Former military spokesman for the prime minister's office, Eli Feldstein, gave a public interview on Monday for the first time since he was accused over the Bild and Qatargate cases, where he said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded that the topic of responsibility for the October 7 attack be "erased from the public discourse."
“The first and biggest task that I had after October 7 was erasing the concept of [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s] responsibility from the public discourse,” Feldstein said in the interview aired by KAN News.
“They told me to take the word responsibility out of the lexicon and formulate something without the word responsibility, it won’t go in,” he explained.
Feldstein also said that the responsibility issue caused rifts between Netanyahu’s office and former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, who believed the office was working against the army and that he himself was being held responsible for the matter.
He also talked about Netanyahu’s reaction to seeing the state in which former hostage Mia Schem, released during the first hostage deal in November 2023, saying that the prime minister “threw away his phone” because he “didn’t want to watch.”
Netanyahu despises Smotrich and Ben-Gvir
Feldstein also said that Netanyahu’s relationship with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (RZP) and Itamar Ben-Gvir (Otzma Yehudit) was bad, and that the prime minister despised the two of them.
"He [Netanyahu] despises them, and most of the time he thinks they are talking nonsense. This situation, where they create multiple discussions just to give them the feeling that they are part of something, tells the story by itself,” said Feldstein.
Feldstein speaks about Bild, Qatargate cases
Finally, he addressed both cases, stating that he was not granted a security clearance because he was classified as “independent.”
“I didn’t know I was receiving money from Qatar, I just did what I was told under the fear of being fired,” Feldstein assured.
He is currently accused of leaking sensitive information to the German newspaper Bild while working in the Prime Minister’s Office, and of being among those who received payments from Qatar in the Qatargate scandal.
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennet said that the scandal was a “betrayal against the State of Israel and IDF soldiers in wartime, and acted on Qatar's behalf out of greed, while Netanyahu himself seeks to cover up the affair."
Bennett added, "Whether Netanyahu knew or did not know that his office was working for money for an enemy during wartime, both scenarios require his immediate resignation.”
Opposition leader Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid), called it the "most serious treason case in the history of the State.”
Former Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot also called out the prime minister: “We paid too heavy a price to let you continue. Netanyahu, you are not worthy of leading the country.”
“Anyone who asks their aides to erase the word ‘responsibility’ from the lexicon is neither worthy nor fit to be Prime Minister of Israel. But there is no such erasure, nor will there be. Israel must go to elections and cleanse its Holy of Holies of the mafia's filth,” he added.
Joanie Marguiles contributed to this report.