Matti Friedman
The Free Press, Apr. 1, 2025
“Improving Qatari credibility in Israeli eyes would have the effect of doing the same where it really matters: in Washington.”
Even those accustomed to the roiling wrestling ring that is Israeli politics can’t remember a week like the last one.
Multiple aides to Israel’s own prime minister, people operating in the most rarefied sanctuary of our leadership and state security, are accused of doing paid side jobs for Qatar, an enemy state. Two have been arrested.
The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has not been urging law enforcement to get to the bottom of the case, as one might expect. Instead, he’s been releasing TikTok videos calling his arrested aides “hostages” and accusing Israel’s internal security service, Shin Bet, along with the police and legal system, of running a “deep state” conspiracy to bring him down.
This is all happening as 59 actual hostages and bodies of hostages remain in the hands of Hamas, as Israel’s reserve army shows signs of cracking under the strain of a year and a half of combat, and as millions of Israelis are woken at night by incoming ballistic missiles fired by the Houthis, the Iranian proxy in Yemen. Israelis have seen a lot in our 77-year history, but we haven’t seen anything quite like this. The crisis in government that has been brewing under Netanyahu’s rule seems to be coming to a head.
Many of the details of “Qatargate,” as Israeli reporters are calling the new affair, are still under a police gag order. The two aides arrested so far are Yonatan Urich, Netanyahu’s media brain and close confidant, and Eli Feldstein, who has served as his defense spokesman during the current war. A third associate wanted for questioning is holed up in Serbia, and two other suspects, neither of them Netanyahu aides, are under house arrest, according to Israeli media reports. (One, for reasons that aren’t yet clear, is the editor of The Jerusalem Post, who visited Qatar at the regime’s invitation last year.) Feldstein, astonishingly, seems to have been working for Israel’s prime minister while having his salary paid by Qatar via a middleman. According to the Israeli journalist Nadav Eyal of the daily Yedioth Ahronot, quoting court documents Tuesday, the aides are suspected of working to “publicly promote Qatar in a positive light,” particularly as a mediator in the negotiations for Israeli hostages, while simultaneously working for Netanyahu. ...SOURCE