Charged … Anat Kam faces more than 10 years in prison for allegedly copying top-secret documents onto CDs during her military service in 2007. Photo: APThere she had access to a daily flow of information - summaries of classified meetings, situation assessments and secret investigations - described by the director of Israel's domestic security agency as ''the fantasy of every intelligence organisation''.
Gradually storing material that interested her, Kam allegedly amassed a collection that included 700 documents marked ''secret'' and ''top secret'', copying them onto two CDs before finishing her military service. Kam then began working as a journalist for the online Israeli news service Walla, and alerted several other journalists to the documents in her possession.
In November 2008, more than a year after Kam had left the IDF, the liberal daily newspaper Haaretz published a story accusing senior IDF commanders of approving illegal assassinations of Palestinian militants and innocent civilians. The story detailed how the IDF had violated Israeli Supreme Court rulings regarding the apprehension of wanted men in the occupied West Bank territory, and showed how the military had identified three Palestinian militants from Islamic Jihad as targets for assassination.
When the story was published, the IDF chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, ordered an investigation into the leak, which eventually led to Kam. After her arrest a gag order on the case was imposed on all Israeli media.
Also fearing prosecution, the Haaretz journalist who published the original story, Uri Blau, fled to London, where he remains as he tries to negotiate his return to Israel.
State prosecutors said Blau had returned 50 of the documents leaked to him under a previous deal with the authorities.
Kam faces a slew of espionage charges that could send her to prison for more than 10 years.
Her family and legal team went on the offensive as soon as the gag order on the case was lifted on Thursday.
Kam's lawyer, Eitan Lehman, said ''at no stage was any damage caused to the security of the state of Israel''.
Mr Lehman emphasised that Kam was not associated with any extreme political group and described her as an ordinary Israeli girl and ''a Zionist, salt of the earth''.
The case, he said, ''endangers Israeli democracy'' and was directed ''against all Israeli journalism''. State prosecutors have alleged that Kam ''acted out of ideological motives and with the intention of harming state security''.
The editor-in-chief of Haaretz, Dov Alfon, confirmed on Thursday that the articles were sent to Israel's military censor and were given permission for publication. But the lifting of the gag order has exposed the power of Israel's security apparatus to arrest Israeli citizens and impose news blackouts.
The ease with which Kam allegedly stole the documents has also severely embarrassed the IDF.
''This gives us a rare peek into what is a daily reality in security affairs, most of which pertain, naturally enough, to Arabs: a request by the security establishment is given almost no serious discussion,'' said an Israeli security analyst, Ofer Shelah.
He added: ''The magic words 'GSS' and 'state security' are enough for the judge to say Amen.''
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