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Silencing: DSDE's Concealment of Documents in Archives

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Summary

The Akevot Institute reports that teams working for the Director of Security of the Defense Establishment (DSDE), a Ministry of Defense department with no legal powers outside the defense establishment, have since at least 2002 periodically visited public and private archives in Israel and ordered directors to place files and documents in vaults and deny researchers access to them, without legal basis, usually without users knowing, and with no procedure to appeal (Silencing: DSDE’s Concealment of Documents in Archives, PDF p.2-3). The materials put away fall, on Akevot’s research, into three categories — nuclear issues, the 1948 war, particularly the uprooting of the Palestinian population during and after the war, and Israel’s foreign relations — and include material that had been public for years and cited in published research, among it the 1948 “Migration of Eretz Yisrael Arabs” document at the Hashomer Hatzair (Yad Ya’ari) archive (PDF p.1-2). Former DSDE head Yehiel Horev is reported confirming that concealing records on 1948 events was intended to weaken research and fact-based public debate, and former Chief State Archivist Yaakov Lozowick and the ISA legal advisor are reported concluding that the operations have no legal sanction, in the ISA’s own branches as well as in public and private archives (PDF p.9-12).

What the file is

  • A 14-page PDF report, titled on PDF p.1 SILENCING / DSDE’s Concealment of Documents in Archives and headed “Akevot Institute Report, July 2019”. No individual author is named; the colophon (PDF p.14) describes Akevot Institute as an independent, non-partisan research institute working since 2014. Downloaded from https://www.akevot.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Silencing-Akevot-Institute-Report.pdf (access basis: NGO).
  • Structure (contents, PDF p.1): Introduction (p.1); Section 1, the work of DSDE “declassification teams”, with subsections on ISA branches and on the involvement of the IDF and Defense Establishment Archive (p.3-5); Section 2, the origins of DSDE operations in public and private archives, with subsections on pressure from the Chief State Archivist and on DSDE operations in the archives (p.6-10); Section 3, acting without legal authority, with subsections on public and private archives and on ISA branches (p.11-12); Conclusion and Recommendations (p.13-14).
  • Epigraph (PDF p.1): “Even if somebody writes the horse is black, if the horse is not outside the stable, it cannot be proven it is actually black”, attributed to Yehiel Horev, former Director of Security of the Defense Establishment, in an interview to Hagar Shezaf, “Security Establishment conceals Nakba documents in vaults”, Haaretz, 5 July 2019 (note 1).
  • Text quality: the supplied text copy (from the memex vault, about 7,766 words) is clean, paginated prose with all 34 footnotes legible. Several spellings stand as printed in the original and are recorded as printed in the reading notes and under Open questions, among them “nuvlear” and “tat” (PDF p.8), “saus” and “than” in a Horev quotation (PDF p.9), “Lazovik” for Lozowick in note 4 (PDF p.3), “Auron” for Oron in note 10 (PDF p.6), “IDEA” for the IDF and Defense Establishment Archive in note 6 (PDF p.5) and note 24 (PDF p.10), and “Shin Beth” (PDF p.13). Byte-level checks confirm these forms are in the original, not extraction artefacts.

