PMO leaks suspect did PR for Qatar while working for Netanyahu, report claims
Eli Feldstein talked up Doha’s role in hostage negotiations to journalists even as prime minister castigated emirate, Channel 12 says; lawyers deny unsourced report
The key suspect in a scandal surrounding the leak of classified IDF documents to and from the Prime Minister’s Office, Eli Feldstein, did public relations work for Qatar while on the premier’s payroll, according to a report Monday.
Eli Feldstein, a former military spokesman in the PMO for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is accused of helping leak pilfered military documents to the press with the intent of swaying public opinion against a ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza, which at the time was opposed by the government.
According to a report aired Monday by Channel 12 news, during his tenure in the PMO, Feldstein was also employed by a Qatar-funded company to improve public perception of Doha around the Gulf country’s role in hostage deal mediation between Israel and Hamas. The company was not named in the report, which also did not offer a source for the allegations against Feldstein.
Feldstein’s lawyers denied the allegations, saying in a response to the Channel 12 broadcast: “The report is not true.”
Netanyahu’s spokesman Omer Dostri also said: “We’re not familiar with any such thing.”
According to Channel 12, Feldstein held conversations with several journalists in which he presented Qatar as having a “positive role” in negotiations.
According to Channel 12, the Qatar-funded firm that employed Feldstein was working to promote contacts between families of the hostages and authorities in Doha.
The work allegedly took place at the same time that Netanyahu was publicly condemning Qatar as a backer of the Hamas terror group.
According to the report, Feldstein’s outside work continued until the scandal became public. He was arrested in November on suspicion of leaking stolen classified intelligence information to be published in the foreign press.
Two other Netanyahu advisers — Jonatan Urich and Yisrael Einhorn — were reported last year to be involved in a campaign to improve Qatar’s image surrounding hosting the 2022 World Cup.
The allegations against Feldstein and Ari Rosenfeld, a reserves IDF noncommissioned officer in the Military Intelligence Directorate, are at the heart of a scandal at the Prime Minister’s Office in which a highly classified document ostensibly detailing Hamas’s priorities and tactics in hostage negotiations was unlawfully removed from the IDF’s military intelligence database and leaked to Germany’s Bild newspaper.
The affair centers around what prosecutors allege were efforts to sway public opinion surrounding the negotiations for the release of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza in a more favorable direction for Netanyahu, days after six hostages were murdered by the terror group last August.
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.
Jeremy Sharon contributed to this report.
