Feldstein says Netanyahu’s chief of staff warned him of probe into PMO, said he could ‘shut it down’

Eli Feldstein, a former media adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has been indicted over the Bild affair and is a suspect in the Qatargate affair, alleges that he told Netanyahu in August 2024 that he was trying to get hold of a classified document, and that the prime minister expressed support for his effort.

In a lengthy interview with the Kan public broadcaster, Feldstein says that he thought of the idea after Netanyahu gave a press conference following the murder of six hostages at the end of August that year.

Feldstein says he first told Jonatan Urich, another key adviser to Netanyahu, that he was friendly with someone in the IDF’s Military Intelligence Division who had a document discovered by the IDF in Gaza detailing Hamas’s position on hostage negotiations and demonstrating that the terror group did not want to make a deal to end the war.

Feldstein said he believed publication of the document would bolster Netanyahu’s claim that only military pressure could bring about the release of the hostages, and that there was no possibility at the time to get a hostage release deal, despite demands by large sectors of the public for such an agreement.

Feldstein says in his interview with Kan that after Netanyahu’s press conference, he told the premier that there was a recent document discovered by the IDF in Gaza and that he had a source from whom he and Urich were trying to obtain the document.

“Excellent,” Feldstein says Netanyahu told him in response.

In further revelations, Feldstein claims that Netanyahu’s chief of staff, Tzachi Braverman, said he could stop an investigation regarding IDF information security if Feldstein needed it.

According to Feldstein, Braverman called him late one night in September 2024, and told him to meet him on level -4 of an underground parking lot in the IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv.

There, Braverman read Feldstein five or six names from a list and asked him if he knew any of the names, which Feldstein said he did not.

When Feldstein asked him why he was asking this, Braverman said that he knew there was an investigation by the IDF’s information security department that had reached the PMO.

“‘Tell me if this is connected to you, tell me if it is connected to us. I can shut it down,'” Feldstein quotes Braverman as saying.

The PMO in response says that Feldstein’s interview consists of “a series of false claims reliant on the testimony of one person who has clear personal interests and who is trying to divert responsibility from himself by besmirching the prime minister and those around him.”

The PMO adds: “The prime minister never gave instructions to leak classified information to Feldstein, either directly or indirectly.”

Braverman says in response that “Feldstein is lying and making up things that never happened. Feldstein’s claim about the chief of staff’s offer to intervene or interfere with an investigation is another false invention. The chief of staff has no ability or influence over ongoing investigations. Braverman only knew about the investigation when it was published by the media.”