat could easily escalate into a Third Intifada if Israel isn’t careful (and when has it been?).

The Jewish Quarter government development authority has the nerve to proclaim that there is no political subtext to the rededication.  Of course there is a political subtext.  There always is when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians.  Precisely when one sides claims it is acting without premeditation is when the other side suspects their motives most (and often rightly so).

Then there is this further gobbledygook from Bibi himself in his speech marking the synagogue ceremony:

“I know many are moved by this moment, and rightly so. But we’re not the only ones moved by our faith. We have enabled adherents of other religions to restore their places of worship as well. We proudly uphold our heritage, we have returned to our cities, and we also give the same freedom of worship to other religions.  The people of Israel maintain their heritage and through that maintain the heritage of others.”

The PM really doesn’t give a crap about the Palestinians.  This statement was intended for an international audience, especially Christians.  It was meant to reassure them that even though we’re sticking it to the Muslims in Jerusalem, we remember with affection those of other religions who know there place in the Israeli scheme of things.

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Yesterday, I filmed a 30 minute interview with Bill Alford for his Moral Politics TV show about the Mossad assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabouh in Dubai.  It’s a handy introduction to the many posts I’ve written on the subject and roves over territory like targeted assassinations, the Mossad’s trampling on the identities and rights of its own citizens, the U.S. connection to the crime, the impact of the Holocaust on Israel’s psychic and political life, and much more.

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I have changed the status of this post to private, thus removing it from public access out of respect for Israeli peace activists who inform me that the alleged leaker is negotiating with the authorities over a plea deal and that publication of the details of the case could jeopardize this process.  I have grave concerns about whether I did the right thing, since it appears to me that silence only furthers the interests of the intelligence agencies prosecuting her and the IDF, which wishes the whole embarrassing episode would just go away.

To thwart this goal, I’d like here to review the original Haaretz story (English translation here–a cursory reading indicates to me the original is much more comprehensive and damning than the translation) which utilized the leaks about targeted assassinations.  First, let’s go back to 2006 when the Israeli Supreme Court refused to outlaw this tactic, which Israeli human rights NGOs argued persuasively was a violation of international law.  As a compromise, the Supreme Court said it would continue to allow such extrajudicial killings as long as they observed certain criteria.  First, the victim had to be a ticking-bomb, that is someone imminently planning a terror attack.  Second, he or she could only be killed if there was no other way of apprehending them short of death.  Third, there could be no danger of killing innocent civilians in such an attack.

The leaked IDF memos proved that the IDF, after the Supreme Court ruling, had liquidated terrorists included on the list, but had publicly released information on their killing which made it appear as if they had been killed during a normal military operation in which they posed a threat to IDF soldiers.  In reality, they were killed in cold blood.

In the memo, the army senior staff explicitly permit killing the victims even if civilians might be killed.  It also made no provision for capturing the wanted person alive.  The mission’s goal was death.  In another memo, the chief of staff specifically postpones a killing timed for the visit of a U.S. secretary of state.  In other words, the victim was not a “ticking bomb” and postponement of his death was a matter of political expediency as it would embarrass the government for it to happen during a U.S. diplomatic visit.

Haaretz published its story in 2008 thus embarrassing the IDF.  But as far as I know, the Supreme Court was not embarrassed enough to take any remedial action to ensure its ruling was respected.  Further, another part of the ruling directed the establishment of a committee to review these assassination and ensure they comply with the Supreme Court directive.  To this day, such a committee has not been established.

As late as 2009, the IDF announced it had killed wanted militants on the West Bank.  The army claimed they were armed and thus posed a threat, but even it admitted they had not fired a shot.  Palestinian witnesses claimed they were executed in cold blood.  As far as the Israeli military is concerned, impunity–but not the truth–goes marching on.

The Israeli who leaked these documents did a great service to Israeli democracy, even if she potentially violated a law.  What was worse–the IDF treating the highest court in the land with impunity while engaging in acts of savagery violating international law?  Or a young person who saw an evil and attempted to expose it?

Someone please tell me what kind of democracy allows its intelligence and military to run roughshod over the rule of law.  What kind of country allows its domestic intelligence service to arrest a journalist secretly and maintain her in detention secretly.  In what kind of country does a journalist simply disappear with other journalists and news outlets having no recourse to publish about it?  China?  Cuba?  Vietnam? Iran?  North Korea?  Is that what Israel is aiming for?  To be no better than countries ruled by despots?

I say to the Shin Bet and IDF: remove the gag order.  Allow your allegedly free press to report this story.  Don’t treat someone doing their duty as a citizen as an enemy of the state.  I look forward to the time when I can make my original post accessible once again.

There are several Hebrew sources which have reported on this story.  Here is a wonderful fable about an imaginary place called Shoo-Shoo land which disappears a journalist without a trace.  The ejournal of the Israel Democracy Institute, The Seventh Eye, has also written a tough critique of this incident, It Can’t Happen Here.  Unfortunately, there is almost nothing about this in English yet.

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