Section by section

  • Introduction (PDF p.1-2): the online catalogue of the Hashomer Hatzair (Yad Ya’ari) archives in Givat Haviva (note 2) annotates a 1948 document, “Migration of Eretz Yisrael Arabs between December 1, 1947, and June 1, 1948”, with “Booklet stored in vault […]. Not to be provided to researchers (Order of State Archive, June 2004)”. The document, penned during the first truce in the 1948 war, analyses the depopulation of Arab villages; its content is discussed in the research literature, yet it has remained in the vault under orders from officials who had no legal authority to issue them. The report addresses the illegal practice of secretly denying public access to archival materials in private and public archives. A team, usually of two, periodically visits archives, instructs the director to hand over files or deposits, goes through them, and orders entire files or individual documents placed in a vault. The three categories put away are nuclear issues, the 1948 war (particularly the uprooting of the Palestinian population), and Israel’s foreign relations; one director said the team tends to put away documents after they are referenced in footnotes of academic articles or books. The teams work not for the ISA but for the DSDE, act on discretion without legal basis, usually without users’ awareness, and with no option to appeal. The research (2017-2019) rests on interviews and conversations with 15 archive employees and directors, Freedom of Information responses, and several dozen files the ISA declassified at Akevot’s request. Former Chief State Archivist Dr. Yaakov Lozowick had already concluded the law makes no provision for DSDE powers in archives, yet the practice continues. Asked to interview the official in charge, the DSDE replied, through Dina Polyak, Head of Public Liaison and Complaints, Ministry of Defense, April 15, 2019 (note 3): “The DSDE does not normally provide details about its operations”.
  • Section 1: The work of DSDE “declassification teams” (PDF p.3-4): teams visit public and private archives from once every few years to once a week. Several teams work under that moniker, normally two senior retired officials from security agencies, the IDF Information Security Department, the Israeli Military Censor, the Israel Atomic Energy Commission and others, in permanent, paid, most likely part-time positions. Note 4 records that public-archive status was created by the 1955 Archives Law, that there are currently 22 public archives, and that decisions on public access in them rest with their directors. In the archive the team asks for the catalogue or arrives with prepared lists; where deposits interest it, it returns several times a week and goes document by document through party minutes, personal files of past senior officials, interviews and oral history, press clippings, posters and speeches. Its three topics are nuclear documentation, documentation on the depopulation of Palestinian villages through 1948 and 1949 and events of the 1948 war, and Israel’s foreign relations. It instructs directors to vault files, documents and even posters, occasionally restores material, and in at least one archive removes material from the premises and does not return what it wants kept from the public; no procedure allows archivists or researchers to challenge its decisions. The nuclear issue seems to be the main focus: a team arrived with a recently published academic paper and had the files it cited — public for many years — removed; 1960s newspaper clippings on nuclear issues and “nuclear non-proliferation” conference posters were removed; documents have been removed from files with no record kept, in one case leaving staff unable to find out what happened. Users are as a rule unaware; a few catalogues annotate the bans, Yad Ya’ari’s with “deposited in the vault per instructions of State Archive declassifiers” and the Labor Party archive in Beit Berl’s with “temporarily confidential”. One such file, the 63-page transcript of David Ben Gurion’s January 19, 1965 MAPAI conference talk at Kibbutz Tel Yosef addressing the Lavon Affair, is accessible at the Ben Gurion Archive, shows on Akevot’s review no reason for confidentiality, and was unconditionally cleared for publication by the Israeli Military Censor when Akevot submitted it. Two public-archive directors describe benefiting from the arrangement — one using the retirees for routine tasks and advice, the other, aware there was no legal basis, using known DSDE staff as a free sensitivity review.
