The Tel Aviv District Court ordered the Haaretz newspaper to pay whistleblower Anat Kamm NIS 75,000 for leaking her identity through the IDF documents she submitted to journalist Uri Blau.
Kamm was convicted of stealing thousands of classified documents during the period of 2005-2007, when she served in the IDF as a secretary in the IDF's Central Command headquarters. She copied thousands of sensitive documents to a disk-on-key (USB drive) which she proceeded to hand over to reporter Uri Blau of Haaretz.
Blau published some of the information in the documents, but he claimed that the information he used was not classified or damaging to the country's security.
Kamm was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for her actions. The sentence was later reduced by one year, after an appeal by Kamm's lawyers that the sentence was unnecessarily harsh. In 2014, Kamm sued the daily for revealing her identity - after it was promised to her that her safety would not be compromised and her identity would be kept secret throughout the media leak.
Kamm had allegedly warned the newspaper from the beginning that while she was giving them documents to leak in spite of a gag order, publishing the documents themselves would place her safety in jeopardy.
Haaretz ignored her warnings and published the documents anyway. While no formal agreement was signed, Blau was allegedly told that it was extremely important to keep his source absolutely anonymous.
Kamm's attorney said the ruling was "a precedent-setting ruling that regulates the responsibility of the newspaper and the journalists for their sources ... The court's decision did justice to the plaintiff and conveyed an unequivocal message that it is impossible that journalists will enjoy the glory while their sources pay the price."