IPS ipsnews.net. and scant others are paying attention to an interesting and emerging case of censorship in Israel. As IPS points out, “An Israeli journalist remains under house arrest and another lives abroad, after they broke news on Israeli undercover units carrying out assassinations or ‘targeted killings’ of non-combatant Palestinian political opponents.

That vocal, effective nonviolent opponents to the occupation of Palestinian territories have been targeted by the military is not new, especially among Palestinians. What this information shows is that the government of Israel must resort to censor discussion of tactics in order to maintain support.

Donald McIntyre broke the story of Israel’s extra-judicial hit squads in The Independent back on March 1. The news is certainly of value to the Israeli public and anyone in the West Bank and Gaza. The hit squads’ vary existence is a violation of international law, and have led to numerous civilian deaths and injuries. However, the facts behind how it emerged and the persecution of those who brought it to the public’c attention is subject to a nationwide gag order.

Anat Kam, a writer for the website Walla was arrested and has been detained since last December for charges of copying classified military documents detailing information on the political assassinations. Haaretz report Uri Blau is in self-imposed exile in Britain after writing about the documents and refuses to return to Israel out of fear of being arrested by Shin Bet.

Amid this information vacuum, blogs and websites operating inside and outside of Israel have been working to bring the story to the public. Shalom Life has run copies of the documents, and the Seventh Eye, a Hebrew language e-journal on the communications and media sector has followed up on the detention as well. Indymedia Israel (back from the dead, it seems) has been posting articles and links to documents in an attempt to bypass the gag order.

The Committee to Protect Bloggers would be interested in getting links to all the original documents, or would like to obtain copies of them which we could get translated into English and host on our own servers for people to have access to, allowing people inside the country to safely link to them in forums and elsewhere. Free speech and transparency is central to democracy. Bloggers are encouraged to share more information on this and other cases, but should take note of this growing trend of repression and take precautions before disseminating classified information that is in the public’s interest.

UPDATE: As pointed out in the comments below, Richard Silverstein’s blog has been tackling the subject for some time, and pointing out that failstream media is caving in a bit to quickly to government bans.