In herself Anat Kamm could not be more unimportant. As a symptom of the psycho-political ills that plague Western democracies Anat Kamm could not be more important.
The malaise her pseudo-intellectual narcissism mirrors can obviously be least afforded in beleaguered Israel, but it’s not only endemic here.
Moreover, it’s lauded as the epitome of politically correct bon ton not only by this country’s homegrown left-leaning media.
True, Israel can also least afford the damage inflicted by left-wing popularized misrepresentations – far more pervasive here than anywhere else due to the incomparable dominance of local leftist opinion-molders, who are particularly aggressive in the Kamm case. After all, they are covering their exposed rear ends.
And for this purpose it suits them to parade Kamm as a selfless journalist, standing her ground courageously in desperate defense of freedom of information. This, their basic contention, already constitutes a gross cock-and-bull narrative. One must either be mulishly gullible or uninformed in the extreme to consider Kamm a crusading journalist and portray her offense as inspired by allegiance to journalistic ethics.
OF LATE Kamm found employment as a gossip purveyor on an Internet site.
It’s quite a stretch to consider the 23-year-old philosophy student a professional in the forefront of investigative reporting. Besides, she broke the law long before her Website connection. She wasn’t remotely in journalism when, as a young conscript, she worked in the OC Central Command’s office, duplicated 2,200 documents, hid her haul and hung on to it long after her 2007 discharge.
That she later postured as a newswoman cannot retroactively justify her larceny. Would Kamm’s thievery be reckoned more reprehensible had she earned her living at a supermarket check-out counter?
Kamm basically emptied everything in her commander’s computer. She wasn’t selective. She didn’t home in on a particular issue (which would have been bad enough). Unlike a whistleblower, which she claims to be, Kamm snatched everything indiscriminately. That was an unmitigated breach of her oath.
Like every recruit, Kamm swore “to maintain loyalty to the State of Israel, its laws and legally authorized government, to accept without condition or reservation the discipline of the Israel Defense Forces, to obey all orders and instructions by authorized commanders and to devote all my energies and even sacrifice my life in the defense of the homeland and the freedom of Israel.”
Not only did Kamm thumb her nose at all the above, her cheerleaders now tell us that she did so out of conviction that she knew best what is better for us.
We could kiss our entire national defense good-bye if each and every soldier would do likewise with no guideline but his/her own youthful hubris. If each soldier were to decide that he/she is empowered to determine national policies and/or subvert endeavors not to his/her liking, the IDF would essentially have to shut down. So would any military hierarchy anywhere.
That may be precisely what assorted varieties of leftist anarchists fervently desire. Their goal is to destabilize, even abolish all authority.
To that end, Kamm achieved a glorious feat by swiping Israel’s most guarded military secrets.
IT MATTERS little that Kamm didn’t pass the contraband to outright enemy agents but handed it over to like-minded news-merchants – Uri Blau and his Ha’aretz confederates. All that matters is that she held on to material she shouldn’t have purloined and transmitted it to others who had no business getting it. The touchiest IDF documents – including detailed battle plans that literally put lives at risk – thereby fell into unauthorized hands. In Blau’s custody, and with Ha’aretz abetting him, they might have ended up anywhere.
Espionage’s bottom line is obtaining confidential information without permission from the legal proprietors of said information. That the secrets reached Blau’s possession, rather than Hamas’s, is no consolation. Top secrets on the loose can wreak havoc.
Secrets can be blown not only via the slipping of concealed microfilms to shady agents in secluded corners as per spy fiction. Careless blabber or reckless publication are treasure troves for enemy intelligence analysts.
This is why Americans were cautioned incessantly during WWII that “loose lips sink ships.” They do. It doesn’t help the casualties to know that they were backstabbed in the name of a high-minded cause.
Kamm betrayed the inordinate trust placed in her and released secrets that can help the enemy kill Israelis. For that she must pay. She would pay heavily in any of the shining sterling democracies whose pen-pushers now gloatingly lecture to us and compare Israel to Iran and North Korea. Neither the American military nor any European army – in countries no way existentially threatened like Israel – would for a minute countenance what Kamm did. See how mercilessly the US keeps punishing Jonathan Pollard, who never compromised American lives.
Nor should the claim that Kamm wasn’t motivated by antagonism but by altruism sway us. Some of the worst offenses were committed in the service of political creeds. The famous Cambridge Four – Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt – were all fueled by ideology. So were a string of fellow-travelers and “useful fools,” including Mordechai Vanunu and the still-mysterious Israel Beer, who assumed they were entitled to impose upon Israel’s democratic collective what they deem overridingly moral. Kamm’s innocent little girl looks don’t make her an innocent little girl.
