Haaretz reveals that two of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s close advisers were behind a PR campaign to boost the global image of Qatar ahead of Doha’s hosting of the 2022 World Cup.
Jonathan Urich and Yisrael Einhorn were working at their Perception PR company at the time. They partnered with another Israeli firm to create a campaign on behalf of Qatar that marketed the Gulf country as a bedrock of peace and stability.
At the time, Netanyahu was head of the opposition, but the government was maintaining his policy of courting Qatar to send tens of millions of dollars each month to Gaza in order to prevent the enclave’s economic collapse.
Urich and Perception deny the Haaretz report.
Haaretz obtained documents from the PR campaign that included the Perception logo on them. A video promoting Qatar on Einhorn’s YouTube channel was taken down after Haaretz asked Perception for comment.
Both Urich and Einhorn have been implicated in an ongoing criminal investigation into the leak of stolen classified intelligence to the Bild German daily in order to skew the public debate regarding the hostage negotiations in the public’s favor.
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