A former spokesperson for Benjamin Netanyahu has alleged that the Israeli prime minister's immediate response to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack was to devise a media strategy deflecting personal responsibility for the catastrophic security failure. Eli Feldstein, currently facing trial for allegedly leaking classified documents, told Israel's Kan news channel Monday that his first assignment from a "panicked" Netanyahu was to "think of something" to "lessen the media storm" regarding the premier's culpability. The accusation provides a rare glimpse into the crisis management calculus of a leadership under siege, suggesting that narrative control took precedence over accountability in the hours following Israel's worst security breach in decades.
The allegation arrives as Israeli society remains locked in a bitter struggle over how to reckon with the failures that enabled October 7. While bereaved families and civil society groups demand a formal state commission of inquiry—a mechanism designed for events of precisely this magnitude—the Netanyahu government has proposed a politically controlled committee instead. This institutional standoff reflects a broader pattern in which accountability mechanisms are systematically challenged or circumvented, raising fundamental questions about democratic governance during prolonged crisis.
The anatomy of alleged blame management
Feldstein's account describes a leadership consumed by political survival calculations even as the nation confronted an existential shock. According to his testimony, Netanyahu's inner circle issued explicit instructions to omit the word "responsibility" from all official statements in the attack's aftermath. This alleged semantic engineering speaks to a deliberate strategy of linguistic distancing—an attempt to separate the office of prime minister from accountability for the intelligence and military failures that left Israeli communities vulnerable to the deadliest attack in the nation's history.
The accusation gains additional weight from Feldstein's intimate knowledge of Netanyahu's media operation. As a close aide, he was positioned to observe the premier's crisis response protocols firsthand. His claim that the immediate priority was damage control rather than substantive accountability assessment suggests a leadership more concerned with political consequences than institutional learning.
Netanyahu's office has categorically denied the allegations, dismissing them as "mendacious and recycled allegations" from someone with "clear personal interests" who seeks to deflect from his own legal troubles. The Prime Minister's Office noted that Feldstein faces serious charges in the classified document leak case, implying his testimony is strategically motivated self-defense. This counterpunch highlights the credibility complexities inherent in accusations from a defendant whose legal fate may depend on portraying himself as following orders rather than acting independently.
Members are reading: How Netanyahu's resistance to accountability mechanisms follows an established pattern of challenging institutional oversight, with lasting implications for Israeli democracy.
The credibility problem on both sides
The controversy unfolds against a backdrop of mutual credibility deficits. Feldstein is not a disinterested witness but a defendant in two serious cases: the alleged leak of classified documents to Germany's Bild newspaper and the "Qatargate" affair. His defense strategy explicitly frames his actions as efforts to protect Netanyahu's image, making his current accusations potentially self-serving—an attempt to portray himself as a subordinate following directives rather than an independent operator exceeding his authority.
Yet Netanyahu's credibility on accountability questions carries its own burden. His government's active resistance to a state commission, combined with the premier's ongoing legal battles, creates a context where allegations of responsibility-dodging find receptive audiences. The institutional fight over inquiry mechanisms suggests a leadership with something to protect from independent scrutiny. Whether or not Feldstein's specific claims prove accurate, they illuminate a genuine tension between political self-preservation and national accountability that extends far beyond one aide's testimony.
Democracy under wartime stress
The Feldstein allegations crystallize a fundamental question facing Israeli democracy: can a system under extreme stress maintain the accountability mechanisms that distinguish democratic governance from mere power management? The October 7 attack demanded both immediate crisis response and eventual reckoning with systemic failures. If Feldstein's account holds any truth, those dual imperatives were immediately subordinated to a third priority: protecting the prime minister's political position.
Two years into the Gaza conflict, that accountability deficit persists. No senior official has resigned over the security failures. No independent commission has examined the decision-making that left communities undefended. Instead, the government that presided over the catastrophe continues to control the terms of any future inquiry. Feldstein's allegations may be disputed, but the institutional reality they describe—a leadership prioritizing self-preservation over transparent accountability—is documented in the ongoing resistance to a state commission. Whether this pattern represents a temporary wartime expedient or a permanent erosion of democratic norms will define Israel's trajectory long after the current conflict ends.
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