Nor do Blau’s studied nonconformist looks make his hoarding of illicit material forgivable. Ha’aretz’s depiction of Blau as a martyr to safeguarding source-confidentiality cannot be more ludicrous. Indeed, were it not for Blau’s slapdash revelations and pretentiousness, Kamm’s role in supplying him with classified information would have never been discovered.
Rather than keep her secret, Blau, his editor and publisher all served Kamm’s head on a newspaper-lined platter. Ha’aretz’s former editor Hanoch Marmari said as much.
When the spin is stripped of sanctimonious malarkey, we’re left with an insolent soldier who considered herself licensed to steal and unconscionably endanger fellow soldiers. She may have been exploited by the unscrupulous media, but her offense wasn’t about freedom of the press.
This should get us thinking long and hard about what skewed values steer significant segments of our media. Kamm’s most avid boosters shrilly decry the reluctance of some IDF soldiers to uproot dedicated brethren from their homes. Sometimes, to hear leftists hectoring, obeying orders is the be-all and end-all. Suddenly, though, they aver that sabotage of IDF operations is admirably principled.
Were Kamm, heaven forefend, a teenaged (even preteen) settler who dared hoist a homemade placard at a sit-in, she’d be dragged, roughed-up, jailed and demonized. Kamm is under house arrest and coddled by commentators.
But this isn’t a matter of disloyalty being in the eye of the beholder.
Right-wingers want to strengthen the Jewish state rather than battle fellow Jews. That is radically not the agenda of Kamm and comrades.
Bucking the Trend ... 
‘After all, they are covering their exposed rear ends’
You wouldn’t expect the arrogant left to ever admit they are wrong ,not even after 16 plus years of their failed peace agenda would you ?
By their nature they are incapable of humility.It’s against their religion.
A distant relative now in Brainwash University once asked me what I thought of the Left.
My immediate response was; ‘They think they are God.’
The picture you selected of Anat Kamm exudes arrogance and pride, a terminal sin that so many in Israel but especially the left suffers from.
I spent a sad week reading some of Israel’s history in 2 Chronicles and it is full of stubborn arrogance and it’s end for so many in Israel at that time and yet Israel today does not learn from the past ans copies the same deadly course.
I submit that the hearts of Israel’s left are risen up to their destruction.
They are too proud and stubborn to heed any warnings and that is all that is left.
Keep in mind that this was a ‘good’ king who makes Israel’s modern day left look like children of Belial.
..and as long as he sought the LORD, God made him prosper. God helped him against the Philistines, against the Arabians who lived in Gur Baal, and against the Meunites.Also the Ammonites brought tribute to Uzziah. His fame spread as far as the entrance of Egypt, for he became exceedingly strong. ..But when he was strong his heart was lifted up, to his destruction, for he transgressed against the LORD his God by entering the temple of the LORD to burn incense on the altar of incense.
2 Chronicles 26
Settler schoolgirls are jailed for months and for much less.
Sarah writes: “Were Kamm, heaven forefend, a teenaged (even preteen) settler who dared hoist a homemade placard at a sit-in, she’d be dragged, roughed-up, jailed and demonized. Kamm is under house arrest and coddled by commentators.”
There are many stories of settler girls, preteen included, who are jailed for weeks and months for no good reason.
Israel National News highlights one of those stories on a column this week: “The Kam Case” by Rachel Sylvetsky.
Excerpts:
“My daughter, Chaya, was also deemed a danger to public security and the State. Five years ago, at the age of 14, she was arrested during an anti-disengagement demonstration and accused of speaking rudely to a policewoman.
“She was brought before the juvenile judge in Tel Aviv. The State prosecutor asked the judge to keep my Chaya in jail until the end of the legal proceedings against her because she was an ideologically motivated criminal, therefore unstoppable and a danger to the public and the State.
“What was so dangerous about her? She had participated in a non-violent civil disobedience demonstration a month before, was arrested, and released to community arrest, which forbade her from going to a similar demonstration. She disregarded that. In the words of the prosecutor, her danger to the security of the State and the public was clear.
(The judge) “sent Chaya to jail, to await her trial. We appealed, and our case went all the way to the Supreme Court of Israel. Justice Ayalla Procaccia heard our case and Justice Procaccia accepted the prosecution’s arguments.
“My 14 year old daughter was indeed an ideological criminal. Her crime, to quote the court, was ‘especially hard because it demonstrated utter disregard towards the law’….My daughter spent 40 days in jail before her trial came to court.
“Last week, the State prosecution decided to ask the court to change the conditions of Anat Kam’s arrest and place her in jail. As Justice.Procaccia was going to hear the case, I faxed her office a copy of Chaya’s protocol.”
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/9454
Sarah you hit a bases loaded homerun with “looselips.”
It is also not even being discussed by the ‘TIKSHORET.”
Next topic suggestion is why the Knesset is not discussing and investigating the New Israel Fund.