  • The work of the DSDE in ISA branches (PDF p.4-5): DSDE teams also work in the heritage-center archives for David Ben Gurion, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin, which are formally ISA branches subject to the Archive Law 1955 and the Access Regulations 2010 (note 5 cites the Ben Gurion Law 1976, the Rabin Memorial Center Law 1997 and the Begin Memorial Law 1988). At the Rabin Center Archives the DSDE ordered a large collection closed and demanded the center pay a sizeable amount to have the records reviewed; the center refused, and more than a decade passed before the records were cleared, with sections redacted, several months before the report. At the Ben Gurion Heritage Institute Archives the DSDE often removes records for review and does not return those it decides to deny access to, including materials researchers had copied in archives abroad and deposited there, which remain open abroad. At the Begin Archive (established 2000, records mostly transferred from the Jabotinsky Institute, largely personal and political), a “Ministry of Defense staffer” goes over transcripts of its oral-history project — interviews with more than 150 public figures — and disqualifies sections at his discretion; staff are under the impression the process is a requirement of the Archive Law.
  • Involvement of IDF and Defense Establishment Archive (PDF p.5): IDF Archive “Staff Task Plan” documents for 2010-2015 (provided under a Freedom of Information application, note 7) include an entry “Special declassification tasks in public archives” described as “coordination with the Archivist and DSDE”, with the remark “including B.G. [Ben Gurion] Archive” for 2013-2015; the 2010 document mentions “130 files, 1,200 photocopies”, and the 2013-2015 documents note roughly 50 files a year in the Begin Archive. The entry is absent from the 2016 plan, perhaps following the ISA determination that the activities have no legal basis; DSDE teams have continued regardless. Note 6 states the archive is officially an ISA branch but subject to the Head of the Computer and Information Systems Department at the Ministry of Defense, with Ministry of Defense funding.
  • Section 2: origins — two disappearances (PDF p.6): in late May 2015 Dr. Tamar Novick, preparing a talk on Yosef Vashitz’ documents, asked the Hashomer Hatzair (Yad Ya’ari) Archive for a document from MAPAM member Aharon Cohen’s files — handwritten notes from a briefing likely given by Israel Galili to the MAPAM political committee on November 11, 1948, regarding crimes committed by Israeli combatants during Operation Hiram and Operation Yoav, quoted by Benny Morris in his books (note 8). She found it was not in the accessible folder but “somewhere called ‘the vault’”, and did not see it (note 9, her June 1, 2015 talk). Similarly, Yair Oron could no longer find, at the locations Tom Segev and Benny Morris cited, the transcripts of the November 17, 1948 government plenum from which they quoted Minister of Agriculture Aharon Zisling’s harsh remarks on the expulsions and massacres carried out by IDF soldiers in Lod (al-Ludd) and al-Dawayima (note 10, which adds that the ISA’s 2018 upload of the session omits Zisling’s statements and the final stage’s pages, and that portions were likely deleted in 1994-1995 under criteria from Government Resolution No. 3649 of July 25, 1994, including information that may damage relations between the state and minority groups). The section’s thesis: disappearing materials are the product of a longstanding policy of removing records believed sensitive with no legal basis or clear criteria, originating in archive directors’ 1980s self-censorship under demands and threats from the then Chief State Archivist, and morphing into the DSDE’s archive work, in place since at least 2002.
  • Pressure from the Chief State Archivist (PDF p.6-8): in 1986 Benny Morris published “The Causes and Character of the Arab Exodus from Palestine: The Israel Defence Forces Intelligence Branch Analysis of June 1948” (Middle Eastern Studies, note 11), discussing at length the IDF Intelligence Service document “Migration of Eretz Yisrael Arabs between December 1, 1947, and June 1, 1948”, which Morris had found in Aharon Cohen’s collection at the Hashomer Hatzair archive (notes 12, and the starred note on PDF p.7 giving Morris’s translated title with its dates as printed). Chief State Archivist Avraham Alsberg then wrote to archive director Pnina Doron (March 6, 1986, note 14) decrying “political harm” and “harm to the archivist community”, threatened to remove government materials and officials’ personal collections from the archive to the ISA, and asked her to tend to the matter discreetly; the same day he forwarded the letter to Ze’ev Tzur of Yad Tabenkin with the same discreet request. Note 13 records his December 14, 1983 reprimand to the Yad Tabenkin and Hashomer Hatzair directors over access to government-meeting transcripts. Doron replied they “were not to blame” (March 18, 1986, note 15) but