A short autobiography released to the press on Thursday by Anat Kamm, the journalist and former IDF soldier at the center of an unfolding espionage case involving thousands of classified IDF documents that were leaked to a
Haaretz reporter, corresponded with the description of her offered by her attorney, Eitan Lehman, during a press conference at his Jerusalem office.
“She is a mainstream Israeli in every way,” Lehman told reporters of the 23-year-old Kamm, who is under house arrest in Tel Aviv. “She’s a Zionist. [And she] denies that any damage was done to the security of the State of Israel or that it was ever her intention to do so.”
Nonetheless, Kamm’s rap sheet includes two counts of “serious espionage” – one for “gathering” and the other for “divulging” classified information – and explicitly states that she “did so out of ideological motivations and with the intent to damage the security of the state.”
According to the statement she issued, Kamm was born in Jerusalem in 1987, Kamm studied at the Ofek School for Gifted Children in the capital, while also attending regular state primary and middle schools.
She graduated from the Leyad Ha’universita High School in 2004, was a Scout leader, and went to New York as part of an Israel Scouts delegation that participated in a summer camp there. Kamm has been dancing classical ballet for 10 years.
From September 2003 to March 2005, Kamm worked for the education section of what was then
Yediot Jerusalem. In January 2005, she started writing for the youth page on the Walla! Web site, called “the ZONE.”
In April 2005, before being drafted, Kamm attended a preliminary pilot’s course but did not pass. She entered the army in July 2005 and was moved to the office of the Central Command after completing her basic training.
According to the Shin Bet, the nearly 2,000 documents that Kamm passed on to
Haaretz reporter Uri Blau, were copied during the time she served in the bureau of OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh, which lasted from 2005 until her discharge in 2007.
In August 2007, about two months after finishing her military service, Kamm began working for Walla!, which was more than 30% owned by
Haaretz, until last month, when the newspaper sold its shares to Bezeq.
In November 2008, she began studying history and philosophy at Tel Aviv University.
The Shin Bet probe that named her as the leak, began after the publication of two articles in
Haaretz – the first in late October 2008, which accused the IDF of defying a Supreme Court ruling against killing wanted Palestinian terrorists who could have been captured alive.
The next article, in November 2008, suggested that the military had unilaterally loosened its rules of engagement and marked terrorists for assassination.
Kamm
was identified by the Shin Bet as the source of the leak in late 2009,
and she has been under house arrest since December. An indictment was
filed against her in January 2010.
In her biography Kamm also spoke of her family.
“My [mother], Ada Gerscht, is a social worker in the Welfare Ministry,
and [my father], Yigal Kamm, is a former insurance agent and guide in
Israel and abroad.
“My father was wounded as a paratrooper during reserve duty in 1968,”
Kamm wrote. “I have two sisters and a brother from my father’s earlier
marriage. My brother has two children and one of my sisters has a
daughter and another child on the way.”
“That same sister is married to Sami Sokol, a reporter for
The
Washington Post,” Kamm added. “Although nothing was passed on to him.”