Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's chief of staff, Tzachi Braverman, was detained Sunday morning for questioning under caution in connection with the classified documents affair involving leaks to the German newspaper Bild.
In addition to Braverman, former Netanyahu spokesman Eli Feldstein is expected to be questioned later in the day at Lahav 433, the Israel Police's major crimes unit. The questioning is expected to last several hours, during which police plan to conduct a face-to-face confrontation between Braverman and Feldstein.
Investigators are expected to question Braverman about an incident Feldstein first described during his interrogation on November 7, 2024. At the time, Feldstein refused to identify the person he said had met with him and updated him about the investigation into the leak of classified documents. In a recent interview, Feldstein revealed that the individual was Braverman, the prime minister's chief of staff.
Last month, Feldstein was interviewed by journalist Omri Assenheim on Kan 11, where he presented his version of the behind-the-scenes events that ultimately led to the filing of an indictment against him for leaking documents to Bild and to investigations in the so-called Qatargate affair.
Feldstein said Braverman was aware of an investigation being conducted by the Defense Ministry's security department within the Israel Defense Forces, and told him he could even arrange to stop the probe.
"It was Saturday night," Feldstein said. "I was sitting with friends in Petach Tikva and kept getting calls and messages from the prime minister's chief of staff, Tzachi Braverman, saying he urgently needed me. At first I thought it was nothing special. There was no specific task that required my presence at the Prime Minister's Office or the pit at the Kirya. The calls didn't stop. After midnight, when the last call came, I said, 'OK, I'm heading out.'"
Feldstein continued: "I had never driven to the pit at the Kirya before, always walked. I called someone I knew was at the office in the Kirya and told him I was coming by car, that the chief of staff was looking for me. I picked him up and we went down to level minus four in the parking garage."
In his interrogation, Feldstein claimed the person involved was "a very senior figure, a crazy Pandora's box that would affect everyone, and it's really dangerous to say." When asked whether it was a military officer, he replied, "Not a military man, one of the most powerful people in the country."
Feldstein told investigators that the "senior figure" arrived with two or three bodyguards who did not hear the content of the conversation. He also said the individual, whom he identified as Braverman, promised he could silence the leak in his own way. When investigators asked what he meant, Feldstein said, "You know what the poison machine is?" He added that they, referring to the Prime Minister's Office, "threw him to the dogs," and said he feared physical harm to himself and his family after receiving messages, including to his father, warning him not to speak.
Investigators sought to assess the credibility of his account. They asked about documentation of the meeting, and Feldstein said there was none, neither cameras nor access badge records. However, in the interview in which he revealed Braverman's name, he said one of the witnesses to the meeting was Omer Mansour, a spokesman at the Prime Minister's Office. Police also know that Braverman was indeed at the Kirya that night, as a cabinet meeting was being held at the time.
Police received approval from the attorney general to search Braverman's home and question him.
At this stage, investigators know that Braverman was present at the Kirya on the night Feldstein described meeting him in the parking garage, since a cabinet meeting took place that day.
In addition to Braverman, Omer Mansour, a Prime Minister's Office spokesman appointed to a position of trust, is also expected to be questioned in the affair. According to Feldstein, Mansour witnessed the meeting that took place in the Kirya parking garage.
The Bild affair, exposed at the end of 2024 during the Iron Swords war, is a criminal and security case involving the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to the investigation's findings, Eli Feldstein and Yonatan Urich, both aides in the Prime Minister's Office, removed highly sensitive intelligence documents without authorization from Israel Defense Forces Military Intelligence systems.
Although Israel's military censor barred their publication in Israel, the materials were leaked to the German newspaper Bild in a selective and distorted manner. The alleged aim of the misleading publication was to create a political narrative portraying Hamas as the sole party refusing a hostage deal, thereby weakening the then-growing campaign for the return of the hostages, which was threatening the stability of Netanyahu's coalition.
