Early September, days after the gruesome discovery of six murdered Israeli hostages in a tunnel in Gaza, a dramatic scoop appeared in Bild. The German newspaper had obtained a secret internal Hamas document, supposedly obtained from Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s personal computer, that revealed Hamas’s hostage negotiation strategy. The document claimed that Hamas was deliberately exploiting the divisions in Israeli society, manipulating the families of the hostages to help blame Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for not making a deal.
A day earlier, the UK’s Jewish Chronicle had posted another story based on sensational Israeli intelligence: a claim that Sinwar was planning to smuggle himself and some hostages out of Gaza into Egypt via tunnels and travel with them to Iran.
The two news stories came just as the Israeli public was angry at Netanyahu for failing to make a hostage deal, leading to the six deaths. The IDF claimed that the stories were based on fake or misrepresented documents, but that didn’t stop Netanyahu from citing the Bild and JC reports as proof that Hamas was never serious, that his demands were vital and that the hostage families’ protests were aiding Hamas.
The Feldstein affair is not the only scandal hovering over the Prime Minister’s Office
Meanwhile, in London, a scandal ensued.
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