Two days ago I was planning to argue in jest (but with a grain of truth) that the president should pardon Anat Kamm the journalist who leaked classified security documents to Haaretz reporter Uri Blau and was jailed for it. But now, I have to ask: What did the Shin Bet security agency want from her? Why did they hound her all the way to the prison gates, seeing as they themselves revealed problematic information about the IDF so recklessly on television? For some indecipherable reason, Shin Bet chief Yoram Cohen felt that his role in the successes of this summer's Operation Protective Edge was somehow overlooked and authorized his third-in-command to blab about it on national television. His intentions were good -- to encourage team spirit within the agency that is so crucial the security of the state -- but the result was distorted, not quite right. Does anyone really believe that the Shin Bet warned the IDF of a coming war with Hamas in the summer and the military, along with the Diplomatic-Security Cabinet, behaved like dummies that heard nothing and saw nothing? That is simply untrue. To wit, Hamas did not plan to go to war with Israel in the summer of 2014, just like Hezbollah did not plan to go to war with Israel in 2006. They dragged the region into war because they allowed their terror initiatives to run rampant due to loss of self-control. But the Shin Bet director already clashed with the head of Military Intelligence after Operation Protective Edge, and the report on television this week was an echo of that clash, so the burden of proof is on him. Did he issue a warning without putting it in writing? Did Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon and IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz all ignore the warning? If that were true, it would be tantamount to abandoning all the soldiers in the IDF. So they fell asleep. What did the head of the Shin Bet do? Comforted himself with the knowledge that he saved himself and held his peace? He didn't go to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee to make his warning heard? Nothing? I find it hard to believe. Now, an impossible situation has arisen. Gantz wrote a letter to Netanyahu, and the same prime minister who failed to settle the feud between former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and former IDF chief Gabi Ashkenazi may make the same mistake again in this affair. He wants quiet and cooperation and clear waters in a swamp whose water has already been contaminated. The relationship between the IDF and the Shin Bet is at an all-time low. The solution cannot be an artificially imposed. Someone needs to be reprimanded. In my opinion, it should be Cohen. The choice is Netanyahu's. But one of the two needs to learn that you can't escape this kind of clash without a scar or two, for the sake of both bodies, and for the sake of Israel's security.