closed the Aharon Cohen collection until further notice and vaulted some of its documents; parts of former Minister Israel Barzilai’s personal archive were handed to an ISA staff member for review on Alsberg’s demand. At the Higher Council on Archives meeting shortly after (May 29, 1986, note 17), Alsberg raised this case and a newspaper report on the borders issue based on Israel Galili’s letters to Levy Eshkol and Golda Meir, demanded the Access Regulations be applied to public archives as well, and several directors expressed willingness to remove access voluntarily. In 1991 Chief State Archivist Reuven Yaron revisited the issue, saying he was “aware of the limits of [his] powers” and seeking dialogue so public archives would not be “a back door for those who find the doors of the large state archives locked” (April 21, 1991 transcript, note 18); a committee discussed other issues instead (note 19), and the Council never discussed the topic again.
  • DSDE operations in the archives (PDF p.8-10): Akevot’s research indicates DSDE operations began in 2002, first communicated by the then director of the IDF Archive as a need to prevent access to non-government-archive records damaging to national security and foreign relations. In mid-2002 DSDE, ISA and IDF Archive representatives met public-archive directors; Akevot located minutes of three meetings with identical language (note 20: Yad Tabenkin, July 10; Hashomer Hatzair, July 17; Labor Party Archive, July 30, 2002), presenting the work as that of “IDF Archive declassification teams” and deciding that the ISA with the IDF Archive would screen each archive’s records, that screening would be funded by the IDF Archive and executed by a team working on its behalf, and that records deemed to warrant confidentiality would be stored under security directions (note 21). DSDE head in 2002 Yehiel Horev told Hagar Shezaf he started it; then Chief State Archivist Prof. Tuvia Friling told Shezaf a stated purpose was to avoid information leaks of the Israeli nuclear project and that concealment expanded to Palestinian refugees and 1948 Independence War records, and claims the activity was one of the reasons for his resignation shortly later (PDF p.8-9). Horev confirms, in the report’s presentation, that concealing 1948 records was intended to harm public debate and academic research by weakening findings’ evidentiary value, and is quoted at length to that effect (PDF p.9). Until several years before the report, DSDE teams carried a document signed by the Chief State Archivist empowering them to act on his behalf; Lozowick describes signing such a document on taking office without being told the risks, without managing or receiving work plans from the teams, and without looking into rumours that they closed material beyond the “core issue” (note 22, conversation of June 8, 2017). Legality questions emerged only after a DSDE team tried to remove records at the Harry S. Truman Institute archive at the Hebrew University, a private archive: Prof. Menahem Blondheim refused, was threatened — including that the DSDE “can confiscate the archive” and unveiled personal threats — and contacted Lozowick (note 23, conversation of January 25, 2019, which also records the later “pragmatic arrangement” under a committee headed by Carmi Gilon). Lozowick and the ISA legal department concluded the operations are not legally sanctioned and the Chief State Archivist has no power to delegate DSDE staff to public and private archives; Lozowick said he would not have extended the authorization and would advise his successor to look into the matter very carefully (note 25). He nevertheless did not warn the archives or instruct directors how to respond, and the teams continue. The “Arab Migration” document in Aharon Cohen’s collection remains one of the vaulted documents (DSDE instruction of June 20, 2004), but Akevot found an identical copy in Yosef Vashitz’ collection at Yad Ya’ari (note 26), had it unconditionally cleared by the Israeli Military Censor, and posted the full document to its website with this report.
  • Section 3: Acting without legal authority (PDF p.11): the DSDE’s duties are overseeing the physical safety of security installations in Israel and preventing security information leaks; its very existence was kept secret for many years, its early decades revolved around Israel’s nuclear program, and its size and budget are not released; former minister Dan Meridor has called it charged with “protecting state secrets on highly sensitive issues” (note 27). It is a Ministry of Defense department governed not by law but by internal Ministry of Defense directives.
