The billboard additionally displayed pictures of the alleged conspirators. Amongst them was Eli Feldstein, a thirtysomething with a shaved head, a close-cropped beard, and a glance of looking out concern. Feldstein’s identify had come up when Einhorn and Footlik have been in search of somebody with adequate credibility to unfold their pro-Qatar messages to journalists. Einhorn had an inventory of candidates, which included a variety of seasoned media specialists—and likewise Feldstein, who labored as a military-affairs spokesperson for Netanyahu.
Feldstein was comparatively younger, and he didn’t communicate English, however he had already distinguished himself as what Einhorn known as a “grasp communicator.” He grew up within the ultra-Orthodox metropolis of Bnei Brak and served for a decade as a media operative, working for a time within the chaotic workplace of Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national-security minister. There, he started ingratiating himself with the Prime Minister’s aides. On October seventh, as Hamas militants ravaged communities alongside Israel’s southern border, he was already managing optics from afar. Feldstein really useful that Netanyahu seem with “no swimsuit, no tie, fight mode,” and demanded that the navy spokesman’s workplace launch images of “troopers on the bottom, with helicopters.” When the images did not materialize rapidly sufficient, he griped that members of the unit have been “scumbags.”
Feldstein began work in Netanyahu’s workplace simply 4 days after the assaults. The environment weren’t glamorous. In an environment of nationwide panic, the Prime Minister was operating most of his operations out of a squat nineteen-fifties constructing close to “the Pit”—the I.D.F.’s underground command middle. However, Feldstein stated after I met him not too long ago close to Tel Aviv, “I used to be thrilled to work there. I actually needed to show myself.”
From his first day on the job, he was known as on to defend the Prime Minister, Feldstein advised me. As he was getting settled, Netanyahu walked by, pointed at a tv mounted on his workplace wall, and requested if reporters have been “nonetheless speaking about duty”—his refusal to apologize for the navy and intelligence failures that led to the assaults. Feldstein replied that they have been. Netanyahu, he says, advised him to “do one thing about it.”
Feldstein’s instant boss was Netanyahu’s closest strategic adviser, Jonatan Urich. For years, Urich had been a continuing presence on the Prime Minister’s aspect: a bearish man with black-rimmed glasses and an inscrutable smile. Feldstein described him as “Netanyahu’s first telephone name within the morning and final telephone name earlier than mattress.”
Urich had began off within the navy press workplace, the place he constructed a status as a social-media whiz. In 2015, he joined Netanyahu’s election marketing campaign and helped safe an unlikely victory. “Jonatan turned destructive campaigning into artwork,” a former senior adviser to Netanyahu advised me. “He enjoys watching the opposite aspect undergo—actually enjoys it.” He was fiercely loyal to the Prime Minister. When Urich was younger, his father suffered a disabling stroke; Netanyahu turned a father determine to him. “I might let him carry out open-heart surgical procedure on me,” Urich as soon as stated.
Cartoon by Mick Stevens
Throughout his years working for Netanyahu, Urich additionally had what amounted to a aspect hustle, working for Notion. He was in a position to discreetly maintain each jobs as a result of he was paid for his authorities work as a advisor for Likud. On the similar time, he acquired forty per cent of Notion’s funds from Qatar, by means of a third-party firm based by former Israeli safety officers. (Urich denies any wrongdoing, saying, “I’m being focused as a result of I counsel the Prime Minister.” He has claimed that he “by no means acquired cash on behalf of Qatar in Israel.” Though he doesn’t deny that Qatar paid him eighteen thousand {dollars} a month by means of most of 2024, he argues that he was being compensated for the World Cup marketing campaign.)
After a couple of months in Netanyahu’s workplace, Feldstein, too, successfully went on Notion’s payroll. In his telling, it was nearly unintentional. He hoped for a promotion and a better wage, however he failed a safety clearance as a result of he had beforehand used medicine. Urich supplied him a workaround, Feldstein stated: he might obtain an elevated wage by means of an middleman. That middleman labored with Footlik. (Footlik says he has by no means sought to rent anybody who labored for the Israeli authorities, and that the funds he supplied have been for an effort to safe the discharge of the hostages. Feldstein argues that he by no means knew he was working for Qatar—although he and Einhorn referred in textual content exchanges to the “sufferers” and the “mates,” with the context clearly indicating Qatar.)
