Saturday, 10 April 2010

Israel Matzav: Israel is not Switzerland

Israel is not Switzerland

There were some comments on the gag order in the Anat Kam case. I made some comments about it here. The JPost's Yaakov Katz adds:

One of the Shin Bet’s main mistakes was its insistence that the gag order remain in effect until it heard back this week from Blau’s attorney that he had rejected another offer to reach an agreement. This came almost two weeks after the story broke and made its way quickly around the world.

While the use of the gag order is questionable, ultimately Diskin is correct in his pursuit of the additional documents suspected of being in Blau’s hands.

Israel is not Switzerland and the documents Kamm allegedly stole reveal emergency IDF deployment plans, classified weaponry, secret drills and sensitive intelligence, and constitute a treasure chest that any Middle Eastern country would love to get its hands on. This is not something that can be taken lightly.

He also speaks to another point I discussed in that post: The IDF's screening procedures for security clearance.

Kamm, the main culprit, is accused of stealing some 2,000 secret military documents from the office of the commander of the IDF’s Central Command, burning them onto a CD and then handing them over to Blau on a disk-on-key data storage device.

Her motivation, according to the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), was her radical ideology. Her presence in a top general’s office and her exposure to classified material raises serious questions about the IDF’s ability to run background checks on its soldiers and prevent the infiltration of spies into its ranks.

Charged with espionage, Kamm faces up to 25 years in jail if convicted.

I would love to hear from anyone who knows more about this, but I suspect that the IDF's attitude is "she was born in Israel and therefore we can trust her." That attitude hasn't been true since at least the Yom Kippur War. Maybe it's time to start doing something about it.

Read the whole thing.

Israel Matzav: Israel is not Switzerland

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