Attorney general to indict senior Netanyahu aide Urich over Bild leak affair

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has decided to indict Jonatan Urich, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, over documents leaked to German newspaper Bild, the Attorney General’s Office announces.

Urich will be indicted on charges of transmitting classified information with the intention of harming state security, possession of classified information, and destruction of evidence. The Attorney General’s Office says Urich’s attorneys have been informed of the intention to prosecute their client.

The charges relate to Urich’s role in the leak of a classified document from IDF military intelligence to Bild in September 2024 as part of an effort to buttress Netanyahu’s claim that it was Hamas, not the prime minister, who was holding up a deal for the release of the hostages held by the terror group in Gaza. The document was leaked to a foreign news outlet in order to bypass Israel’s military censor.

Eli Feldstein, a former Netanyahu adviser who has already been indicted over the affair, obtained the document from an NCO in military intelligence, and came up with the plan to leak it to the press.

Feldstein says he informed Urich of his plan and that Urich approved it, and that when Israeli media outlets said they could not publish it because of the objections of the military censor Urich helped Feldstein find a foreign outlet to publish it, with the assistance of Likud party adviser Israel Einhorn.