Anat Kamm–Uri Blau affair
After she finished her military service, Kamm copied the documents to a CD and leaked it to the Israeli Haaretz journalist Uri Blau.
Information from the leak suggested that the military had defied a ruling by the Supreme Court of Israel against assassinating wanted militants in the West Bank who could potentially be arrested safely.
[13] Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin said that the case "had the potential to cause grave damage to state security", and defined the documents as "the kind that any intelligence agency would be delighted to get its hands on".
Uri Blau (Hebrew: אורי בלאו, born 1977) is an Israeli writer and journalist and currently an investigative reporter for the Haaretz newspaper, specializing in military affairs.
In 2008, Blau published a report[14] based on these documents, which said that the IDF senior command planned and executed targeted killings of three people, in violation of an earlier 2006 ruling of the Israeli Supreme Court limiting the circumstances in which such a tactic could be used.
"But in case [the soldiers] identify one of the senior leaders of the Islamic Jihad, Walid Obeid, Ziad Malaisha, Adham Yunis, they have permission to open fire in accordance with their appraisal of the situation during the operation.
[15] Following a petition for investigation by two Israeli leading human rights attorneys,[15] the Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz responded in a letter challenging the allegations made by Blau: According to documents released by The Tel Aviv District Court, Kamm said during her interrogation: "There were some aspects of the IDF's operational procedures in the West Bank that I felt should be public knowledge...
The first overseas reporting on the case came in the Tikun Olam blog, which collaborated with Israeli bloggers and journalists to bring the story into the public consciousness.
[18] After pressure from articles in the foreign media and from the Israeli press itself, which resented its muzzling, the gag order was removed on 8 April and an indictment was published accusing Kamm of espionage and damaging the security of the state.
The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders issued a statement saying that "Defence of national security is a legitimate objective but censorship must not be used to prevent the Israel Defense Forces from being held responsible if they broke the law.
The Haaretz newspaper and Channel 10 filed a petition to the District Court in Tel Aviv against the gag order, which was eventually lifted on 8 April.
[28] On 6 February 2011, Kamm was convicted in the Tel Aviv District Court after pleading guilty in a plea bargain to leaking more than 2,000 secret military documents to Haaretz.
[31] In a hearing before Supreme Court justice Miriam Naor, the prosecution accused Kamm of posing a major threat to the state, and claiming that due to her actions, "we are paying the price to this day."
Prosecutors also claimed that it was odd that Kamm complained of being judged prematurely by the press when she had previously argued that the public had a right to the information contained in the documents she leaked.
On 31 December 2012, the Supreme Court granted her appeal and shortened her sentence to three and a half years by majority decision, noting that she had confessed to the crime, cooperated with the investigation, spent a considerable period of time under house arrest, and is unlikely to make repeat violations.
