Feldstein says he was ‘used’ for Qatari interests, without realizing it at the time

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s former spokesman Eli Feldstein denies he had any knowledge that people in the Prime Minister’s Office were working side jobs on behalf of Qatar.

Feldstein and close Netanyahu aide Jonatan Urich are suspects in an ongoing investigation into connections between senior officials and Qatar. Yisrael Einhorn, a former campaign adviser to Netanyahu, is also a person of interest in the investigation.

“I have very good reason to think they used me, took advantage of me,” the former spokesman says of Urich and Einhorn during an interview on the Kan public broadcaster.

Feldstein says that when, at Urich’s request, he helped Jerusalem Post editor Zvika Klein speak to Israeli media outlets about a meeting with the Qatari prime minister, it didn’t occur to him that this might be part of a foreign influence operation.

Likewise, he says, when he received pro-Qatari messaging from Urich, which he then passed along to journalists, he believed it was accurate.

The ex-spokesman says that while the convoluted process by which individuals in the US, whom he did not know, transferred money to his bank account — ostensibly his salary from the PMO, which he could not receive directly because he failed a background check — was strange, it didn’t raise alarm bells or cause him to connect the dots.

“Is it possible that things I put out served, aided, helped, after-the-fact, or as a side effect, or a consequence, some official in Qatar? It could be,” he acknowledges. However, he insists that he was not aware of it in real-time.

“They took me, with my motivation, my desire to belong, to feel a part of something, and they used me,” he says.