Israel News: Employee passed on confidential documents

Media leaks in Israel –

An employee leaked confidential documents – what did Netanyahu know?

Secret documents ended up with foreign media to thwart a hostage deal. The reports came in handy for Israel’s prime minister.

Published: November 4, 2024, 6:00 p.m

What did he know about the leak? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Photo: Abir Sultan (AFP)

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Shortly:

The Israeli secret service is investigating leaks of sensitive military documents.
Four suspects were arrested, including a Netanyahu confidant.
Reports in foreign media were based on secret documents to torpedo hostage deals.
Netanyahu distances himself, opposition leaders accuse him of shared responsibility.

In the middle of Multi-front war A story about betrayal of secrets dominates the headlines in Israel. At the center of the storm is the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, from whose environment confidential military documents are said to have been placed in foreign media. The aim should have been a hostage deal to thwart Hamas. Four suspects were arrested last week.

Although the Israeli media is full of reports, many details of this case remain obscure. The reason: The responsible court has imposed a news blackout, pointing out that in this case there is a “serious threat to national security and a risk to information sources”. This information blockage will only be relaxed gradually. On Sunday evening it became known that the main suspect is a man named Eli Feldstein, who is considered a kind of informal spokesman in Netanyahu’s inner circle.

If you put the pieces of the puzzle together, the explosive affair began two months ago. On September 1, the army reported that the bodies of six Israeli hostages had been discovered in a tunnel in the Gaza Strip. The abductees had recently been executed with shots in the head by their Hamas tormentors. This discovery of bodies shocked Israel enormously. Demonstrations demanding an agreement to release the hostages were now held daily. Hundreds of thousands took part.

Useful articles in the foreign press

This put Netanyahu under pressure, whose right-wing partners have always threatened to break up the coalition if concessions were made to Hamas. The head of government is therefore accused by many quarters of repeatedly torpedoing an agreement in order not to endanger his own power.

Two articles that appeared in foreign media in the first week of September with reference to secret Israeli documents appear to be quite useful in such a strategy. First, the Jewish Chronicle, published in London, caused a stir with a report that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning to smuggle hostages across the border into Egypt. Shortly afterwards, the German “Bild” appeared with the headline: “To shudder! This is what the Hamas leader is planning to do with the hostages.” Citing an exclusively obtained document that came from Sinwar’s computer, it is stated that Hamas has no interest in a quick end to the war, but only wants to “manipulate the international community and torture the hostage families” in order to put pressure on Israel’s government.

The army, alarmed by the reports, immediately launched an investigation into the disclosure of the documents in question. The report in the “Jewish Chronicle” quickly turned out to be a fake. The weekly newspaper took the article down from its website and the author was fired. Regarding the “Bild” report, the army said it was based on an old document that was not written by Sinwar, but “as a recommendation from middle ranks of Hamas.”

Netanyahu likes to quote the reports

However, Netanyahu had long since known how to use the two reports. The plan to allegedly smuggle hostages across the border fit perfectly with his argument that the Israeli army should never vacate the so-called Philadelphi Corridor between Gaza and Egypt. The head of government reportedly quoted the “Bild” report in a cabinet meeting a short time later to prove that the blame for the failure of a hostage agreement did not lie with him, but with Hamas alone.

The old question “Cui bono?”, i.e. who will benefit from the leaks and media reports, would then be clarified. However, it is far from clear whether a direct line can be drawn from the suspected spokesman Eli Feldstein to Netanyahu. The prime minister immediately did his best to distance himself from Feldstein and the entire incident.