Israel’s State Attorney’s Office announced on Sunday that it would file charges against Netanyahu spokesman Eliezer Feldstein and one other suspect in connection with the deliberate leak of a manipulated top-secret document by the PM’s office to media in an attempt to convince Israelis that protests against the Netanyahu government served to strengthen Hamas.
Feldstein is accused of first trying to leak the information to local media, which would not publish it thanks to the Israel Defense Force’s strict military censorship laws, and then to foreign media, which published a story based on an altered version of the sensitive material.
“On September 6, 2024, foreign media published an article about Hamas’s positions regarding negotiations for the release of hostages. This article included the use of classified materials and documents that were illegally taken from IDF intelligence system,” a court document released Sunday detailing the charges against Feldstein and his coconspirator said.
The article in question, published by Germany’s popular Bild newspaper, alleged, citing a document purportedly taken from the late Hamas chairman Yahya Al-Sinwar’s computer, that the Palestinian militia had engaged in a campaign of “manipulating the international community, [psychologically] torturing the hostage families, and seeking to rearm” through drawn out hostage negotiations.
The Bild story was picked up by Netanyahu in a cabinet meeting soon after publication.
The court document released to media Sunday indicated that “after examination by the IDF, it was determined” that the document in question “could harm both the achievement of one of the war’s objectives (hostage release) and the operational activities of the IDF and Shin Bet in the Gaza Strip against Hamas and in additional contexts.” Inquiries were subsequently started by the intelligence services and the Israeli Police.
“During the overt investigation, several individuals were arrested (in stages and according to developments): a reserve NCO, two reserve officers, an active-duty NCO, and Eliezer Feldstein, a civilian communications advisor employed in the National Public Diplomacy Directorate under the Prime Minister’s Office,” the document said.
“The investigation revealed a serious chain mechanism for leaks, beginning with a reserve NCO who decided on his own initiative to remove a top secret and sensitive document from IDF possession illegally, intending to transfer it to the political echelon,” the court doc added said, clarifying that a copy of the file in question was transferred to Feldstein in April, and a physical copy and two additional top-secret files provided to him in September.
“As revealed in the investigation, in early September 2024, Eliezer Feldstein decided to distribute the said document to media outlets in Israel for the purpose of publishing its contents, with the aim of influencing public opinion in Israel regarding the ongoing hostage negotiations, particularly concerning the impact of protests on strengthening Hamas,” the court said.
Feldstein was alleged to have “enlisted another party to help publish the story.”
The damning revelations could prove a further hit to Netanyahu's standing, with the embattled prime minister facing protests recently over the sacking of his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, earlier this month, and a dragging, years-old investigation into alleged corruption, repeatedly postponed amid the ongoing fighting in Gaza and Lebanon.