[News] Mossad Operation Threatened Against Reporter

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/cook04132010.html
April 13, 2010


Whistleblowing Israeli Journalist Treated as "Fugitive Felon"


Mossad Operation Threatened Against Reporter

By JONATHAN COOK

in Nazareth.

An Israeli journalist who went into hiding after 
writing a series of reports showing lawbreaking 
approved by Israeli army commanders faces a 
lengthy jail term for espionage if caught, as 
Israeli security services warned at the weekend 
they would “remove the gloves” to track him down.

The Shin Bet, Israel’s secret police, said it was 
treating Uri Blau, a reporter with the liberal 
Haaretz daily newspaper who has gone underground 
in London, as a “fugitive felon” and that a 
warrant for his arrest had been issued.

Options being considered are an extradition 
request to the British authorities or, if that 
fails, a secret operation by Mossad, Israel’s spy 
agency, to smuggle him back, according to Maariv, a right-wing newspaper.

It was revealed yesterday that Mr Blau’s 
informant, Anat Kamm, 23, a former conscript 
soldier who copied hundreds of classified 
documents during her military service, had 
confessed shortly after her arrest in December to 
doing so to expose “war crimes”.

The Shin Bet claims that Mr Blau is holding 
hundreds of classified documents, including some 
reported to relate to Operation Cast Lead, 
Israel’s attack on Gaza in winter 2008 in which 
the army is widely believed to have violated the rules of war.

Other documents, the basis of a Haaretz 
investigation published in 2008, concern a 
meeting between the head of the army, Gabi 
Ashkenazi, and the Shin Bet in which it was 
agreed to ignore a court ruling and continue 
carrying out executions of Palestinian leaders in the occupied territories.

Yuval Diskin, head of the Shin Bet, who has said 
his organisation was previously “too sensitive 
with the investigation”, is now demanding that Mr 
Blau reveal his entire document archive and take 
a lie-detector test on his return to identify his 
sources, according to Haaretz. The newspaper and 
its lawyers have recommended that he remain in 
hiding to protect his informants.

Haaretz has also revealed that, in a highly 
unusual move shortly before Israel’s attack on 
Gaza, it agreed to pull a printed edition after 
the army demanded at the last minute that one of 
Mr Blau’s stories not be published. His report 
had already passed the military censor, which 
checks that articles do not endanger national security.

Lawyers and human rights groups fear that the 
army and Shin Bet are trying to silence 
investigative journalists and send a warning to 
other correspondents not to follow in Mr Blau’s path.

“We have a dangerous precedent here, whereby the 
handing over of material to an Israeli newspaper 

 is seen by the prosecutor’s office as 
equivalent to contact with a foreign agent,” said 
Eitan Lehman, Ms Kamm’s lawyer. “The very notion 
of presenting information to the Israeli public 
alone is taken as an intention to hurt national security.”

The Shin Bet’s determination to arrest Mr Blau 
was revealed after a blanket gag order was lifted 
late last week on Ms Kamm’s case. She has been 
under house arrest since December. She has 
admitted copying hundreds of classified documents 
while serving in the office of Brig Gen Yair 
Naveh, in charge of operations in the West Bank, between 2005 and 2007.

Under an agreement with the Shin Bet last year, 
Haaretz and Mr Blau handed over 50 documents and 
agreed to the destruction of Mr Blau’s computer.

Both sides accuse the other of subsequently 
reneging on the deal: the Shin Bet says Mr Blau 
secretly kept other documents copied by Ms Kamm 
that could be useful to Israel’s enemies; while 
Mr Blau says the Shin Bet used the returned 
documents to track down Ms Kamm, his source, 
after assurances that they would not do so.

Haaretz said Mr Blau fears that they will try to 
identify his other informants if he hands over his archive.

Mr Blau learnt of his predicament in December, 
while out of the country on holiday. He said a 
friend called to warn that the Shin Bet had 
broken into his home and ransacked it. He later 
learnt they had been monitoring his telephone, 
e-mail and computer for many months.

