Netanyahu spokesman was reportedly paid by Qatar to plant puff pieces in Israeli media
Eli Feldstein, indicted for leaking stolen IDF intel, was reportedly hired by Doha-employed US strategist; prime minister’s critics demand probe of Qatari influence at his office
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s former spokesman Eli Feldstein, who has been charged with harming national security in a case involving the theft and leaking of classified IDF documents, was paid by Doha to feed top Israeli journalists pro-Qatar stories, Hebrew media reported Thursday, as the premier’s critics demanded a probe of alleged Qatari influence in the Prime Minister’s Office.
Eli Feldstein’s ties with Doha, a mediator of the current hostage-ceasefire deal and a backer of Hamas, emerged during the intelligence theft investigation, but were left unexplored by investigators, Channel 12 said. The network cited a former defense official excoriating investigators for the reported oversight.
According to Channel 12 news, Feldstein worked for Qatar via an international firm contracted by the Persian Gulf state. Channel 13 news reported that Feldstein was hired by a Qatar-employed US strategist, who had interviewed several well-known publicists for the job.
The unnamed strategist reportedly has wide-ranging contacts in Qatar’s government and has been instrumental in arranging meetings between hostage families and Qatari officials.
It was unclear if Feldstein, who started working at Netanyahu’s office some four days into the war in Gaza, was first approached by the strategist before or after the fighting began.
Channel 13 also claimed that on behalf of the strategist, and while on the premier’s payroll, Feldstein arranged a visit to Qatar for Zvika Klein, editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post. Klein, who met with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani and other officials, published an account of the three-day visit in April.
Klein said late on Thursday, however, that he only came into contact with Feldstein after the trip, when Feldstein, “as a public relations man,” helped him publicize it. Klein posted on X that he visited Qatar at the direct invitation of the Qatari government. He said he has never met Feldstein and spoke to Feldstein for the first time after his return from Qatar, to coordinate TV interviews for him about the visit on Channels 12 and 13. Klein did not specify how he came into contact with Feldstein, or whether he knew Feldstein worked for Netanyahu.
On Wednesday, Channel 12 military correspondent Nir Dvori acknowledged having published some Qatar-related stories he received from Feldstein.
Last month, the network interviewed al-Thani in Paris — the Qatari premier’s first face-to-face with an Israeli television network.
Israel has no diplomatic relations with Qatar, which hosts Hamas’s leadership. For years, with Netanyahu’s approval, Qatar transferred hundreds of millions of dollars to the terror group in Gaza.
Qatar, along with Egypt and the United States, mediated the current ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas, following 15 months of fighting that began on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages. It also helped mediate November 2023’s weeklong hostage-truce deal.
Reports of Feldstein’s ties to Doha were first published on Monday, and follow reports in November that top Netanyahu aides Jonatan Urich and Yisrael Einhorn did public relations work for Qatar ahead of the 2022 World Cup there.
Feldstein’s lawyers denied the allegations. And Netanyahu’s spokesman Omer Dostri said Monday: “We’re not familiar with any such thing.” It has also cast the ongoing investigation into Feldstein as a witch hunt.
Urich, Einhorn and another aide to Netanyahu, Ofer Golan, were indicted on Tuesday charges of witness intimidation, for having sent a car with a megaphone to the home of a key witness in Netanyahu’s criminal trial in 2019 in order to harass him.
Former prime minister and IDF chief Ehud Barak and former Mossad chief Danny Yatom earlier Thursday published an open letter demanding a probe into Qatar’s influence in the Prime Minister’s Office, while The Democrats party chief Yair Golan, a former IDF general, demanded Netanyahu and his staff be investigated for treason.
In November, the State Prosecutor’s Office indicted Feldstein, a military spokesman in Netanyahu’s office, in connection with a stolen intelligence document that was leaked to the German tabloid Bild. Feldstein allegedly got the document from Ari Rosenfeld, a reservist non-commissioned officer in the Military Intelligence Directorate, who was also indicted.
Feldstein stands accused of transferring classified information with the intent to harm state security, a charge that can carry a sentence of life in prison, as well as illicit possession of classified information and obstruction of justice.
The stolen document, located by the IDF in Gaza, was said to show Hamas’s strategy of manipulating hostage families into pressuring the government to end the war in Gaza as part of a hostage deal.
Prosecutors accuse Feldstein of leaking the document in a bid to sway public opinion, which had turned against Netanyahu after the murder in captivity of six Israeli hostages in late August.