  • Illegal operations in public and private archives (PDF p.11): neither the Archive Law nor its regulations grant any powers to the Chief State Archivist, the DSDE or any other party to deny public access to materials in public or private archives. ISA legal advisor Adv. Naomi Aldobi’s memorandum of August 12, 2018 (note 29) holds that a public archive does not come under the Access Regulations, that access policy for its records rests with its director in keeping with its approved bylaws, that the only sanction for bylaws unlike the Access Regulations is revocation of public-archive status — a sanction of little weight, as the Chief State Archivist noted — and, for private archives, that “the Chief State Archivist has no powers under the Archive Law with respect to the public access to archival materials in private hands”. Note 29 also records Akevot’s legislative-history finding against reading Section 4(a) as a transfer obligation for such archives.
  • Illegal operations in ISA branches (PDF p.12): access in government archives is regulated by the Archive Law and the Access Regulations, which stipulate Restricted Access Periods of 15 to 70 years by type and source, and protect three interests — security, Israel’s foreign relations, and privacy. Only three parties may participate in declassification and confidentiality proceedings: the depositors, the Chief State Archivist (who may declare documents “secret” or “confidential”), and the Ministerial Committee for Permission to Access Classified Archival Records, a designated committee of three ministers that approves the Archivist’s decisions (note 30, citing Chapter 1 of Akevot’s Point of Access, April 2016). For the Ben Gurion, Rabin and Begin archives the correct course is a Section 10c decision by the Chief State Archivist approved by that committee; any other measure, including DSDE team work, is without legal authority. On Lozowick’s account he had no involvement in, and was not briefed on, DSDE activities during his tenure.
  • Conclusion (PDF p.13): public access to historical records in Israel is subject to close monitoring by the security establishment: the IDF and Security Establishment Archive, the largest archive in the country, has opened only one percent of its records (note 31); the General Security Service (Shin Beth) archive is completely closed (note 32); and the Israeli Military Censor has recently posted an officer to the ISA in a pilot program to review records before access (note 33, Ofer Aderet, Haaretz, December 27, 2018). Because government-archive access is meagre, private and public archives are a major source for historical research on Israel, and DSDE work in them impedes the access on which reliable, independent research rests, cumulatively distorting public and political discourse; in the few removed documents Akevot could review, publication posed no security threat, as the Censor’s clearances also evidence. The report singles out the hiding of Nakba records as denying Jewish citizens access to a controversial chapter and robbing Palestinian refugees and citizens of Israel of recognition and of familiarity with the historical facts in the archives (note 34, on human-rights records in Point of Access, Chapter 5), and says the activities must stop immediately. It also notes that archives do contain sensitive records, that several directors wanted a consulting official, and that the Association of Israeli Archivists would do well to fill that gap.
  • Recommendations (PDF p.13-14): to the DSDE, end operations in public and private archives immediately. To the Deputy Chief State Archivist: contact the DSDE head, stress the work is without legal authority and order its cessation; and contact public and private archive directors, clarify the instructions were given without legal authority, and instruct them not to cooperate with DSDE teams. To the Association of Israeli Archivists: appoint an authorized professional to advise such archives on access while balancing the relevant interests. To directors of archives where access was denied on DSDE instructions: inform users of the fact, scope and, if possible, titles of the records made inaccessible; and provide public access, on their professional assessment, to records closed on DSDE orders where access poses no threat to security, foreign relations or privacy.
  • Colophon (PDF p.14): Akevot Institute is an independent, non-partisan research institute working since 2014 to research the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, protect human rights, and expand public access to government archives; its activity and publications are solely determined by its staff and management; and, under Israeli legislation it describes as seeking to harm civil society organizations, it states that the majority of contributions it received in 2018 were donated by public and governmental bodies in democratic states.

