Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the European Union on Monday after the bloc imposed sanctions on some Israeli settler organisations over violence against Palestinians.
„As Israel and the U.S. are ‚doing Europe‘s dirty work‘ by fighting for civilisation against jihadist lunatics in Iran and elsewhere, the European Union exposed its moral bankruptcy by drawing a false symmetry between Israeli citizens and Hamas terrorists,“ Netanyahu‘s office said on its official X account.
Throughout the west, criticizing the Netanyahu government is now a crime punishable by imprisonment. Glenn Greenwald on the end of free speech.
JERUSALEM—The Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel was the greatest security failure of Benjamin Netanyahu’s career. Less than three years later, the Israeli prime minister is pursuing what may become his defining strategic achievement: toppling the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“Netanyahu wants mouthpieces. He wants media outlets that will applaud him while he evades responsibility, praise him while he sacrifices Israel’s security, and remain silent while he protects advisers and aides who betrayed the state and received money from Qatar, the same Qatar that funded Hamas and the October 7 massacre,” Golan says, referring to the ongoing investigation into senior Netanyahu aides accused of lobbying on behlaf of Qatar during Israel’s war against Hamas while being employed by the premier’s office.
“He knows that a free and independent press poses a real threat to a corrupt government built on cover-ups. That is why he seeks to turn news channels into obedient, hollow mouthpieces that avoid criticizing him and his government,” he says.
(February 5, 2026)
Among other things, he told us that the Democrats already have 60,000 members registered in the party, and are shooting for 100,000 now, which will make us the second-largest political party in Israel in terms of numbers. In addition, he stressed the need to reach out to the Arab citizens of Israel, who make up 22 percent of our population:
There is no future for Israel without Jewish-Arab cooperation in Israeli politics.
This is a critical issue in the political discourse right now, since it is obvious that a new government will not be able to be formed if the so-called “centrist” political parties don’t agree to welcome Arab political parties into the next coalition. So far, only The Democrats have agreed to do so!
Lapid also posted a clip of himself from September 20, 2023, less than a month before the attack, warning the public that the nation was getting „dangerously close to a violent, multi-front confrontation.“
In the 2023 statement, Lapid went on to say that based on defense establishment reports, clashes in the West Bank were reaching a dangerous volume and recent activity on the Gaza border was „precisely the type that led to past phases of war [with Gaza].“
Continuing, Eisenkot accused Netanyahu of using secretive documents deliberately in an election year “out of a desire to improve his image, distance himself from blame and harm the other candidates facing him.”
Eisenkot requested that the State Comptroller’s Office allow the relevant people to review the full minutes of the meetings referenced by the premier in his “partial and manipulative” response, and told Englman that he will be happy to “set the record straight” regarding his own actions during his time as IDF chief.
(February 6, 2026)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday night published a redacted 55-page reply to questions from State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman regarding the October 7 attack, releasing the document after the comptroller’s review was halted by a High Court of Justice ruling. Three pages were blacked out. In the text, Netanyahu did not accept responsibility for the failures that preceded the assault in which thousands of Hamas terrorists crossed into southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and abducting 251.
(February 6, 2026)
Critics argued that only a state commission of inquiry, Israel’s highest investigative body, could independently establish responsibility for the failures leading up to 7 October. Opinion polls suggest most Israelis support such an investigation.
(October 22, 2025)
Israel‘s President Isaac Herzog awarded the 2025 Presidential Medal of Honor on Wednesday to German media mogul Matthias Döpfner, known for promoting a pro-Israel line in his outlets, and to Israeli-U.S. megadonor Miriam Adelson, for their „unique contribution“ to Israel.
Döpfner, CEO of German media giant Axel Springer, the publisher of daily tabloid Bild and a close associate of Netanyahu, has been linked to the so-called Bibileaks affair involving the alleged leak of a classified document from Netanyahu‘s office to Bild in an attempt to influence Israeli public opinion concerning the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.
(August 7, 2025)
WhatsApp communications show messaging sent from former Netanyahu aide Einhorn to then-spokesperson Feldstein, on to closest aide Urich, before being echoed by the prime minister or disseminated to the media; Netanyahu, Einhorn, Urich deny allegations of wrongdoing
(January 27, 2026)
Asked why he has not disavowed Urich in light of accusations that the top aide took Qatari money to spearhead a public relations campaign for Doha while working in the Prime Minister’s Office, Netanyahu claims that “Jonatan Urich did not speak a single word to me about Qatar — not even a syllable.”
(January 25, 2026)
The Central District Court in Lod on Sunday extended restrictive conditions on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s senior adviser, Yonatan Urich, for an additional 60 days, accepting a police appeal in the ongoing investigation into the leak of classified intelligence to the German newspaper Bild.
(January 11, 2026)
In November 2024, the Israeli courts lifted a gag order and identified Mr. Feldstein, who was working as a military affairs spokesman for Mr. Netanyahu, as one of the suspects in the case involving the stealing, illegal holding and leaking of a classified military document to a German newspaper, Bild.
Handwritten in Arabic, the document, obtained from Gaza, appeared to lay out Hamas’s plan for psychological warfare against Israel, claiming that Hamas was in no rush to reach a deal to release hostages or to end the war. Some of the messaging aligned with Mr. Netanyahu’s own approach.
