Roi Ben-Yehuda has written an article about the investigation for Jewcy.

Excerpt:

“Curtailing the freedoms of the press, speech, and movement is a price that is too high to justify the existence of the amendment to the Infiltration Prevention Law. A democracy should not cage its citizens for the sake of potential threats. One may expect such laws in countries like Iran, Egypt, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia, but not from a country that proudly proclaims it is the only democracy in the Middle East.

Moreover, it is not clear to me that much public good is served by this law. In a healthy and vital democracy the role of the press is to keep the government accountable by giving the people reliable and independent information about their world. When the government bars its journalist from investigating for themselves the reality of their neighbors, it weakens its democratic character.

Read the full article here.

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I responded to the naysayers in the comments as follows:

There has actually never been a single case of an Israeli civilian being abducted and held for ransom in an enemy state that s/he entered using a foreign passport. That does not mean the scenario is impossible, but there are precedents that show it is highly unlikely.

One recent precedent occurred in October 2002, when a French-Israeli journalist named Gideon Kouts covered the Francophone Summit in Beirut as a reporter accredited for a French-Jewish newspaper. Kouts’ Israeli nationality was exposed when several Lebanese reporters at the summit heard him conducting a telephone conversation in Hebrew. The agitated Lebanese reporters surrounded Kouts, who was protected by the security guards at the conference. Kouts was stripped of his credentials for the conference because he had “caused an uproar” and was suspected of filing a story for an Israeli media outlet, for which he was not accredited. Interestingly, the Lebanese authorities did not arrest him or deport him. Even more interestingly, UNESCO and Reporters Without Borders lodged an official protest with the Lebanese authorities’, citing freedom of the press, over their decision to strip Kouts of his press credentials.

A second precedent occurred in October of this year, when an Israeli-German named Daniel Sharon was arrested by the Lebanese police and held for about three weeks. Sharon’s release was negotiated by the German authorities, since Sharon entered Lebanon on his German passport (as I entered Lebanon on my Canadian passport). There was no talk of hostage exchanges, and the Israeli authorities were not involved in the negotiations for Sharon’s release. The full story is here.

As I wrote in my response to the investigation for Haaretz, the example of Elhanan Tennenbaum is not comparable to mine. Tennenbaum was a former high-ranking officer in the IDF intelligence corps who was abducted by the Hezbollah in Dubai, then transferred to Lebanon. Three years later, he was traded for 400 political prisoners held in Israel. Dubai is not classified as an enemy state – in fact, lots of Israelis do business there. Tennenbaum was, according to his own admission, trying to do a drug deal in Dubai – but his contact was actually a Hezbollah agent. Since Tennenbaum had access to classified information, the Israeli authorities needed to obtain his release in order to discover what – if any- state secrets he might have revealed to the Hezbollah under torture. Finally, Tennenbaum does not have alternate citizenship so he was indeed solely Israel’s responsibility.

In any case, Israel is under no obligation to trade political prisoners for abducted civilians. Instead of forbidding travel to enemy states, the government could require them to sign a waiver absolving the state of any responsibility for the journalist’s welfare.

I do believe this law needs to be re-examined, for several reasons.

First, it is not logical. Israelis can be abducted anywhere in the world, and there is no evidence to suggest that they are more likely to be abducted while visiting an enemy state.

Second, the law limits freedom of the press. Only about 10 percent of Israelis know English well enough to follow reports about the Arab world in the Western media. But even if language were not an issue, surely Israelis deserve the right to first-hand reporting about their neighbouring states, from their own perspective. After all, all the Arab media outlets have reporters in Israel. Why should Arabic speakers have the right to first-hand information about Israel, from their perspective and in their own language, while Israelis must rely on translated second-hand reports?

Third, as Roi points out in his article, by limiting freedom of the press Israel is undermining its own democracy. One of the cornerstones of a thriving democratic society is an unfettered press. To me, this investigation smells like the government trying to control the press by frightening reporters with threats of jail sentences. After all, Israelis with dual citizenship have for years been traveling in their thousands to enemy states on their alternate passports. There are far too many precedents to list here. Most of the time we do not hear about this, because in the Middle East we play a silly little game of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But the fact is that the Law to Prevent Infiltration has never been enforced.

And finally, I think it is very important to question the police’s assertion that Israeli reporters compromised the security of the state. There is simply no evidence to support that statement. Unfortunately, however, too many Israelis stop asking questions when the word “security” is mentioned. We assume that the authorities have our best interests at heart and that they know more than we do. Based on my experience, however, this is not always the case. Indeed, it is too often not the case at all.

Let us not subvert democracy in the name of security, especially when security is not really the issue.