One Journalist is under house arrest, another fled to London and is in hiding, fearing arrest, or worse, in his home country.
Where are they from? Iran? Burma?
No, the self-described "only democracy in the Middle East", Israel. The place our political leaders hold as a model of democracy.
They were reporting on a story that claims that the IDF violated the direction of the Israeli Supreme Court in shooting of Palestinians wanted for resisting Israeli Occupation rather than arresting them.
The story first was told in the US by Richard Silverstein at Tikun Olam.
Anat Kam, photo by Ido Kenan
An Israeli journalist has been under secret house arrest since December on charges that she leaked highly sensitive, classified military documents that suggest the Israeli military breached a court order on assassinations in the occupied West Bank.
Anat Kam, 23, goes on trial in two weeks on treason and espionage charges and could face up to 14 years in jail. A court-imposed gagging order, proposed by the state and more recently by the defence, is preventing media coverage of the arrest and charges in Israel.....
A Haaretz journalist, Uri Blau, who has written several stories critical of the Israeli military and who has been linked in internet reports to the case, has left Israel and is now in London, apparently for fear he will be targeted for his reporting. Haaretz and Channel 10, an Israeli television station, will challenge the media gagging order at a hearing on 12 April, two days before Kam's trial is due to start at the Tel Aviv district court.--- Guardian
Reporting the misdeeds of the government? Isn't that the job of the Press?
Just a few thoughts. First, i think it is clear who the powers-that-be want to keep this hidden from. It is not Palestinians. Not those involved in armed resistance to Israeli occupation. If anything, the publication that the Israeli army is going to shoot dead Palestinians rather than arrest them, in defiance of the Israeli Supreme Court, may be just the kind of news the Israeli army would like Palestinians to hear.
As Richard notes:
I’ve learned from an Israeli source some strange, but not entirely surprising news. There is a reason why the floodgates of the foreign press are opening to this story but they remain closed in the Hebrew language press. The Shin Bet doesn’t really care what we write about this story. What they really worry about is their own citizens, what they’ll learn about it, and what they’ll say about it when they do.
It is the possibility of damaging material might, just might, lead to calls for changed policies and perhaps to calls for accountability for the Israeli Army that i think they find so frightening. Isn't that why the Nixon Administration worked so hard to stop the Pentagon Papers- you don't think it was because they wanted to prevent the Vietnamese from knowing the US government has been lying to American people for decades, do you?
A week from today, on April 12, Israeli newspaper Haaretz will be taking this case to court to lift the gag order. IN the meantime, Uri Blau sits in London.
Dov Alfon, editor of Haaretz, said: "Uri Blau is in London. He will be there until his editors decide otherwise. We are ready to continue to keep him in London as long as needed. Uri Blau published a lot of articles in Haaretz. All of them are dynamite stuff and it is clear of course that the authorities are not satisfied with these kind of revelations in a major newspaper.
"We understand this but we also understand that Israel is still a democracy and therefore we intend to continue to publish whatever public interest demands and our reporters can reveal."- Guardian, because they can't yet print it in Haaretz