Key passages

  • “Booklet stored in vault […]. Not to be provided to researchers (Order of State Archive, June 2004)” (PDF p.1, catalogue annotation as quoted)
  • “The DSDE does not normally provide details about its operations” (PDF p.2)
  • “deposited in the vault per instructions of State Archive declassifiers” (PDF p.4, Yad Ya’ari catalogue annotation as quoted)
  • “so that the various public archives won’t provide an opportunity, a back door for those who find the doors of the large state archives locked” (PDF p.8, Reuven Yaron in 1991 as quoted)
  • “when the state conceals [archival records] publication becomes weaker, as the [the researcher] does not hold the document” (PDF p.9, Yehiel Horev as quoted; doubled “the” as printed)
  • “the Chief State Archivist has no powers under the Archive Law with respect to the public access to archival materials in private hands” (PDF p.11, Adv. Naomi Aldobi as quoted)
  • “The fact that much of the DSDE’s work is focused on hiding historical records of the Nakba is particularly disturbing” (PDF p.13)
  • “End operations in public and private archives immediately.” (PDF p.13, recommendation to the DSDE)

Evidence the work relies on

  • Interviews and conversations with 15 archive employees and directors, conducted 2017-2019 (PDF p.2). Most archive directors quoted in the report are unnamed; the accounts attributed by name are those of Prof. Menahem Blondheim (Truman Institute, note 23) and the archive directors’ accounts are otherwise presented without names.
  • Information received under Freedom of Information applications (PDF p.2), specifically the IDF Archive Staff Task Plans for 2010-2015 provided in response to an application for the archive’s work plan (PDF p.5, note 7), and the General Security Service response of April 11, 2019 (note 32).
  • Several dozen files the ISA declassified and cleared for access at Akevot’s request (PDF p.2), among them the correspondence and meeting records cited in notes 13-21: Alsberg’s letters of December 14, 1983 and March 6, 1986 (ISA Files G-7295/2, G-7978/7, G-7978/11), Doron’s reply of March 18, 1986, Tzur’s letter of June 4, 1986, the Higher Council transcripts of May 29, 1986, April 21, 1991 and November 4, 1991 (ISA Files G-7326/3, G-7977/1, G-7974/13), and the three 2002 screening-meeting minutes.
  • Contemporaneous statements collected by Akevot: its conversations with Dr. Yaakov Lozowick of June 8, 2017 (notes 22, 25) and with Prof. Blondheim of January 25, 2019 (note 23); Adv. Naomi Aldobi’s memorandum of August 12, 2018 (notes 4, 29); and the DSDE’s written refusal through Dina Polyak of April 15, 2019 (note 3).
  • Published and broadcast material as cited: Hagar Shezaf’s Haaretz investigative feature released with the report, 5 July 2019, carrying the Horev epigraph and the Horev and Friling interviews (PDF p.1, 8-9, note 1); Tamar Novick’s June 1, 2015 talk (note 9); Yair Auron’s Haaretz piece of February 7, 2016 (note 10); Benny Morris’s 1986 article and his The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (1991) and Correction (2000) (notes 8, 11); Dan Meridor’s June 27, 2017 television interview (note 27); Ofer Aderet’s Haaretz report of December 27, 2018 (note 33).
  • Two test submissions to the Israeli Military Censor, both unconditionally cleared: the 63-page Ben-Gurion Tel Yosef transcript (PDF p.4) and the “Arab Migration” document found in Yosef Vashitz’ collection (PDF p.10).
  • Akevot’s own earlier reports as cited: Point of Access: Barriers for Public Access to Israeli Government Archives (April 2016) and State of Access to Israeli Government Archives (September 2017) (notes 30, 31, 34).

Analysis

  • Method: an investigative report built from the receiving end of the practice — the archivists who host the teams — triangulated with the paper trail the ISA itself released (1980s-1990s Chief State Archivist correspondence and Higher Council transcripts, the 2002 meeting minutes, the IDF Archive work plans, and the ISA legal advisor’s 2018 memorandum) and with named on-record accounts from the two Chief State Archivists who signed or inherited the authorization (Lozowick) and the one archive head who refused (Blondheim). Its legal argument is narrow and documented: it does not claim the concealed material is harmless in general, but that no provision of the Archive Law or its regulations gives the DSDE, or the Chief State Archivist acting through it, power over access in public, private or — by the route the teams use — ISA-branch archives.
  • Perspective and limits: Akevot is an advocacy research institute whose stated mission includes expanding public access to government archives (PDF p.14), and the report argues for cessation and reopening; its recommendations are addressed to the DSDE, the Deputy Chief State Archivist, the archivists’ association and archive directors. The DSDE itself declined to give details (PDF p.2), so the teams’ own criteria, lists and records are not in the report; most working archivists are quoted anonymously, and the two directors who describe benefiting from the teams are also unnamed. Quantities are mostly exemplary rather than enumerated: apart from the Staff Task Plan figures (130 files and 1,200 photocopies in 2010; roughly 50 Begin Archive files a year in 2013-2015), the 22 public archives, the 15 interviewees and the one percent opening figure for the IDF archive, the report gives no total count of archives visited, files vaulted or documents removed. Its chronology of origins rests on the released ISA files for the 1980s-1990s and on Horev’s and Friling’s retrospective accounts for 2002, both given to a newspaper feature rather than to Akevot directly.
  • Support: the central claim — operation without legal authority — is supported inside the report from the authorities themselves: Lozowick’s conclusion after an ISA legal review (PDF p.2, 10) and Aldobi’s memorandum (PDF p.11) are quoted in terms, and no contrary legal provision is cited by any party in the report, including the DSDE, which declined to discuss its operations. The concealment-of-cited-research pattern is supported by two worked examples (the Ben-Gurion transcript and the “Arab Migration” document) in which the same content was open elsewhere or cleared by the Military Censor, undercutting a security rationale for those items without establishing it for vaulted material Akevot could not see — a limit the report itself marks by resting its no-threat finding on “the few cases in which we were able to review the content of documents removed by the DSDE” (PDF p.13).

