Netanyahu aide leaked stolen doc to try to ‘skew hostage deal debate’ in PM’s favor
Info released by court reveals document was leaked to lift pressure on PM after Hamas murdered 6 hostages; efforts to free hostages were harmed, as were IDF, Shin Bet ops in Gaza
Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter
Information released by the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court on Sunday demonstrated that the apparent motivation behind the leak of a highly classified military intelligence document to Germany’s Bild newspaper in September 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.
According to details released by the court, Eli Feldstein, a former spokesman and aide to Netanyahu and a central suspect in the affair, leaked the document to Bild in order to change 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.
Feldstein originally obtained the classified document in April this year, after an Israel Defense Forces non-commissioned officer in the reserves unlawfully leaked it to him of his own accord.
Feldstein only leaked it himself to Bild after the six hostages were murdered at the end of August, an event that traumatized the country and led to severe recriminations against Netanyahu for what critics said was the prime minister’s effort to torpedo a hostage release deal for political purposes.
Investigators believe that the leak of the document had the potential to do severe damage to Israel’s security, the court disclosed, while the IDF came to the conclusion that the leak harmed the war aim of freeing the hostages, as well as the operations of the IDF and the Shin Bet security service in Gaza.
Earlier on Sunday, the State Attorney’s Office informed the court that it intends to prosecute Feldstein and another key suspect over the affair, but requested that they both be held in detention for an additional five days in order to complete the indictment drafting and filing process.
Feldstein and the other suspect, whose name has not been released for publication, are suspected of transferring classified information to harm the state, collecting classified material to harm the state, and conspiracy to commit a crime, among other charges.
Others questioned, wanted for questioning
Jonatan Urich, a former spokesman and press officer for Netanyahu and later for Likud who was questioned under caution on Thursday, is also a possible suspect in the case, according to Hebrew news reports.
Urich was asked, among other things, about his relationship with Yisrael Einhorn, another Likud operative who has connections to Bild, Channel 13 reported on Sunday.
Einhorn, who is currently overseas, has refrained from returning to Israel to avoid being grilled by authorities, according to the report.
He and Urich have been involved in several controversies in the past, including allegedly harassing a state’s witness in Netanyahu’s corruption trial.
Highly sensitive document
According to the information released Sunday by Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court judge Menachem Mizrahi, the IDF initiated an investigation into a possible leak after the publication of the Bild report due to the highly sensitive nature of the document that was leaked.
After initial checks by the army’s information security department, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi himself requested that the Shin Bet domestic security agency open its own, secret investigation in parallel to help identify those behind the leak.
The identification of the main alleged culprit, the NCO reservist, led the investigators to three other suspects involved in the leak — two IDF reserve officers, and a career NCO — and eventually to Feldstein as well.
Over the course of the investigation, “a grave leak axis was exposed” which began with the reservist NCO, “who decided of his own accord to remove a top secret and sensitive document from the IDF’s authority in order to pass it to the political rank,” the court said.
The reserve NCO passed the document to Feldstein in April via a social media account, and the spokesperson sat on it until September.
The murder of the six hostages by Hamas spawned an outpouring of grief in the country, and protests erupted against Netanyahu, accusing him of blocking a hostage deal, with relatives of the slain hostages joining such criticism.
Then, on September 6, the Bild article based on the leaked document was published, reporting that Hamas was indifferent to whether the war ends quickly, and was prioritizing maintaining the terror group’s military capabilities and “exhausting” Israel’s military and political apparatuses in the negotiations.
The report also said that Hamas had laid out a strategy of psychological warfare through the hostages, and was seeking to “continue to exert psychological pressure on the families of the [hostages], both now and in the first phase [of the proposed ceasefire] so that public pressure on the enemy government increases.”
The court noted that the Bild report came just after the murder of the hostages and the subsequent protests against the government “and as part of a desire to change the public discourse and direct the finger of blame at [Hamas leader] Yahya Sinwar.”
Outflanking the censor
Feldstein initially sought to get the document he had received in April published in the Israeli press after the murder of the hostages, and leaked it to several Israeli journalists.
But when the military censor blocked the publication of their reports due to the sensitivity of the material and its source, Feldstein sought to get it published in the foreign press, which the censor could not block, doing so with the help of “an additional party.”
Once it was published in Bild, he contacted several Israeli journalists to tell them about the report in order to get them to write follow-up pieces.
Some of those journalists questioned the authenticity of the document, however, and so Feldstein then asked the reserve NCO to provide him with the physical copy.
The officer then met with Feldstein and at that meeting gave him a physical copy of the original document, along with two other “highly classified” documents.
The court noted that the investigation, conducted jointly by the IDF, the Shin Bet and the Israel Police, had stymied the “leak axis” and prevented further damage being done to state security.
Charges soon
The State Attorney’s Office said, in its statement announcing its intention to indict Feldstein and the second suspect, that it would at the same time ask the court to keep the two suspects in detention until the end of legal proceedings against them.
A lawyer for Feldstein did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the information released by the court.
Netanyahu is not a suspect in the case. A gag order still applies to aspects of the case.
