Israeli Jewish journalist Asaf Shalev, who lives in California, has said that Israel had been hiding 300,000 documents about crimes carried out against the Palestinians, thousands of them date back to 1800s, +972 Magazine reported early this week. Shalev was reported saying to the magazine that Israel’s State Archives declassified secret documents last summer including documents which are more than a century old; however, he said, 300,000 documents which predate the creation of Israel remained classified.
The very existence of the 300,000 classified files—their names, dates, and origin within the state bureaucracy—had been kept a secret, until now, he was reported saying by +972 Magazine, noting that one-fifth of the files, deemed too sensitive still by the government, were excluded from the disclosure.