In a move that has baffled many observers, the 
Shin Bet revealed last week that Mr Blau was 
hiding in London, despite the threat that it 
would make him an easier target for other countries’ intelligence agencies.

Amir Mizroch, an analyst with the right-wing 
Jerusalem Post newspaper, noted that it was as if 
Israel’s security services were “saying to 
Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian, Hizbullah and 
Iranian intelligence agents in London: ‘Yalla, be 
our guests, go get Uri Blau’.” He added that the 
real goal might be to flush out Mr Blau so that 
he would seek sanctuary at the Israeli embassy.

Ms Kamm is charged with espionage with intent to 
harm national security, the harshest indictment 
possible and one that could land in her jail for 
25 years. Yesterday another of her lawyers, 
Avigdor Feldman, appealed to Mr Blau to return to 
Israel and give back the documents to help “minimise the affair”.

“The real question is whether this exceptionally 
heavy-handed approach is designed only to get 
back Kamm’s documents or go after Blau and his 
other sources,” said Jeff Halper, an Israeli 
analyst. “It may be that Kamm is the excuse the 
security services need to identify Blau’s circle of informants.”

Mr Blau has already published several stories, 
apparently based on Ms Kamm’s documents, showing 
that the army command approved policies that not 
only broke international law but also violated the rulings of Israel’s courts.

His reports have included revelations that senior 
commanders approved extra-judicial assassinations 
in the occupied territories that were almost 
certain to kill Palestinian bystanders; that, in 
violation of a commitment to the high court, the 
army issued orders to execute wanted Palestinians 
even if they could be safely captured; and that 
the defence ministry compiled a secret report 
showing that the great majority of settlements in 
the West Bank were illegal even under Israeli law.

Although the original stories date to 2008, the 
army issued a statement belatedly this week that 
Mr Blau’s reports were “outrageous and 
misleading”. No senior commanders have been 
charged over the army’s lawbreaking activities.

B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, said its 
research had shown that “in many cases soldiers 
have been conducting themselves in the 
territories as if they were on a hit mission, as opposed to arrest operations”.

It added that the authorities had “rushed to 
investigate the leak and chose to ignore the 
severe suspicions of blatant wrongdoings depicted in those documents”.

A group of senior journalists established a 
petition this week calling for Mr Blau to be 
spared a trial: “So far, the authorities have not 
prosecuted journalists for holding secret 
information, which most of us have had in one 
form or another. This policy by the prosecution 
reflects, in our view, an imbalance between 
journalistic freedom, the freedom of expression and the need for security.”

However, media coverage of the case in Israel has 
been largely hostile. Yuval Elbashan, a lawyer, 
wrote in Haaretz yesterday that Mr Blau’s fellow 
military reporters and analysts had in the past 
few days abandoned their colleague and proven 
“their loyalty to the [security] system as the lowliest of its servants”.

One, Yossi Yehoshua, a military correspondent 
with the country’s largest-circulation newspaper, 
Yedioth Aharonoth, who is said to have been 
approached by Ms Kamm before she turned to Mr 
Blau, is due to testify against her in her trial due next month.

Chat forums and talkback columns also suggest 
little sympathy among the Israeli public for 
either Ms Kamm or Mr Blau. Several Hebrew 
websites show pictures of Ms Kamm behind bars or next to a hangman’s noose.

A report on Israel National News, a news service 
for settlers, alleged that Ms Kamm had been under 
the influence of “rabidly left-wing“ professors 
at Tel Aviv University when she handed over the 
documents to the Haaretz reporter.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in 
Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are 
“<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745327540/counterpunchmaga>Israel 
and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and 
the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) 
and 
“<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1848130317/counterpunchmaga>Disappearing 
Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” 
(Zed Books). His website is <http://www.jkcook.net>www.jkcook.net.

A version of this article originally appeared in 
The National 
(<http://www.thenational.ae>www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.




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