Report: Ex-Shin Bet chief told PM of arrest of his former spokesman Feldstein hours after it happened

Former Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar informed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the decision to arrest his former spokesman, Eli Feldstein, for alleged involvement in the Bild intelligence leak scandal, shortly after the arrest was carried out, according to new information revealed by Channel 12.

The disclosure is notable because the investigation was under a sweeping gag order at the time, with knowledge of the arrest reportedly restricted to a very small circle of officials. According to the report, even many senior figures who would ordinarily have been informed were initially kept in the dark as investigators sought to preserve the secrecy of the probe.

According to the report, however, Bar was permitted to inform Netanyahu of the arrest in very limited detail.

“The prime minister responded with astonishment, and I indicated [to him] that I could not elaborate” on the reason for the arrest, Bar said during testimony in judicial proceedings on the affair, according to the Hebrew network.

Channel 12 adds that, according to suspicions under investigation, Jonatan Urich, a close Netanyahu aide who is also allegedly involved in the affair, deleted the contents of his phone within a day of Feldstein’s arrest. While Urich has argued that he routinely deletes the contents of his phone and that he was completely unaware of Feldstein’s arrest, Bar’s testimony would challenge that claim, since by that point, Netanyahu had already been informed.

However, the report does not indicate that Netanyahu passed the information to Urich or anyone else, and does not cite evidence that Urich learned of the arrest through the Prime Minister’s Office.

Urich and Feldstein are under investigation for allegedly playing roles in the leak of a classified document from IDF military intelligence to the German tabloid Bild in September 2024 as part of an effort to buttress Netanyahu’s claim that it was Hamas, not the prime minister, who was holding up a deal for the release of the hostages held by the terror group in Gaza. The document was leaked to a foreign news outlet in order to bypass Israel’s military censor.