| Submit your comments on this article |
| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Haaretz Defends Treason and Espionage |
| 2010-04-14 |
| The partial lifting of the gag order on the Anat Kam espionage affair, which had already been exposed to the world media in March by Judith Miller, is stirring up a storm in Israel. The charge sheet accuses Kam of “divulging secret information with the intent to harm the security of the state,' which falls under “serious espionage' and carries a maximum life term. Haaretz, Israel's left-wing daily, is at the center of the storm — and tying itself in knots to defend Kam, its journalist Uri Blau, and itself. When sources in the defense establishment saw the stories, they worried about where they could have come from. The Israel Security Agency, better known as Shin Bet, eventually worked out a deal with Blau where he returned his documents and was promised they wouldn't be used to incriminate him or his sources. A few months later, in December 2009, the Shin Bet identified Kam as the source of the documents — but the problem was that she admitted to giving Blau far more documents than he had turned over. Kam was put under house arrest; Blau fled the country and is now in London. The Shin Bet negotiated with Blau's lawyers in an attempt to retrieve the documents. It was when they concluded this was futile that the gag order was lifted. As things now stand, Kam has been indicted and the trial is supposed to begin in May; the head of the Shin Bet, Yuval Diskin, has warned that Blau is endangering himself and the country by holding onto his documents in a foreign location, but Blau still has not agreed to return to Israel and give them up. Haaretz is rattled, and a sense of shock is said to hang over its editorial offices. It's not only that Kam acted out of what the charge sheet called “ideological motivations' arising from the extreme left — an outlook given much voice in Haaretz. It's also that Haaretz's own journalist, Blau, is involved — and people are good and mad. Yisrael Hasson, a former deputy head of the Shin Bet and a Knesset member from the center-left Kadima Party, called on people to cancel Haaretz subscriptions until Blau is fired and returns all the documents. And yet, amid the storm, Haaretz is sticking to its guns and to its reporter. On Sunday it published a piece called “Haaretz Answers Four Key Questions on the Anat Kam Case' that shows how low Israel's security actually ranks in its priorities. “Haaretz,' the article states, “believes that it cannot pass on all the documents Blau has to the defense establishment because its senior officials may use them to trace his sources.' The article also accuses the Shin Bet of “reneging' on its agreement with Blau — even though it was Blau who hoodwinked the Shin Bet by handing over only a fraction of his contraband. Yet Haaretz admits that it “decided to instruct Blau to remain abroad' despite the danger entailed. (It's even speculated that Diskin, out of desperation, sought to scare Blau into returning.) Also on Sunday Haaretz ran an op-ed by its columnist Yossi Sarid, a former leftist politician, arguing that what Kam did was fine because the institutions and country whose laws she violated aren't worth much anyway. “Let every Israeli mother decide,' Sarid intoned, "if she has entrusted her sons to an army and government worthy of her trust." By Monday Kam had waived her journalistic immunity, and her lawyer was trying to convince Blau to return to Israel and hand over the documents on the understanding that he wouldn't be charged. But even if such a deal is reached, Haaretz, for the bulk of the Israeli public, won't smell like roses in this affair. Indeed, the Israeli left as a whole has fallen on hard times lately. In the 2009 elections the two parties that most embody it, Labor and Meretz, won a total of 16 seats out of 120. Last February it was revealed that the New Israel Fund, a major and wide-ranging left-wing NGO, had supplied most of the false information enabling the Goldstone Report — recognized as an anti-Israeli calumny across the Israeli spectrum, that is, except for the far left. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #5 If cancelled subscriptions or legal expenses lead to Haaretz closing at least some good could come out of the affair. Gideon Levy's column could then originate in a Syrian newspaper where it belongs. |
| Posted by: Odysseus 2010-04-14 18:31 |
| #4 Isn't it odd how the Left - the self-styled 'socialists' - get enraged about all sorts of things and yet actual treason - betrayal of one's own society - is something they have no problem with whatsoever. In fact they glorify it. The Politics of Perverts. |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2010-04-14 12:48 |
| #3 Israel's own NY Times |
| Posted by: Frank G 2010-04-14 11:38 |
| #2 Well poisoners. Yes. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2010-04-14 07:25 |
| #1 Well poisoners. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2010-04-14 04:03 |