‘The boss is happy’: Indictment suggests Netanyahu may have known about aide’s leak of classified intel

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have been made aware by members of his staff that they had obtained a classified document and then leaked it to the foreign press in what has become known as the security documents scandal, details from the indictment of one of those aides suggest.

The indictment filed against Eli Feldstein, an aide to Netanyahu, details how an IDF reservist non-commissioned officer (NCO) working in the IDF’s military directorate leaked a highly classified document detailing Hamas’s hostage negotiations strategy to Feldstein, for him to show to the prime minister.

Feldstein leaked the document to a reporter at Channel 12 News on September 2, just days after six hostages were murdered by Hamas, to influence media coverage and the public discourse which had turned sharply against Netanyahu as a result of the slaying of the captives, the indictment says.

After leaking the document, Feldstein told Netanyahu’s spokesperson Yonatan Urich what he had done in a WhatsApp message, adding “And [we] need the prime minister for this.”

The Channel 12 reporter was unable to publish the article since the military censor blocked its publication, so Feldstein then had the document sent to the Bild German newspaper through an associate of Urich’s on September 4 in order to circumvent the military censor.

Bild published its article on September 6 with direct quotes from the classified document. After publication, Urich wrote to Feldstein “The boss is happy,” in an apparent reference to Netanyahu, who he ostensibly updated about the leak.

Feldstein also received two other classified documents from the NCO in early September, and when he had all three documents together he told another Netanyahu spokesperson, Ofer Golan, on September 9 that he had them and that “[We] need to bring them to the boss.”

Those documents were ultimately not sent to the media since Feldstein and the others decided they weren’t relevant to the media discourse at the time.

Feldstein was indicted on charges of transferring classified information designed to harm state security. Urich has been questioned by the police under caution, and may be the subject of an indictment, while other suspects are also likely to be indicted. Netanyahu is not a suspect in the case.