Eli Feldstein and second suspect in Prime Minister's Office leaks case charged with harming state security

The State Attorney’s Office indicts Eli Feldstein, a central suspect in the Prime Minister’s Office security documents scandal, and another key suspect in the affair on charges of harming state security and transferring classified information.

Feldstein, an aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is charged with transferring classified information with intent to harm the state, while the second person to be charged, an IDF reservist noncommissioned officer, is charged with transferring classified information.

According to Israel’s Penal Code, the punishment for someone convicted of unlawfully transferring classified information with intent to harm the state is life imprisonment. The punishment for unlawfully transferring classified information is seven years in prison.

The prosecution accuses Feldstein of unlawfully receiving a classified document and leaking it to the Bild German tabloid newspaper.

Eli Feldstein, a spokesman in the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is the main suspect in an investigation launched in late October 2024 of alleged illegal access and leaking of classified intelligence material. (Kan screenshot, used in accordance with clause 27a of the copyright law)

Hundreds of people, including coalition ministers and MKs, have been demonstrating at the Tel Aviv court building in support of Feldstein and the second suspect, denouncing the probe against them and their ongoing detention.

Yehoshua Feldstein, the suspect’s father, tells the protesters that the document he allegedly gave to Bild was already in public circulation. “He’s a righteous man; he’s a true hero of Israel,” Feldstein’s father says.

Avital, the wife of the second key suspect, tells a Channel 12 reporter outside the court that her husband “is someone whose whole life is dedicated to the people of Israel… All he’s ever done is given of himself for the country.”

Information released by the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court on Sunday demonstrated that the apparent motivation behind Feldstein’s leak was to alleviate public pressure and criticism against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following the murder of six high-profile hostages by Hamas in late August.

The court indicated that Feldstein leaked the document to Bild in order to influence the public discourse over the fate of the Israeli hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza; have Hamas leader Sinwar blamed for the impasse in hostage release negotiations; and imply that protests demanding the release the hostages were playing into Hamas’s hands.

Netanyahu is not a suspect in the case.