From the Liveblog of
Wednesday, January 8, 2025
Lawyer for PM’s aide: Netanyahu knew he planned to leak classified document to press
Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knew that his aide Eli Feldstein intended to leak a highly classified document to the press, Feldstein’s lawyer told the Supreme Court last month, a newly released court transcript has revealed.
The transcript of the December 5 hearing, first obtained and published by the Ynet news website, includes an exchange between Feldstein’s lawyer Oded Savoray and Supreme Court Justice Alex Stein when Savoray was arguing for his client’s release from detention to house arrest.
“[Feldstein] whispered in [the prime minister’s] ear after the press conference. He said to the prime minister, ‘I have a document from my sources in IDF Military Intelligence with the same content but more updated, [top adviser Yonatan] Urich and I are working on getting it out,'” Savoray told the Supreme Court.
The lawyer said this exchange took place five days before the classified document was published in the German tabloid newspaper Bild.
The allegations against Feldstein and a reserve IDF noncommissioned officer in the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate are at the heart of a scandal at the Prime Minister’s Office in which a highly classified document ostensibly detailing Hamas’s priorities and tactics in hostage negotiations was unlawfully removed from the IDF’s military intelligence database by the noncom and leaked to the German newspaper by Feldstein.
The affair centers around what prosecutors allege were Feldstein’s efforts to sway public opinion surrounding the negotiations for the release of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza in a more favorable direction for Netanyahu, after six hostages were murdered by the terror group last August.