People, organizations, places and events

Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research, Director of Security of the Defense Establishment, Israel State Archive, IDF and Defense Establishment Archive, Yehiel Horev, Yaakov Lozowick, Yad Ya’ari Research & Documentation Center, Hashomer Hatza’ir, Aharon Cohen, Benny Morris, David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, Lavon Affair, Archives Law 1955, Tom Segev

Concepts

Nakba

How it relates to other sources

  • With The Emigration of the Arabs of Palestine in the Period 1/12/1947-1/6/1948: this report is the account of what happened to that document in the archive. The 1948 report’s original record is the Yad Ya’ari copy in Yosef Vashitz’ collection, file 95-35.27(3); the copy in Aharon Cohen’s collection is the one Morris quoted in 1986 and after, the one Alsberg’s 1986 pressure had vaulted in part, and the one a DSDE team ordered kept in the vault on June 20, 2004. Akevot found the identical Vashitz copy, had it cleared by the Military Censor, and posted it in tandem with this report (PDF p.1, 6-10) — the route by which the translation ingested as the 1948 source reached the wiki.
  • With Nakba and Survival: agreement from opposite standpoints on archival secrecy as a limit on 1948 research. Manna quotes Morris’s admission that information about the Galilee massacres is very limited because of the secrecy imposed by Israeli army archives; this report documents a mechanism of that secrecy operating outside the army’s own archive, in the public and private archives where Morris and others found the documents they published, and records Horev’s stated purpose of weakening exactly such archive-based findings.
  • With Israel: The Hijack State — America’s Watchdog in the Middle East: Rose records Morris publishing, early in 1986, the secret June 1948 intelligence report confirming the Palestinian account of the flight. This report records the immediate institutional sequel Rose does not: Alsberg’s March 1986 letters, the closure of the Aharon Cohen collection, and the demand that the closure be handled discreetly.
  • What is new: the wiki’s first source on the administration of access itself — a named mechanism (DSDE “declassification teams”), a dated origin sequence (1983-1986 pressure, 1991 revisit, 2002 formalization, 2004 vault order, post-2017 legal finding, continued operation in 2019), a legal analysis from the ISA’s own advisor, and a stated intent, attributed to the DSDE’s founding head, to weaken 1948 research by removing its documentary base.

Open questions

  • Morris’s translated title in the report’s starred footnote (PDF p.7) is given as The Emigration of the Arabs of Palestine in the Period 1/12/1948-1/6/1948, with a 1948 start date, while the document’s title as given in the body (PDF p.6-7) covers December 1, 1947 to June 1, 1948. Both forms stand as printed and are not reconciled in the report.
  • The report dates the DSDE’s archive work in two ways: it “has been in place since at least 2002” (PDF p.6) and “the DSDE began its operations in archives in 2002” (PDF p.8). Both stand as printed.
  • The largest archive is named “IDF and Defense Establishment Archive” in Section 1 (PDF p.5) and “IDF and Security Establishment Archive” in the Conclusion (PDF p.13); its acronym is printed “IDEA” in notes 6 and 24. The three forms stand as printed.
  • Footnote 28 (PDF p.11) reads “See supra note 3”, but note 3 is the DSDE’s April 15, 2019 email; the memorandum the subsection discusses is the subject of notes 4 and 29. The reference stands as printed.
  • Spellings as printed that differ within the report: “Yaakov Lazovik” in note 4 (PDF p.3) against “Yaakov Lozowick” throughout the body; “Yair Auron” in note 10 (PDF p.6) against “Yair Oron” in the body; “Shin Beth” (PDF p.13) for the General Security Service. Each stands as printed at its locator.
  • The report’s Morris bibliography gives Correction (Am Oved: 2000) at “p. .139” (note 8, PDF p.6) and his 1986 article’s journal as “Vol. No 22. 1” (note 11, PDF p.6); both stand as printed.
  • Horev is quoted saying he does “not remember [the Migration Movement] document” (PDF p.9); the bracketed title differs from the document title used elsewhere in the report (“Migration of Eretz Yisrael Arabs…”), and the report does not explain the bracketed form.
  • Whether DSDE teams were still operating after July 2019, and whether any vaulted records were restored following the report and its recommendations, is not addressed in the report.

Coverage

PDF p.1-14 of 14, read in full

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