Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party on Saturday night denied that he had employed Eliezer Feldstein as a spokesperson.
Feldstein is a public relations professional who is accused of working for Qatar while debriefing journalists on the government’s position during the war with Hamas.
Feldstein “never served as a spokesperson of the prime minister and was never employed by the Prime Minister’s Bureau,” the statement read. Netanyahu was “hardly in contact with him, did not share discussions with him and certainly did not let him into meetings or classified sessions.
“Feldstein was hired by the director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office. When his employment there ended, he worked as an external adviser for the National Public Diplomacy Directorate,” which is a unit of the Prime Minister’s Office,” the statement added.
The Prime Minister’s Bureau consists of a handful of people working directly under him. The Prime Minister’s Office is an administrative entity roughly the size of a large government ministry, with hundreds of employees.
“The prime minister rejects the disgusting attempts to attribute extraneous motives or illegal actions to him,” the statement said.
Last week, i24 News published correspondence suggesting that Feldstein and another PR specialist, Israel Einhorn, last year handed messages to Israeli journalists that sought to portray Qatar as a better mediator for Israel with Hamas than Egypt. Jonathan Urich, a former Netanyahu aide, had been in contact with Feldstein and Einhorn in this context, according to the i24 item. Feldstein has been widely referred to in the Israel media as “the prime minister’s spokesperson on military affairs.”
Urich, Einhorn and Feldstein are suspects in another affair involving the handing last year of a Hamas document seized by Israel to a journalist for Germany’s Bild newspaper. Last month, a judge allowed Urich to resume work for Likud, citing the lack of evidence tying him to the Bild affair, though he is barred from communicating with Netanyahu.
Also last week, Feldstein gave a television interview in which he said Netanyahu had known about the Bild leak. The leaked document suggested Hamas wasn’t interested in a deal that would recover Israel’s hostages then held in Gaza.
Critics of Netanyahu said he had the document leaked in response to pressure for him to accept terms offered by Hamas and end the war that began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led terrorists invaded Israel and murdered some 1,200 people.
The Likud statement on Saturday distanced Netanyahu from efforts to improve Qatar’s image.
“Since the beginning of the war, the prime minister has issued harsh statements and briefings against Qatar despite criticism from security officials and left-wing journalists who claimed that he was ‘endangering the hostages’,” the statement said. “Senior security officials have tried occasionally to insert words of praise for Qatar into the prime minister’s speeches, and the prime minister has firmly refused. In addition, the prime minister has also ordered a strike in Qatar,” said the statement, recalling an attempt to kill Hamas officials earlier this year.
Under former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, the statement noted, then head of the Shin Bet Ronen Bar, was sent to Qatar “as an honored guest of the emir of Qatar. The hypocrisy is blatant.”
Bennett last week sharply attacked Netanyahu, saying his office had “betrayed the State of Israel and IDF soldiers during wartime and acted on behalf of Qatar for monetary gain, and Netanyahu himself is covering it up.”
The Likud said the attention given to Feldstein’s claims and actions was part of an attempt to distract from other scandals, including “the affair of the Iranian penetration of Naftali Bennett‘s phone, the one involving [former] Israel Defense Forces Military Advocate [General Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi], the blood libels about IDF soldiers that caused incalculable damage to the State of Israel. Instead of dealing with these affairs, well-timed distractions are being created.”
