Freed Jerusalem Post editor decries arrest, says he got ‘no benefits’ from Qatar trip
Zvika Klein says police probing alleged Qatari payments to Netanyahu aides took his phone, interrogated him for 12 hours, barred him from contact with his family
In his first public comments since he was named as a suspect in the Qatargate investigation, Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief Zvika Klein said Thursday he could not have imagined “in my worst nightmares” his arrest this week, and insisted that he received absolutely no benefit from his coverage of Qatar, which included a reporting trip to the Gulf state last year.
Klein is one of four journalists to have been called in by police over the so-called Qatargate affair, but the only one to have been questioned under caution, due to his suspected involvement in alleged offenses for which two aides to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been investigated and kept in detention this week.
Klein has denied any involvement in the affair, and on Thursday was released from house arrest without any further restrictions imposed on him.
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and State Attorney Amit Aisman said in a statement earlier Thursday that Klein was questioned under caution as a suspect due to comments he made in open testimony which, they said, ostensibly linked him to the alleged effort by aides to the prime minister to improve Qatar’s image in return for payment.
The questioning related to a trip Klein made to Qatar, which he published an account of in April 2024, in which he met with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani and other officials.
“This week, I was arrested,” he wrote in a column in The Jerusalem Post. “I was placed under house arrest. In an instant, I went from a public servant to a suspect. Not even in my worst nightmares could I have imagined this.”
He went on to explain how his visit to Qatar came about: “I reached out to officials representing the Qatari government and, after some back and forth, I became the first Israeli journalist to interview the prime minister of Qatar. The full story was proudly published in this paper. Nothing was hidden. Everything was done with full transparency and at the highest journalistic standards.”
Baharav-Miara and Aisman said in their statement that Klein was originally summoned to give open testimony and not as a suspect, but that when questioned, “a significant suspicion formed that the journalist was, along with the prime minister’s aides, a part of the mechanism of receiving benefits from Qatar in exchange for advancing Qatar’s interests.”
However, Klein stressed in his column that he “received nothing in return. No benefits, no payment, no promises. I came back to Israel, and apparently one fact puzzled the police: I got nothing in return. A public relations official connected to the delegation offered to promote the article in other media outlets. I agreed. The interviews aired on Channel 12 and Channel 13. I didn’t hide anything. On the contrary – it was all out in the open.”
Klein wrote that when he was asked to give “open testimony to the police, I complied, as a law-abiding citizen. I thought I could be helpful – nothing more. But then everything turned upside down.”
He said his phone was seized, he was blocked from being able to contact his family, and he was prohibited from being able to speak publicly and clear his name. “My phone was taken without a warrant or explanation. I was interrogated for about 12 hours, alone, without contact with my wife – who was abroad – and without being able to speak to my children for many hours. The conditions were harsh.”
Furthermore, he wrote, “When leaks from the investigation began to emerge – and they are still emerging as I write these lines – I couldn’t respond. I was prohibited from speaking to the media.”
“My good name was damaged, even before the truth could come out,” he added.
“Only after several days of silence did a public outcry begin,” he noted. “Colleagues – journalists, editors, media professionals – asked: how could it be that in the State of Israel, a journalist is detained and interrogated for doing his job? Thankfully, I was fully released yesterday – without restrictions. It was my legal argument – that I could not publish anything as long as the investigation was ongoing – that convinced the investigators to let me go.”
Israel’s Channel 13 reported in February that Klein’s trip to Qatar was arranged by Eli Feldstein, a former Netanyahu spokesman who, along with Netanyahu adviser Jonathan Urich, is one of the two main suspects in the case.
Klein denied the report at the time, posting on X that he visited Qatar at the direct invitation of the Qatari government. He said he had never met Feldstein and only spoke to Feldstein, in Feldstein’s capacity as a public relations person, for the first time after his return from Qatar, to coordinate TV interviews about the visit on Channels 12 and 13. Klein did not specify how he came into contact with Feldstein, or whether he knew Feldstein worked for Netanyahu.
In his column on Thursday, Klein wrote: “The time will come when the full story can be told.”
He said he was “proud to be an Israeli journalist in a democratic country. I only hope that the law enforcement authorities remember that, too.”
The Times of Israel Community.