PM adviser Urich charged with leaking classified information with intent to harm state security

The State Attorney’s Office indicts Jonatan Urich, a senior media adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on a charge of transmitting classified information with the intent to harm state security over his involvement in the leaked documents affair.

The prosecutors request that the Tel Aviv District Court bar Urich from the Prime Minister’s Office and from all security facilities and places where classified documents might be kept, and from contacting anyone involved in the case, until the end of legal proceedings against him.

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

The indictment alleges that Urich, together with Netanyahu’s former military affairs spokesman Eli Feldstein, leaked the document they obtained from IDF Military Intelligence NCO Ari Rosenfeld, knowing it was classified and that the military censor had blocked publication in Israel, “while taking a real risk that critical security interests would be harmed” by the leak.

The indictment adds that Feldstein passed the classified information to other unauthorized individuals as well, in coordination with Urich.

Urich is also charged with destroying evidence by switching phones the day after Feldstein and Rosenfeld were arrested.

“The actions of Urich, Rosenfeld and Feldstein led to the disclosure of the existence of a secret intelligence asset, its capabilities and the methods by which it was used,” the State Attorney’s Office says in a statement to the press.

“The disclosure of the secret information to the public could cause real damage to the security interests of the State of Israel, mainly in the field of intelligence gathering and the disclosure of intelligence sources, through whom human lives are saved, since [the leak] could reveal missions, capabilities, methods of operation and the classified methods used by the intelligence community in various arenas.”