A court partially lifted a gag order Sunday on a case surrounding suspected leaks of classified information by an associate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, unsealing the name of the central suspect and several other details.
Eli Feldstein, a spokesperson working with the Prime Minister’s Office, is accused of divulging top-secret information with national security implications to European media outlets, according to a ruling published Sunday evening by Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court head Menahem Mizrahi.
The names of three other suspects remain gagged by the court, but it confirmed that they were connected to the defense establishment.
“The investigation began after significant suspicions arose in the Shin Bet and IDF — including as a result of media publications — that secret and sensitive intelligence information was taken from the IDF and removed illegally, sparking concerns of serious harm to national security and a danger to the sources of the information,” the court noted. “As a result, damage could have been done to the ability of defense bodies to achieve the goal of freeing the hostages [held in Gaza].”
In recent days Netanyahu had sought to distance himself from the case, claiming no one from his office had been arrested or was under investigation, and pushing back against critics who claimed the leaks had been politically expedient for him. The premier had downplayed the affair and publicly called for the gag order to be lifted.
According to multiple outlets, however, Feldstein had functioned as a PMO employee in all but name over the past year, and was frequently in the premier’s close orbit. He is seen beside Netanyahu in various photos over the past year. Kan news reported that Feldstein was technically working for the PMO’s director-general and not the office itself due to failing a polygraph test, which made him ineligible for the security clearance required to work at the PMO, but was in close contact with the premier regardless.
The leaked documents are said to have formed the basis of a widely discredited article in the London-based Jewish Chronicle — which was later withdrawn — suggesting Hamas had planned to spirit hostages out of Gaza through Egypt; as well as an article in Germany’s Bild newspaper that said Hamas was drawing out hostage talks as a form of psychological warfare on Israel.
Israeli media and other observers expressed skepticism about those articles, which appeared to bolster Netanyahu’s position in the hostage release-ceasefire talks and to absolve him of blame for their failure. The pair of reports regarding Hamas’s strategy were nearly identical to talking points made by Netanyahu in interviews, statements at cabinet meetings and press conferences shortly before and after the articles appeared in early September, including a claim that Sinwar sought to smuggle Israeli hostages out of Gaza through the Philadelphi Corridor which separates the Strip from Egypt.
The case first became public on Friday, after Feldstein was arrested in an early-morning police raid on October 27. He was remanded in custody until at least Tuesday, when another hearing is scheduled. Three others, as yet unnamed, have also been arrested.
The Ynet news outlet reported that investigators are examining four separate issues in the case: the leaking of top-secret documents; allowing an adviser without security clearance to access meetings and premises that should have been off-limits to him; negligence in the handling of classified documents; and the use of documents to influence public opinion on a hostage deal.
Some of the suspects in the ongoing investigation could face up to 15 years in prison, Ynet said, citing an official familiar with the details.
Who is Feldstein?
Feldstein, 32, comes from an ultra-Orthodox family and grew up in Bnei Brak. He studied at Ohr Yisrael, a yeshiva in Petah Tikva in the hesder framework — which combines Torah study and military service — and joined the IDF in 2014.
During his service, he was an officer in the military spokesperson’s unit, serving as spokesman for the religious Netzah Yehuda Battalion and for the army’s West Bank division. He was at one point an operations officer within the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, winning plaudits as the first Orthodox person in the role, according to the Ynet news site.
Following his discharge from the military, Feldstein briefly worked as a spokesperson for Otzma Yehudit head Itamar Ben Gvir, who is now national security minister. According to Hebrew media reports, he worked as a spokesman for Netanyahu from soon after the Hamas invasion and slaughter in southern Israel in October 2023, and was employed despite having failed a Shin Bet security check.
On Saturday, the PMO did not deny allegations that a document had been leaked from Netanyahu’s office, but sought to distance the premier himself from the episode. It claimed that the spokesperson, now known to be Feldstein, “never participated in security discussions, was not exposed to or receive classified information, and did not take part in secret visits.”
“The published document never came to the Prime Minister’s Office from the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate, and the prime minister learned about it from the media,” the PMO asserted, apparently relating to the document cited by Bild.
The two articles in September
On September 6, Germany’s Bild published a report that cited a document captured in Gaza indicating that Hamas’s main concern in ceasefire negotiations with Israel was to rehabilitate its military capabilities, and not to alleviate the suffering of Gaza’s civilian population. Bild said it had obtained the spring 2024 document exclusively, without offering further details. It said the document was found on a computer in Gaza that belonged to now-slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
The IDF launched a probe into the information leak at the time and said that the document had been found in Gaza some five months earlier, and was not written by Sinwar but was rather a recommendation paper drawn up by a mid-level Hamas officer.
The PMO called it “ridiculous” to allege that a sympathetic article in Bild “caused any damage to the negotiations for the release of the hostages, or to the security of Israel.”
Regarding a debunked September 5 Jewish Chronicle article headlined “Sinwar’s secret plan to ‘smuggle hostages to Iran'” — which alleged that a document had been uncovered in the Gaza Strip proving that Sinwar was planning to smuggle himself and some of the hostages out of Gaza and from there to Iran — the IDF said at the time it was unaware of any such document existing.
The Jewish Chronicle announced in mid-September that it had fired the writer who penned that article and others, amid doubts about their veracity, and had removed his stories from its website.
Opposition’s Gantz: If proven, it’s a national crime
Responding to the lifting of the gag order, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid charged that Netanyahu was either too incompetent to lead Israel during wartime or was “complicit in one of the most serious security offenses.”
“Netanyahu’s defense is that he has no influence or control over the bodies he leads. If that’s true, he’s ineligible, he’s not qualified to lead the State of Israel in the most difficult war in its history,” Lapid declared, calling for the probe to include an investigation of whether Netanyahu had ordered the leaks.
And “if he did not know that his close aides were stealing documents, operating spies within the IDF, forging documents, exposing intelligence sources and passing secret documents to foreign newspapers in order to stop the hostage deal, then what does he know?” he asked.
National Unity party leader Benny Gantz, a former member of the war cabinet, said the affair was “proof” of his earlier claims that political considerations were harming security deliberations.
“Contrary to the impression they are trying to create in the Prime Minister’s Office, this is not suspicion of a leak, but of state secrets being profiteered for political purposes,” he said, speaking alongside Lapid. “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 Hostages and Missing Families Forum issued a statement on Sunday evening saying the information revealed in the case “indicates that those close to the prime minister acted in a manner that endangers national security in an attempt to thwart the return of the hostages.
“The suspicions indicate that individuals affiliated with the prime minister acted to carry out one of the largest efforts to at engineering a narrative in the country’s history. A government that abandoned citizens who became victims of brutal kidnappings is effectively working to slander them and to sway public opinion against the duty to return them — as though they were enemies of the nation.”
Hard worker with ‘a pure heart’
On Instagram, Feldstein’s sister said he had been in Shin Bet custody for a week, describing her brother as a hard worker with a “pure heart.”
A source close to Feldstein told Channel 12 earlier that he had been sold out by the premier.
“He worked for Netanyahu and was an adviser to him over the past year and a half. He has dedicated his life to the prime minister and would endanger himself for him. The moment [the scandal] erupted, Netanyahu threw him under the bus and is even lying, saying he doesn’t work for him,” the source said.
On the hard-right Channel 14, devoted Netanyahu supporter Yaakov Bardugo, sometimes described as an associate of the premier, described the probe as “an attempt by people in the Shin Bet and the IDF to use their investigative power for a coup.”
“We’ve seen this over recent years — investigative powers, prejudiced enforcement and prejudiced investigations being used, all to get to Netanyahu.”
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