‘Next topic suggestion is why the Knesset is not discussing and investigating the New Israel Fund.’
Any even better and more pressing topic Israel needs to urgently ponder is ;
Why does Israel religiously follow fools and run to idiots looking for peace ?
How stupid has the US become ?
http://www.debka.com/article/8741/
‘With him is strength and wisdom: the deceived and the deceiver are his.
He leads princes away spoiled, and overthrows the mighty.
He pours contempt upon princes, and weakens the strength of the mighty
He increases the nations, and destroys them: he enlarges the nations, and straitens them again.
He takes away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth, and causes them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way.
They grope in the dark without light, and he makes them to stagger like a drunken man.’
Job 12
Is there anyone left with any doubt that the Holy One of Israel has made the US and her leaders incompetent fools and stumbling idiots ?
The blind and useful idiots will remain faithful to their idol unto the end.
I agree with #3 – Daaty’s suggestion for a topic: the NIF.
The issue is explosive and reveals how Israel’s sovereignty is being undermined by organizations that operate quite openly and with government sanction.
Moshe Dann wrote a column about the subject recently and he says
“A motion to investigate the New Israel Fund (NIF)by Israeli MK Otniel Schneller was withdrawn because of ‘intense pressure’.”
“Investigating the NIF will expose not only Kadima, Labor, and anti-settlement and anti-Israel organizations, but their connections to Israeli politicians — especially President Shimon Peres, his Peres Center for Peace, and its supporters.”
“Of the 123 NIF grantees, half are Arab or pro-Arab organizations with political agendas.”
The list of names involved should be quite long and interesting. It’s strange how something so important is being ignored by mainstream media.
You can read more of Moshe Dann’s column “New Israel Fund Revelations” here:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/9455
An even more explosive subject for research would be the PERSONAL business connections to Arab business (Palestinian or otherwise) of Israelis who contribute money to and/or actively support the NIF and related organizations.
It always comes down to “Follow the money”, doesn’t it? While a few are driven by ideals, most others are guided by simple personal interest and greed.
Although we are aware of how the Carter Foundation and the Clinton Foundation are heavily financed by Arab money, very few journalists or Israeli politicians dare to point out the obvious conflict of interest when those people interfere in Israeli affairs.
So if the MKs are too afraid to tackle the NIF issue, it will be left to independent researchers such as Sarah to do it.
You can never source a quote when you need to, but it was either van Mises or Hayek who said of socialists something very close to “bringing petty grievances to cataclysmic proportions.” He was talking about their aims and how they emanate from their youthful experiences. The quote (if you can call it that, given my shoddy filing system…) speaks equally for Kamm. The bullied by and large – aside from the most noble, decent ones – often seek revenge that is grossly and disastrously disproportionate to anything they suffered.
But, no! Don’t be fooled into thinking that I mean, or can assume, she was pushed up against a wall in elementary school, had her lunch money stolen, was called “fatty” or such like. No. It’s largely internally-derived, internalised, and – most, most importantly – self-perpetuated. Why do you think the academic despises the grubby businessman? Because life gives the latter the remuneration (that which the bright and noble deride!) that which the former lacks, despite all his brains and morality. The businessman generally loves the outcome of his actions – i.e. his work. Why do you think most output by social science academics is so negative, pessimistic and damning of society? Because they hate life. More on that later.
This bullying within Kamm is her hatred of the good for being the good. It’s her inability to do good as you and I and most Israelis would see it (a few missiles from Gaza or Lebanon, I found, reminded the moderates and the near-left who was good and who was evil in the region). So, she must destroy. She cannot self-critique – have you ever met a more sensitive, emotionally delicate & thus volatile sub-demographic than the far left? – so she must blame the Other. Her Utopia (the embodiment of perfect Leftist Jewish self-loathing: the obliteration of every last morsel of Jewishness – in the Middle East and the World, for some amalgamation of nothingness and nihilism) cannot materialise because of the actions of you and I am those who create (always artificially, remember) the status quo – i.e. the militaristic, Zionist Israelis state. She is like the jihadist: she doesn’t know it, but she does not seek anything. She seeks nothingness – that is, nonthingness in terms of Judaism. It’s the same for the Left in general. How can Socialists, jihadists, feminists, gay rights’ advocates, Black Power-ists, etc sing Kum Baya in unison? Because they are for nothing. It’s their shared hatreds that binds them: capitalism, liberalism, democracy, freedom, Westernism, Judeo-Christian values, etc. The problem is, when an opponent wants nothing, what can you give them to appease them? Judea? Gaza? Samaria? Golan? Dan? Negev? Like I said, it’s the Liechtenstein Syndrome of the foolish Israeli appeaser.
