Indicted ex-Netanyahu aide says PM backed plan to utilize intel he later leaked to Bild |
Eli Feldstein, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s indicted former spokesperson, alleged on Monday that the premier was aware and supportive of his efforts to make use of classified intelligence in order to sway public opinion against a hostage deal, effectively contradicting Netanyahu’s assertion that he had no prior knowledge of Feldstein’s leak of the document to the German Bild tabloid.
Feldstein made the accusation in an interview with the Kan public broadcaster aired Sunday night — his first media appearance since being arrested in October 2024 and later charged for leaking stolen intelligence to Bild the previous month. The publication presented that classified document as evidence that Hamas was not interested in reaching a hostage deal with Israel.
He went on to claim that Netanyahu’s chief of staff Tzachi Braverman got wind of the secret investigation into Feldstein’s leak to Bild months before it was publicized and had assured Feldstein then that he’d be able to quash the probe.
Feldstein also told Kan that well before the Bild affair, Netanyahu was hyper-focused on combating media narratives that were critical of his conduct and had directed his aides to limit public chatter about him being “responsible” for Hamas’s October 7 onslaught.
The Bild affair was triggered by the execution of six Israeli hostages at the hands of their Hamas captors, who sensed Israeli troops approaching the tunnel where they were located in the southern Gaza city of Rafah at the end of August 2024.
The execution sparked massive public uproar against the government, which critics saw as the obstacle in hostage negotiations due to Netanyahu’s perceived prioritization of an amorphous “total victory” against Hamas at the expense of the captives’ lives.
Feldstein told Kan that he urged Netanyahu to hold a press conference to combat this narrative, which the premier ended up doing on September 2. During the press conference, Netanyahu displayed an internal Hamas memo obtained by the IDF that suggested the terror group was not interested in a hostage deal.
The memo was from nine months earlier and Feldstein said he knew someone in the IDF’s Military Intelligence Division who had access to a more recent document detailing Hamas’s approach to the hostage negotiations, which he felt would further bolster Netanyahu’s argument that only military pressure could bring about the release of the hostages.
Feldstein said he first went to Jonathan Urich — another top Netanyahu adviser — about the document before approaching the prime minister himself after the September 2 press conference.
He said he told the premier that he had a source from whom he and Urich were working to obtain the........