Summary
The Ministry of Defense archive, officially considered a branch of the ISA, which the Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research reports played a role in the DSDE archive operations until recently, and which has opened only one percent of its records to public access (Silencing: DSDE’s Concealment of Documents in Archives, PDF p.5, 13).
Details
- Although officially an ISA branch, it is subject to the Head of the Computer and Information Systems Department at the Ministry of Defense and its funding is part of the Ministry of Defense budget (PDF p.5, note 6; the acronym there is printed “IDEA”).
- The 2002 screening decisions presented the work as that of “IDF Archive declassification teams”, with funding provided by the IDF Archive and execution by a team working on its behalf (PDF p.8).
- Its Staff Task Plans for 2010-2015 include “Special declassification tasks in public archives” in coordination with the Archivist and the DSDE — 130 files and 1,200 photocopies in the 2010 document, and roughly 50 files a year in the Begin Archive in the 2013-2015 documents; the entry is absent in 2016 (PDF p.5).
- Archive staff in other archives know the visiting DSDE teams as “IDF Archive Officials” (PDF p.2).
- In the report’s Conclusion it is named “IDF and Security Establishment Archive” and called the largest archive in the country, which “has so far opened only one percent of its records to public access” (PDF p.13).
Related pages
Silencing: DSDE’s Concealment of Documents in Archives, Director of Security of the Defense Establishment, Israel State Archive