Christian Christensen is a professor of global media. In a fascinating commentary, he pointed out how the leaking of tens of thousands of classified documents on America’s role in Afghanistan has proved to be an endorsement of traditional journalism and the rule of good government. How so?

First, the power of Wikileaks is not in its role as part of social media.

Because while complete openness (of the net) might be attractive in theory, information is only as valuable as its reliability, and WikiLeaks has an organizational review structure in place that Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and most blogs (for obvious reasons) do not. All social media are not created equal, and so their power is far from equal.

Wikileaks is a trusted information source. Thus people wanted to find its video on utube, while millions of other exposure tapes are ignored.

Next, the Wikileaks team played on the role of laws designed to protect democracy.

WikiLeaks is semi-officially based in Sweden and has all the protection offered to whistleblowers and guarantees regarding anonymity of sources under Swedish law…..

Material submitted to WikiLeaks first goes through PRQ, and then to servers located in Belgium… which has the world’s second strongest laws for the protection of sources. And WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange chose Iceland as the location for decrypting the aerial video footage of the killings in Baghdad. Iceland recently passed the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, devised to make the country a global haven for whistleblowers, investigative journalism and freedom of speech.

Finally, Wikileaks carefully exploited old-fashioned media routes.

WikiLeaks decided to release the Afghan documents to the Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel weeks before they were released online ….. The WikiLeaks people were savvy enough to realize that any release of the documents online without prior contact with select news outlets would lead to a chaotic rush of unfocused articles the world over.

And what does all this mean for Israel, who’s opponents claim that the political and military chiefs in Jerusalem hide behind the demands of security in order to cover up war crimes?

Israel has one of the largest foreign press contingents in the world. Its internet system is open and free. Its judicial system was founded on the lines of British jurisprudence.

Are documents leaked? Barely a week goes by without one of the major radio or TV stations blurting out something sensitive. In a country of 7.5 million people, where most civilians have served in the army or knows somebody who has, few secrets are kept for very long.

So is Wikileaks a defunct feature in Israel? Not exactly. However, it seems to possess more relevance in those very countries that are often critical of her policies – such as Sweden, Iceland and Belgium. Now why is that?