Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s close aide is suspected of leaking sensitive security documents as part of an orchestrated campaign to thwart a hostage deal, court documents revealed on Sunday.
Speculation about the case had seized public attention for days even before Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court Judge Menahem Mizrahi partially lifted a gag order on details of the security breach.
It has already been billed as one of the most serious security breaches in the country’s history. Details are scarce, but the court decision showed that four individuals were under investigation, including civilian Eliezer Feldstein, a close associate of Netanyahu’s who had been informally working for him.
Netanyahu has been accused of thwarting a deal that could potentially bring down his government.
“The investigation began after significant suspicions arose in the Shin Bet [Israel Security Agency] and IDF, also in light of media publications indicating that classified and sensitive intelligence information was taken from IDF systems and illegally removed,” the judge wrote.
This raised “concerns about serious harm to national security and risking information sources. As a result, there could have been damage to the security forces’ ability to achieve the goal of releasing the hostages, as part of the war objectives.
“Following this, a joint covert investigation was launched by the Shin Bet, IDF, and Israel Police, during which these suspicions were significantly strengthened.
“Accordingly, an overt investigation was opened, during which four suspects involved in the activity have been investigated so far, some of them security system officials and a civilian named Mr. Eliezer Feldstein. The investigation is ongoing and is being conducted according to law and under court supervision. Any additional publication regarding the investigation could lead to harm to the investigation, its objectives, and national security,” Mizrahi said.
He added, “Let it also be said: I have examined the investigation materials and its conduct, and I am satisfied that this is a highly professional and substantive investigation that must be allowed to be completed. If I were to order a sweeping cancellation of the order, there is a real concern that it would significantly harm the investigation and the pursuit of truth.”
The ruling also revealed that one of the suspects had been released from confinement, while the remand of three others was extended; that three of the suspects were prevented from meeting with an attorney; and that there were “reasonable grounds” regarding the defendants’ guilt, as well as “alleged evidence” to that effect.
Mizrahi approved for publication on Friday that “the overt part of a joint investigation by the Shin Bet, Israel Police, and the IDF began in the past week, which deals with suspected security damage based on the illegal passing on of classified information.
“At issue is the endangering of sensitive information and information sources, as well as hampering achieving the goals of the war in the Gaza Strip.”
Some of the documents in question are widely believed to be related to two reports from September, near the peak of public pressure in support of a hostage deal after the bodies of six hostages, who had been executed just days before, were retrieved from Rafah.
The reports, in the German newspaper Bild and the British Jewish Chronicle, supported views the prime minister had been espousing at the time that Hamas did not intend to go through with a hostage deal and that it was planning on smuggling hostages out of the Gaza Strip and into Egypt.
The prime minister used the latter to emphasize his claim about the necessity of soldiers remaining along the Philadelphi Corridor on the Gaza-Egypt border.
Who is Eliezer Feldstein?
Feldstein was hired by the Prime Minister’s Office media team soon after the war began, although his exact employment status remained unclear. He had previously served as a spokesperson in the IDF and then as a spokesperson for National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
According to a number of reports, Feldstein did not pass a Shin Bet security clearance vetting process, and therefore served in an advisory capacity and was not officially an employee of the Prime Minister’s Office. The Prime Minister’s
Office argued in a series of statements over the weekend, including a rare statement on Friday evening after Shabbat had already begun, that no member of the Prime Minister’s Office had been arrested or interrogated.
However, Feldstein, while not officially part of the office, can be seen in photographs accompanying the prime minister in many tours to military bases and present in a number of discussions with senior security officials.
Opposition leader MK Yair Lapid said in a press conference on Sunday night alongside MK National Unity Party head Benny Gantz that Netanyahu was either complicit in leaking classified information in an attempt to thwart the hostage deal or he is completely incompetent to lead the country.
“If Netanyahu knew, he is complicit in one of the most serious security breaches in the law book. If Netanyahu didn’t know, what does he know?” Lapid asked.
“It is suspected that Netanyahu’s people published secret documents and falsified documents to torpedo the possibility of a hostage deal, to build a public relations campaign against the families of the hostages.”
This security breach came “out of the Prime Minister’s Office,” and an investigation should be held to see if the security leaks and falsification of information were done at Netanyahu’s order, Lapid said.
Netanyahu has claimed that he “has no influence or control over the system he leads. If that’s true… he is not qualified to lead the State of Israel in the most difficult war in its history,” Lapid charged.
Gantz said the security breach wasn’t about leaked documents, it was about the “withholding of state secrets, for political purposes. If sensitive security information is stolen and becomes a tool in a political survival campaign – this is not only a criminal offense, it is a national crime.
“The stealing of classified intelligence information by an official in the Prime Minister’s Office is a black line, period,” Gantz said.
The Hostage Families Forum, which participated in Sunday’s hearing, said in a statement following the ruling:
“The attack against the hostages and their families has an address, a sender, and motives that constitute a real threat to national security and to the war objectives.
“The foundation of evidence, which has allegedly accumulated in this serious case currently being investigated by the Shin Bet, indicates that the prime minister’s inner circle acted in a way that harms national security with the aim of thwarting the return of the hostages.
“The Israeli government and its leader have a moral, ethical, and leadership obligation to return all hostages – the living for rehabilitation and the murdered and fallen for proper burial in their homeland.
“The suspicions indicate that people associated with the prime minister acted to carry out one of the greatest public deceptions in the state’s history. A government that abandoned citizens who became victims of cruel kidnappings is effectively working to defame them and harm public opinion regarding the duty to return them – as if they were the nation’s enemy.
“How terrible that the directing hand behind the incitement, violence, and blood-letting against the hostages and their families has allegedly been found.
“There is a serious causal connection between the defamatory and malicious campaign against the effort to return the hostages, and the thwarting of Netanyahu’s deal by the one who initiated it himself.
“The Hostage Families Forum demands investigation of all those involved in the alleged subversion and harm to national security. Such action in general, and during wartime in particular, endangers the hostages, harms the chances of their return, and God forbid legitimizes their blood and leads to harm against them by Hamas terrorists.
“This is a moral low from which there is no deeper depth. This is a fatal blow to the remaining trust between the government and its citizens,” the Hostage Families Forum concluded.
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