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One of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s advisers is accused of leaking a top-secret document to a German tabloid in an attempt to influence public sentiment on hostage negotiations.
Israeli prosecutors indicted one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s aides on Thursday, charging the aide with leaking classified information on Hamas and likely harming national security, the latest development in a web of legal scandals that has entangled the country’s leader.
The aide, Eliezer Feldstein, a media adviser in the prime minister’s office, deliberately acquired and illegally leaked a top-secret document to Bild, the German tabloid, in an attempt to influence how the Israeli public viewed negotiations for a deal to reach a cease-fire and free the roughly 100 hostages still held by Hamas, prosecutors said in a nine-page indictment.
The leak “exposed Israeli intelligence capabilities to Hamas, which was likely to harm national security and the functioning of security agencies,” according to the indictment. “It would also likely put people in life-threatening danger, particularly at a time of war.”
The families of the remaining hostages have denounced Mr. Netanyahu, arguing that he has favored the survival of his hard-line government over reaching a deal to win the release of their loved ones held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Mr. Netanyahu has said he is doing all he can, but he has also used the document Mr. Feldstein is accused of leaking to suggest that pressuring him serves Hamas’s agenda.
Mr. Feldstein was arrested, along with the military officer who leaked him the document, on Oct. 27. Lawyers for both men did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The indictment comes as Israeli authorities have pursued several lines of inquiry in recent weeks involving officials in Mr. Netanyahu’s office. They are being investigated for trying to bolster Mr. Netanyahu’s reputation by allegedly altering official transcripts of his conversations and intimidating people who controlled access to those records.
Mr. Netanyahu has also been on trial since before the war in Gaza in three separate corruption cases. The prime minister has staunchly denied any wrongdoing, accusing Israeli justice officials of a witch hunt against him, his family and his aides. He has similarly accused Israeli prosecutors of aggressively cracking down on Mr. Feldstein while ignoring his critics’ leaks to the news media.
“One case! And what about the rest of the leaks which are causing great damage to Israeli security?” Mr. Netanyahu said in a speech this week in Israel’s Parliament. “Well, we all understand what’s happening here.”
Mr. Feldstein, 32, a former military spokesman, acquired the classified document from the military officer, who was also indicted, prosecutors said. The document purported to lay out Hamas’s strategy in talks with Israel: waging psychological warfare to compel Israel to make concessions, in part by inciting public pressure to free the hostages.
Prosecutors say that the military officer, whose name has not been released publicly, first contacted Mr. Feldstein in June, offering to share classified information. But they made little use of the secret document until September, after Israeli soldiers found the bodies of six hostages who had been killed by their Hamas captors in a tunnel beneath the Gaza Strip.
Israelis had grown to intimately recognize the hostages’ names and faces after months of campaigning by their relatives. The abductees’ killings shocked the Israeli public and prompted large protests in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem calling on the government to reach a deal with Hamas to return the remaining hostages alive.
According to the indictment, Mr. Feldstein decided to leak the document in the hopes of “shifting the public discourse about the hostages in the wake of their murder.” He informed Yonatan Urich, another media adviser to Mr. Netanyahu, that he intended to leak the document, the indictment said.
Mr. Feldstein later sent the document by the messaging app Telegram to Raviv Golan, a journalist at an Israeli broadcaster. To comply with Israeli national security restrictions, Mr. Golan submitted the article for approval to the Israeli military, which banned it from publication, according to the indictment.
In an attempt to circumvent Israeli censorship, the indictment says, Mr. Urich connected Mr. Feldstein with a former adviser to Mr. Netanyahu, who helped him leak the document to foreign news organizations. Excerpts were ultimately published in Bild, although it did not publish an image of the document itself.
It is unclear what Mr. Netanyahu knew about the decision to leak classified information. According to the indictment, Mr. Feldstein sought to bring at least some of the information to the attention of the prime minister.
After the document was published in Bild, Mr. Feldstein urged local Israeli news outlets to pick up the report. Traditionally, Israeli outlets have been allowed to publish some news censored at home as long as they attribute it to the international press.
“Take your time; the boss is happy,” Mr. Urich wrote to Mr. Feldstein at the time, prosecutors said.
Mr. Feldstein subsequently ordered the military officer who had leaked him the document to erase their correspondence on messaging apps, according to the indictment.
Johnatan Reiss and Myra Noveck contributed reporting from Tel Aviv.
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