PM’s ex-aide withheld name of top official involved in Bild leak out of fear — report

Law enforcement sources say account regarding PM’s chief of staff must be examined; Feldstein claims he took sole responsibility for leak out of desire to ‘protect’ PMO staff

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s beleaguered former spokesman Eli Feldstein told the Shin Bet he resisted revealing the name of a senior official in the Prime Minister’s Office during an investigation into leaks of classified intelligence to the German Bild tabloid out of fear for his and his family’s safety, Channel 12 reported Wednesday.

The report was published to coincide with the airing of the third and final segment of an extended interview Feldstein gave to the Kan public broadcaster — his first media appearance since being arrested in October 2024 and later charged for leaking stolen intelligence to Bild the previous month. The publication presented that classified document as evidence that Hamas was not interested in reaching a hostage deal with Israel.

Feldstein has admitted to being part of the leak and has alleged that Netanyahu’s close aide, Jonatan Urich, who is also a suspect, and Netanyahu himself, who is not a suspect, were part of the scheme as well.

In addition to the Bild affair, Feldsein is also a suspect in the so-called Qatargate affair, in which he and Urich are accused of simultaneously working for Qatar and for the Prime Minister’s Office.

In the first segment of the interview aired Monday night, Feldstein alleged that Tzachi Braverman, Netanyahu’s chief of staff, had gotten wind of a secret IDF investigation into Feldstein’s leak to Bild months before it was publicized and had reassured him that the probe would be quashed.

Although Feldstein freely named Braverman in his interview with Kan, Channel 12 reported that he had initially refused to give up his identity during a Shin Bet probe into the leak, and had told the agency that he had to “think about the future,” given that “there are only two people who know the content of this conversation.”

“If the Pandora’s Box is opened, if I open my mouth,” Feldstein allegedly said of the conversation with Braverman, “I will have to look over my shoulder for the rest of my life.”

“Neither the Shin Bet nor any other body will be able to protect my family or me from being harmed,” he said, according to Channel 12.

According to Feldstein, Braverman asked to meet him in the underground parking of the IDF’s Kirya military headquarters. There, he disclosed to Feldsrein that the IDF’s information security department had launched a probe into the leak of the classified intelligence and that the list of suspects went as high as the Prime Minister’s Office.

Braverman read off about half a dozen names of individuals who he said were being implicated in the Bild investigation and asked Feldstein if he knew any of them, the former spokesperson recalled to Kan, adding that he had responded in the negative.

“‘Tell me if this is connected to you. Tell me if it is connected to us. I can shut it down,’” Feldstein quoted Braverman as having told him.

When probed about the conversation in the Kirya parking lot, Feldstein begged investigators not to try and figure out the identity of the official who had told him about the IDF probe, Channel 12 reported Wednesday, and told them that the parking garage cameras would not have picked up the conversation since it was held in an area without cameras.

He also changed his story about the type of car he was driving, it reported, and insisted that there was no electronic record of him entering the Kirya since he only showed his card to a guard there.

Feldstein also told investigators that 2-3 others were also present for the conversation, but were not close enough to hear. He also refused to say if those present were senior officials, the report said.

Law enforcement sources appeared to cast doubt on the report, telling Channel 12 that the embattled ex-spokesman was “a problematic witness,” who was constantly changing his testimony.

Still, they told the news outlet that there was “no choice” but to examine Feldstein’s allegations against Braverman and to determine whether they were reason enough to probe the premier’s chief of staff.

Additionally, Channel 13 reported that some senior law enforcement officials believe it was a mistake that they had not summoned Netanyahu or his chief of staff for questioning regarding the Bild probe.

Also on Wednesday evening, in the third and final segment of Kan’s lengthy interview with Feldstein, the former spokesman revealed text messages that he said proved that, despite Netanyahu’s denials, the two closely collaborated until just before Feldstein’s arrest.

After Feldstein’s arrest last year, Netanyahu’s office first claimed that he wasn’t an employee, that the premier had no knowledge of or involvement in the plan to leak classified intelligence to international media, and that Netanyahu was not involved in the day-to-day activities of his spokespeople.

The premier then shifted to defending him as a loyal aide before eventually turning on him, after Feldstein began telling investigators that all of his actions were at the direction of the Prime Minister’s Office.

The insistence that Feldstein was not an employee of the Prime Minister’s Office were called into question by the text messages revealed Wednesday by Kan, which show that hours before he was arrested on October 26, 2024, the same day that Israel launched an attack on Iran, Feldstein contacted fellow suspect and top Netanyahu adviser Urich to ask about the PMO’s media strategy regarding the Iran attack.

According to Kan, the messages show that Feldstein “acted as an integral part of Netanyahu’s media organization,” up until his final day before being arrested, contradicting claims that he was not active in the Prime Minister’s Office at that time.

Even as Netanyahu insisted that Feldstein was not an employee of his office, the beleaguered spokesman told Kan he had wanted to “protect” the Prime Minister’s Office and those working there, which he said led him to initially claim sole responsibility for the Bild leak.

He said that at first, he had expected the officials he was trying to protect to come forward and issue statements in his defense and to portray the leak as an “official and approved” action. But after days passed without any such statements, he told Kan he realized his relationship with the PMO was a “one-sided friendship.”

Feldstein said that after his lawyer showed him the PMO’s public statements distancing itself from the affair and from him, he realized that “everyone was ready to sacrifice” him.

At the same time as the case continued to develop, Feldstein told Kan that unnamed entities were working overtime to pressure him into dropping his lawyer, Oded Savoray, due to his past participation in protests against Netanyahu’s government and its controversial judicial overhaul agenda.

He said he had been subject to “very heavy pressure,” including threats of physical violence, to hire someone else instead of Savoray.

He refused to name the lawyer he was being pressured to hire, even when asked directly whether he was referring to Netanyahu’s attorney, Amit Hadad, who is also representing Urich in the Qatargate case.

Turning away from the investigations into his own alleged wrongdoings, Feldstein told Kan in Wednesday’s interview segment that the premier’s office possesses an incriminating video of former defense minister Yoav Gallant acting violently, which he suggested was being used to prevent Gallant from divulging any potentially incriminating information.

“Footage is held in the Prime Minister’s Office of the [former] defense minister acting violently toward security guards when he was refused entry to the Prime Minister’s Office at the beginning of the war,” Feldstein alleged.

He did not say whether the prime minister himself knew that compromising material about Gallant was being collected.

But he added that he believes “Gallant knows they’re collecting material on him. He understands that there’s footage of the event in question and other events.”

Feldstein added that because of that, Gallant “won’t open his mouth.”

Gallant, whom Netanyahu fired in November 2024, has publicly criticized the prime minister a number of times since then.