Critics said the Bild article based on the leak appeared to be part of a deliberate effort by the prime minister or his loyalists to weaken the domestic campaign for the hostages’ release and influence Israeli public opinion in favor of Mr. Netanyahu’s negotiating positions.
A real inquiry would likely deliver harsh conclusions about Netanyahu’s misguided strategy of coddling Hamas; his failure to heed intelligence before Oct. 7; the staggering human cost of the war that followed; the failure to dismantle Hamas despite two years of brutal fighting; Israel’s growing international isolation; and Netanyahu’s repeated rejection of diplomatic exit ramps.
It is obvious that a commission dealing with such explosive matters must not be controlled by the very people it will judge. Yet that is exactly the system Netanyahu has engineered, while arguing that a state inquiry would be stacked against him. Most Israelis see the attempted whitewash clearly, and some three quarters of the public have consistently said they want a state commission.
(December 26, 2025)
Speaking to Kan, Feldstein said, “the first task” he received from Netanyahu after October 7, 2023, was to stifle calls for accountability.
“He asked me, ‘What are they talking about in the news? Are they still talking about responsibility?‘” Feldstein said. “He wanted me to think of something that could be said that would offset the media storm surrounding the question of whether the prime minister had taken responsibility or not.”
He added that Netanyahu looked “panicked” when he made the request. Feldstein said he was later told by people in Netanyahu’s close circle to omit the word “responsibility” from all statements.
(today)
Over the past week, at least four ministers have spoken out about the scandal, in which close Netanyahu aide Jonathan Urich and his former spokesperson, Eli Feldstein, are accused of working as lobbyists for Qatar while simultaneously being employed in the Prime Minister’s Office. The allegation is particularly explosive because Hamas’s leadership is based in Qatar and the Gulf state has acted as a mediator in the Gaza war and the current ceasefire.
(December 24, 2025)
“[Netanyahu] is the one who ultimately was behind the leak,” Feldstein said emphatically, adding that he told interrogators the same thing repeatedly after his arrest and eventual indictment over the matter.
The document in question was an internal Hamas memo purporting to show that the terror group wasn’t interested in the compromises necessary to reach a hostage deal. After it was leaked to the Bild, Netanyahu used it to argue that only further military pressure would lead to the release of the hostages.
(December 26, 2025)
The affair surrounding the leak of classified documents to the German newspaper Bild and the so-called Qatargate scandal have returned to the headlines in recent days.
Eli Feldstein, former military spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is charged in the first case and implicated in the second, claimed this week that Netanyahu “knew about and backed the leak.” At the same time, correspondence between Feldstein and Yisrael Einhorn, a former close adviser to the prime minister, was revealed, showing efforts to promote pro-Qatar messaging in Israel.
(December 26, 2025)
Because what Feldstein portrayed was an office where Chief of Staff Tzachi Braverman allegedly said he could block an IDF investigation, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu winked at circumventing the censor by releasing sensitive information to a foreign newspaper, and where officials close to Netanyahu were in the pay of Qatar and pushing favorable messages about that Hamas-supporting state during a time of war.
It wasn’t an accounting of a single bad decision, but of an environment where lines were blurred and manipulation of the public, via the press, ruled the day.
Hadash-Ta’al chairman Ayman Odeh calls on fellow opposition factions to join together to topple Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government “as soon as possible.”
Addressing reporters ahead of his party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset, Odeh says that the government has three aims during the current parliamentary session, “harming the West Bank…promoting the judicial coup…and preventing the Arab population from running in the next elections.”
Similar views have been echoed by ministers within Netanyahu‘s government.
Last year, in a documentary, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was filmed advocating for the expansion of Israeli borders to include Damascus.
He suggested that Israel would gradually grow to encompass not only all Palestinian territories but also parts of Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
(August 12, 2025)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tells i24 he feels he is on a “historic and spiritual mission,” and that he is “very” attached to the vision of a Greater Israel, which includes areas slated for a future Palestinian state and possibly also areas that are part of present-day Jordan and Egypt.
The interviewer Sharon Gal, who was briefly a right-wing member of Knesset, gifts to Netanyahu what he says is an amulet of “a map of the Promised Land.”
Israel‘s High Court of Justice on Monday issued an injunction blocking the ouster of Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara after a unanimous Cabinet vote to fire the woman currently prosecuting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for corruption.
Former attorney general Avichai Mandelblit warned Monday that the government’s plan to oust his successor, Gali Baharav-Miara, could result in the “complete destruction” of Israeli democracy.
“This is a recipe for complete destruction of democracy and the rule of law in the State of Israel,” he told Kan public radio when asked about the possibility that Baharav-Miara’s potential replacement would scrap Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ongoing years-long corruption trial.
“The hearing scheduled for today allows the government to dismiss the attorney general and any future advisor for foreign and corrupt considerations. In response to the fact that the advisor prevented illegal actions, ordered an investigation or prosecution of a coalition member, refused to halt a criminal proceeding against a sitting government member, or as part of a ‚political deal‘ to ensure the survival of the government,” she wrote.