Kamm’s complete and utter selfishness – a trait the far left fool themselves into thinking they oppose, but in which they actually lead – enables her to be completely blind to the consequences of her actions. These actions, and actions similar in Israel and the West’s history, Sarah, is like anorexia*. It has almost nothing to do with the immediate matter at hand. It is almost completely about her desire to fight her demons. Her desire to make Israel a better place is to her what food is to an anorexic: it is a mere tool for a deeper-originating desire that is far more complex and pervasive. And very often unstoppable. Actions by those to the level of Kamm’s mentality cannot be stopped because, like many anorexics, her motives are infantile; without conscience or reason. To debate her, if you were so foolish, would be like debating a toddler for grabbing all the candy in a supermarket and throwing a tantrum. Ever see the similarity between a picture of a student protest and a child tantruming at his mother? Not coincidental at all. As she sits at these hearings and court cases, her resolve is as firm as that child: time stands still; nothing and no-one else exists; her universe is pre-Copernican.
My only recommendation is that she be treated severely and without a drop of compassion. Israel must be unyielding, otherwise she will be seen as tacitly sympathetic to Kamm’s ideology. No person nor people can be vilified and attacked without first their giving consent. And you only have to look at where this got Israel the last significant time she was so self-destructive: Oslo.
*I use this analogy with all due respect, and as a clinical psychologist (well, I graduate in Sept!). But I think the analogy is dangerously apt.
The 2nd round of the Kamm&Blau Traveling Circus (oh yeah!) is at the gates.
Haaretz’s lawyers have met with Mr Blau in London and, surprise surprise, have returned with the keys of the kingdom (Blau stayed safely behind). These magic keys are meant to unlock the stolen documents’ cache ( or is it the Pandora box?). All options are open.
I have a strange feeling that the Defense will do its best to lead the uninitiated straight to the Elysian Fields, the Good Guys’ home turf. There… “real” democracy reigns supreme, the freedom of speech knows no boundaries and – how else – the secrecy of a journalist’s sources is sacrosanct. As for stealing military secrets (wholesale): there are higher ideals
than bombing Gaza (I have omitted the part with the poor Palestinian children).
Well folks, you have been warned!
Before you fall for this sham, let us recall some (very) unpleasant facts:
After being nabbed by the General Security Service (GSS ) a.k.a. the Shabak , Anat Kamm allegedly confessed to the wholesale theft of more than 2000 highly classified IDF documents. This illicit material – which, according to Kamm, she copied onto CD-Rs and took home – could have easily been re- copied onto a variety of portable data-storage devices, such as CD-ROMs, Disk-on-Key (a brilliant Israeli invention) , external HD drive, screen-captured or even copied to her own personal Laptop! In other words: highly sensitive military info could have been easily replicated and disseminated at will. To my knowledge, at this point in time, there is no technical possibility to categorically prove that said secret info has not already been transferred to well-wishers around the globe. By the end of 2008 Israel went to war against the Hamas in Gaza. Out of fear that sensitive (stolen) info might have already reached the enemy, IDF was forced to change some of its operational plans right before going into battle !. Ms Kamm, evidently, had to stay behind. To this day, Anat Kamm is “arrested at home” and enjoying life in the State- of- Tel-Aviv. As for Blau, he returned some 50 illicit IDF docs, claiming that’s all he had.
When confronted with contradictory evidence, he managed to flee to London, where his stay is reportedly financed by his employer. The Shabak it doing its utmost to retrieve the stolen documents – or so we are told. To me, it’s malarkey!
At this point in time – some 3 to 5 yrs post facto – the retrieval of the cache contents is
no longer relevant for the security of the state. It may be useful for yet another “deal”
with the Haaretz lawyers, but that’s beside the point.
The damage has been done and the suspects are still free.
Indoctrination of the young, when exercised by an influential, authoritative figure – like, let’s say, your class teacher – is undoubtedly effective. While debating current events in one of Tel-Aviv’s better high-schools, a 12th- grader (soon to be recruited into the IDF),
spoke out against Anat Kamm’s wholesale theft of confidential IDF documents.
He opined that Kamm’s criminal act was apparently motivated by HATE, hate against the country and its army.
The class teacher – one Dr.(!) L.M. – harshly reprimanded the youngster, called him an “anti-Semite” and proceeded to lecture the class on the dangers of “blind hate” , postulating that “everyone has a little Nazi hidden deep inside…” . She further threw the “little Nazi” out, and told him not to bother to come back, ever !
This incident took place just before the Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The parents complained directly to the Education Ministry and the teacher had to recant and apologize, yet she was allowed to stay on her job. It is interesting to note that Dr. L.M. has been previously employed by same Ministry , where she held the senior position of Head Tutor for History studies in hi-schools, nationwide. No wonder. For decades, the Education Ministry has been in the hands of Meretz and its ilk, headed by such left-leaning luminaries as Yossi Sarid and Shulamit Aloni. Stay tuned.