Netanyahu ally accused of leaking documents to derail hostage deal

TEL AVIV - A scandal over a leak of top-secret military documents, allegedly involving the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has rocked Israel’s political establishment in a wartime country still reeling from last year’s Hamas attacks.

Israeli media has linked the leak to two articles that appeared in foreign outlets - Britain’s Jewish Chronicle and Germany’s Bild - in early September. Both articles, which were immediately called into question by Israel’s military, claimed to be based on internal Hamas documents that showed the Palestinian militant group had no intention of releasing the hostages it captured on Oct. 7.

The stories were published days after six hostages were murdered by their captors in Gaza, according to the military, and demonstrations had intensified in Israel calling for the government to reach a cease-fire deal. Netanyahu mentioned the Bild article in a weekly cabinet meeting, using it to bolster his argument that a hostage agreement could be a “Hamas trap.”

A judge overseeing the case said Sunday that the leaks to foreign media caused “potential damage” to efforts to secure the release of the roughly 100 hostages still held by Hamas. Only a few dozen are still believed to be alive, Israeli authorities have said, and their uncertain fate is a raw issue in this still-grieving nation.

A former aide in Netanyahu’s office is among five people who have been arrested in connection with the leaks. Netanyahu has not been implicated in the case. But critics say it underscores a damningly persistent assessment of his leadership during his nearly two decades in power: That his decisions are driven by self-interest rather than the national interest.

“The public that has been protesting for a hostage deal and elections, they are not surprised by this,” said Mairav Zonszein, an analyst with the International Crisis Group. “It’s substantiating what they already knew: That Netanyahu doesn’t want a hostage deal.”

Outrage over the leak has already started to cross political lines, with the Netanyahu-friendly newspaper Israel Hayom describing the case on Monday as “of the gravest affairs Israel has ever known.”

A statement Tuesday from Netanyahu’s office said “there is an unprecedented campaign against the Prime Minister’s Office in the midst of a war. … As with the previous attempts to inflate accusations against the Prime Minister and those around him, the present matter will also not yield anything whatsoever.”

An umbrella group representing hostage families released a statement Sunday evening calling for a full investigation into the leak allegations, warning they could “endanger the hostages, undermine the chances of their return, and expose them to harm by Hamas terrorists.”

Some of the families staged a protest on Tuesday morning, blocking rush-hour traffic on a key highway in Tel Aviv, with a supporting statement accusing Netanyahu’s government of organizing “psyops against its own public.”

Israeli officials have a history of leaking information to foreign outlets to get around military censorship rules, said Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler of Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem-based think tank. “Israel has the strictest military censorship legislation among Western countries,” she said.

Israel’s prime minister cannot unilaterally declassify documents, and military censors control what can be published domestically. When stories appear first in the international press, censors can decide to lift the restrictions and allow the news to be covered by Israeli media.

In this case, however, questions were raised immediately in Israel about the accuracy of the two stories and the veracity of the documents they were based upon. Military officials took reporters on a tour of southern Gaza to show the area did not have active cross-border tunnels to Egypt, which the stories said Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning to use to escape the enclave with hostages. Sinwar was killed on Oct. 16.

Soon, Israeli reporters also found numerous holes in the stated background of Elon Perry, the freelance journalist who wrote the article for the Jewish Chronicle, a small London-based weekly newspaper, which later removed his stories from their website and ended their association with him.

The origin of the documents - and how they made their way to the foreign outlets - remained largely hidden from public view until this weekend, when Judge Menachem Mizrahi of the Rishon Lezion magistrate’s court loosened a gag order on the case. The name of the main suspected leaker, Eliezer Feldstein, was released, followed by revelations that he had served as an aide in the prime minister’s office.

Feldstein has made no public comment. His lawyer said his detention has been extended until Sunday.

At least five people have been arrested in all, according to accounts in Israel, with Israel’s internal intelligence agency Shin Bet conducting the investigation.

Ran Kochav, a former Israeli Air and Missile Defense commander and former IDF spokesperson, said that the incident showed the breakdown of trust between Israel’s military and its civilian leadership. Feldstein, he said, had been hired early in the war to serve as a spokesman on military affairs for Netanyahu’s office.

His position allowed the office to brief military journalists in manner that contradicted the IDF’s perspective, Kochav said. “The prime minister takes credit for the successes and leaves the IDF spokesperson to handle only the failures,” he added.

Netanyahu’s office has downplayed Feldstein’s role, stating that “the individual in question never participated in security discussions, was not exposed to or received classified information, and did not take part in secret visits.”

Israeli media outlets, however, have published photos showing Feldstein in the company of the prime minister on official visits. “[Netanyahu] initially responded in a panic mode, denying things that were obviously true,” said Chuck Freilich, a former deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council.

Paul Ronzheimer, the deputy editor of Bild who wrote one of the two articles based on the leak, has visited Israel several times since the beginning of the war and has interviewed Netanyahu. The Berlin-based tabloid is known for its fiercely pro-Israel stance.

“So this document somehow reached Bild without [Netanyahu] knowing? Give me a break,” Kochav said.

Ronzheimer declined to comment. Bild said in a statement that “we do not comment on our sources as a matter of principle,” but added that the IDF had confirmed the authenticity of the documents.

With the involvement of Shin Bet and the level of secrecy surrounding the matter, experts said the case was likely far broader than what has been publicly revealed so far. As early as Nov. 12, barely a month after the Hamas attacks, Israel’s attorney general had sent a letter to the prime minister’s office demanding to see classified material it had allegedly taken, Shwartz Altshuler said.

“We know that the investigation was opened before they knew about the leak of those two specific documents,” she added. “So it means that there is more.”

The political fallout is also hard to predict. Netanyahu already faces criminal charges in three separate cases related to corruption and cronyism, and last year became the first sitting prime minister to appear as a defendant in an Israeli court.

“It’s difficult to imagine a more damaging faux pas than pilfering and tampering with sensitive intelligence, and then deploying it for political purposes,” said Shalom Lipner, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who previously worked in the prime minister’s office under Netanyahu.

Yet Bibi, as he is known in Israel, has developed a reputation as a consummate political survivor. The country’s ongoing conflicts in Gaza and southern Lebanon, and its escalating confrontations with Iran, have helped the prime minister recover some of his support after being widely blamed for the security failures on Oct. 7.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu fired his defense minister Yoav Gallant, who has emerged in recent months as one of his fiercest critics on the failure to conclude a hostage deal in Gaza. If he is able to keep his far-right coalition together, he could put off elections until late 2026.

“Somehow, Netanyahu blunders his way through crisis after crisis,” Freilich said.