The Washington Post is covering the house arrest of former IDF soldier Anat Kam, for allegedly passing classified documents to Haaretz regarding assassinations of Palestinian militants in the West Bank.
The Independent relates Kam’s arrest to the flight of Uri Blau, a Haaretz reporter, to London. He broke the story in 2008. Richard Silverstein has been all over this story, by the way; when will it break in the US mainstream? Independent:
In an unusual move, Israel has placed a gagging order on national media, preventing them from reporting any aspect of the Kam case. Israel’s Channel Ten and Haaretz are expected to challenge this order on 12 April.
…The move to gag Israel-based media has sparked fevered debate on Jewish blogs, which have freely reported the story. Bloggers have railed against the blackout, saying it represents a critical challenge to the freedom of the press.
"I do not believe that a citizen can be arrested and tried for suspected security offences right under our noses without anyone knowing anything about it," wrote former Haaretz editor Hanoch Marmari in an eloquent cri de coeur on the Seventh Eye website.
"Trials do not take place here in darkened dungeons, nor do we have show trials behind glass or chicken wire. I have no doubt that such a strange, terrible and baseless scenario cannot take place in such a sophisticated democracy as our own."
Didi Remez says that Ron Kampeas has gotten on the story for JTA; presumably the US MSM, which defers always to conventional conservative pro-Israel opinion whenever a story reflects badly on the poodle-wags-the-dog state, will now accept that it is a story.
