The Leak Scandal Roiling Israel
The scandal rocking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s inner circle began with a headline in giant type announcing Hamas’s “horrifying” plans for Israeli hostages, and an exclusive story about a document “said to be” from the computer of the organization's then-leader, Yahya Sinwar. The headline appeared in German but precisely fit Netanyahu's domestic needs.
The date was September 6. Less than a week had passed since the corpses of six Israeli hostages, shot by their Hamas captors, were found in a tunnel in Gaza. Protesters filled Israeli streets night after night, calling for a hostage deal and expressing anger that Netanyahu had prevented an agreement that could have saved the six. Funerals for the murdered captives drew thousands of people.
All of which played into Hamas’s strategy. So said the supposed Sinwar document that Bild, Germany’s largest newspaper, had obtained. The document called for exploiting “psychological pressure” on the families of Israeli hostages “so that public pressure on the enemy [Israeli] government increases.” Talks on a hostage deal, meanwhile, could be dragged out long enough for Hamas to rebuild its military, the paper’s paraphrase of the document said.
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Israeli media quickly echoed the report. Netanyahu leapt on it. In his weekly statement to the media before the cabinet met, he said that Bild had revealed Hamas’s plan: “to sow discord among us … to tear us apart from within … until Israel is defeated.” Most Israelis weren’t “falling into this Hamas trap,” he added. The protesters, by implication, were the tools of Israel’s enemy.
If publication of the Hamas document seemed too convenient for Netanyahu’s political purposes, that may be because it was. On Thursday, a Netanyahu spokesperson was indicted on the espionage charge of revealing classified information with the intent to damage state security, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. The spokesperson, arrested late last month, gave the contents of a top-secret document to the German paper in order to “slant the public conversation about the hostages” in Israel, the indictment says. Another close adviser of and spokesperson for the prime minister has been questioned by police and is named, but not charged, in the indictment, which states that the leak could compromise Israeli espionage “capabilities.” This means that the intelligence community could lose the long investment it has made in developing a source, as well as the information that source could provide in the future. A court ruling last week, partially lifting a gag order, said the leak may also have harmed efforts to free hostages.
As portrayed in those court documents, members of Netanyahu’s staff have shown themselves willing to pay an astonishing price for deflecting criticism of the prime minister’s war policy. Because of military secrecy and court gag orders, a full picture of the case has yet to emerge. But the indictment and other legal documents tell part of the story.
When the Bild article came out, it reportedly set off alarms in Israeli military intelligence, which realized that the story was based on a top-secret document leaked from within the army. But army sources told Israel media that the document came from a minor Hamas figure, not Sinwar, and did not mention a lack of interest in a hostage deal.
Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, investigated the leak and traced it to a noncommissioned officer, who had allegedly seen the document and decided that it needed to reach Netanyahu. The leaker’s motive is unknown, though it may be linked to a conspiratorial narrative, reportedly promoted by Netanyahu, that the military has hidden vital information from the prime minister since before the war. (In fact, the indictment says, more relevant and up-to-date intelligence had already been conveyed to the correct address.) The noncommissioned officer allegedly made contact with Eli Feldstein, a Netanyahu spokesperson, and sent him a photo of the document and a Hebrew translation via Telegram.
Feldstein is himself an ex-officer and a former spokesperson for the Israeli-military division in the West Bank. After leaving the army, he was a spokesperson for Israel’s far-right national-security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir. Last October, just after the war began, Netanyahu took on Feldstein as his point man for military correspondents.
In April, the indictment says, Feldstein failed a Shin Bet security-clearance check and was found unfit to handle highly classified material. Yet Netanyahu kept him on, and he regularly visited the Israeli military headquarters, in Tel Aviv.
The noncommissioned officer allegedly passed the document to Feldstein last June. Feldstein texted Jonathan Urich, a more senior spokesperson, that he was receiving “insane material” meant for the prime minister, the indictment says, citing the precise time of the WhatsApp message. Whether Urich or Feldstein actually passed the document on to Netanyahu is unstated in the indictment. But at the beginning of September, as streets in Israel filled with protesters, Feldstein allegedly sent a photograph of the material to an Israeli television journalist via Telegram. As required by law, the reporter checked with the military censor, who can block publication of information “nearly certain” to harm national security. The censor killed the item.
Undeterred by the censor’s ruling, Feldstein allegedly wrote to Urich to ask if he knew anyone outside Israel who could arrange publication of the classified material. Urich, the indictment says, connected him with Yisrael (Srulik) Einhorn, a campaign consultant who’d worked closely with Netanyahu and who was abroad. Via WhatsApp, Feldstein sent Einhorn the contents of the document and the censor’s message blocking publication. Einhorn contacted a Bild reporter, and the story of Hamas’s supposed strategy appeared. The legal documents don’t reveal how two key false details made it into the story: the supposed source of the document in Sinwar’s computer, and Hamas’s putative willingness to prolong the war.
In any case, Feldstein alerted the Israeli media, which could now report on what had appeared in a foreign outlet. The item got heavy play.
Urich, according to the indictment, texted Feldstein, surely referring to the prime minister: “The boss is pleased.”
The next day, Feldstein and Urich drafted Netanyahu’s statement quoting Bild. Everything had clicked—or so it seemed, until the arrests began.
This, at least, is the story the indictment tells. Its claims remain to be proved in court. And the indictment doesn’t say whether Netanyahu in fact knew in June that one of his aides had illegally received a document pilfered from military intelligence. It doesn’t say whether Netanyahu ordered the leak, or if he even knew in advance that the document would be leaked. Whether Netanyahu faces possible legal consequences, or only political fallout, remains to be seen.
Certainly, though, the case has rattled him. When it first broke, he denied that there had been any leaks from his office and that anyone from his bureau had been arrested or questioned. His tone has since changed. On Saturday night, via social media, Netanyahu released a nine-minute video clip in response to the indictment. The normally glib prime minister sounded angry and anxious. He claimed, falsely, that no other leaks have been investigated, and that the army was withholding crucial information from him. This investigation was a “witch hunt” aimed “not only at me, but at you, the huge public that voted for me,” he said. He said he knew Feldstein as a “patriot.”
Then he added, “But if they come … in the middle of the night and jail you, isolate you … threaten you with a life sentence … a person can break” and say anything. It was an apparent preemptive strike, should Feldstein testify against him.
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Meanwhile, the hostages remain in Gaza. Why Netanyahu has resisted reaching a hostage and cease-fire agreement is no more apparent now than it was in September. He has defined the goal of the war as “absolute victory” over Hamas militarily and ending its rule in Gaza. But he has evaded proposing an alternative for who would administer Gaza after the war. And his recently dismissed defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said earlier this month—in a meeting with families of hostages—that Israel has already “reached all [its] goals militarily.” So the mystery remains.
“The boss is satisfied, and my son is being abused in the tunnels” of Gaza, Einav Zangauker, whose son is a hostage, said in a video statement on social media after the Feldstein indictment was made public.
Maybe Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners want the war to continue, allowing Israel to renew its occupation and settlement of Gaza. Or maybe an end to the fighting would simply redouble public pressure for new elections, which Netanyahu would likely lose.
Here is where the hostage issue meets the leak affair: The security that matters most to Israel’s supposed “Mr. Security,” it seems, is his own.