The Tel Aviv District Court Judge lifted on Thursday a months-long gag order regarding the case of Israeli ex-Soldier, and reporter, Anat Kam, for providing a reporter of Israeli daily Haaretz, information regarding the Israeli army rules of engagement.Chairman of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, David Rotem, said he would submit an amendment to the correction law asking to strip citizenship from any citizen who is found to be endangering and undermining Israel’s state security.
Rotem, of the Yisrael Beiteinu fundamentalist party, demands that citizens who get convicted should also be imprisoned and stripped of their state national insurance, and should not enjoy any prison educational privileges.
Rotem stated that Anat stole sensitive documents and should be punished for that, and added that the journalists who published those documents should also have the same severe penalty.
Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, B’Tselem, said that Israel is focusing on the issue of leaked documents while ignoring an investigation into the leak itself.
Haaretz stated that the leaked documents are allegedly classified information regarding the Israel Army’s rules of engagement.
The documents include sensitive information regarding illegal assassinations carried out by the army against Palestinians in the West Bank under the guise of “arrest operations”.
The army claims that the operations are meant to kidnap Palestinian fighters but the real nature of its operations is to assassinate the fighters, an issue that comes in violation to an Israeli High Court ruling.
B’Tselem stated that the last official assassination carried out by the Israeli forces took place in august of 2006. Since that date, Israel said that if there is a chance to arrest the “targets” then the army should do so, yet, assassinations continued.
A research conducted by B’Tselem revealed that that soldiers who carry these attacks, are operating as if they are on an assassination mission, and not on a mission to arrest wanted Palestinians.
Mohammad Abdul-Dayim, coordinator of the Middle East and North Africa Committee to Protect Journalist, told Haaretz that several international outlets, not bound by the Israeli gag order, published details of the affair, and that the Israeli reporter did her duty and confirmed the reports.
He told Haaretz that this story was published by several media outlets outside Israel, yet Israeli journalists “were somehow not allow to write about it”.
The Israeli Police found thousands of copies of security files at the apartment of Kam and also located similar files on her computer.
