A senior media adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been formally charged for leaking classified information with the intention to cause harm to state security by the country’s State Attorney’s Office.The indictment relates to Jonatan Urich’s role in leaking a document from IDF military intelligence to the Bild, a German newspaper, in September 2024, as an aspect of the effort to justify Netanyahu’s claim that Hamas and not the prime minister was blocking a hostage deal. The leak apparently happened days after six hostages had been killed by Hamas when Israeli armed forces accidentally reached the place where they were being held beneath the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Express Opinion | View from Tel Aviv: Growing Trump-Netanyahu rift, the Hezbollah threat, and a public that doesn’t trust the peace processThe document, which was an internal Hamas memo that was obtained by IDF intelligence, was allegedly leaked to Bild to bypass the military censor of Israel. It was around a 9-month-old leak. The media reports later said that the newspaper had distorted the contents in the interests of the Netanyahu government. Also Read | Geneva Convention violated? Iran says US strike destroyed two drinking water reservoirs serving 20,000The alleged conspiracy The charges alleged that Netanyahu’s former military affairs spokesman Eli Feldstein and Urich routed the document, which was obtained from Ari Rosenfeld, IDF Military Intelligence NCO, knowing it was a classified document which the military censor had blocked, “while taking a real risk that critical security interests would be harmed.” Urich was also indicted for destroying evidence by switching phones after Feldstein and Rosenfeld were arrested. National security implications The State Attorney’s Office said in a statement to the press, “the actions of Urich, Feldstein and Rosenfeld led to the disclosure of the existence of a secret intelligence asset, its capabilities and the methods by which it was used. “The disclosure of the secret information to the public could cause real damage to the security interests of the State of Israel, mainly in the field of intelligence gathering and the disclosure of intelligence sources, through whom human lives are saved, since [the leak] could reveal missions, capabilities, methods of operation and the classified methods used by the intelligence community in various arenas,” it said. Story continues below this adAlso Read | Iran launches retaliatory strikes targeting US bases in Jordan, Kuwait and BahrainCourt proceedings The Tel Aviv District Court was requested immediately to bar Urich from the Prime Minister’s Office and from all security facilities by the Prosecutors. The imposition of immediate restrictions was declined by the court. The hearing was scheduled for July 5. The broader scandal Yisrael Einhorn, who is the adviser to Feldstein, Urich, and Likud, is a suspect in the “Qatargate” affair, where the three allegedly 3 accepted payments in order to run a public relations campaign to portray Qatar favourably for more than a year following the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, despite Qatar’s hosting the terror group. Urich was informed of the plan to tout the classified document and approved it according to Feldstein. But when the Israeli media outlets could not publish it due to censorship restrictions, Urich helped to find a foreign news agency to publish it instead. Netanyahu’s office has declined to comment on the indictment. Urich’s lawyers called the decision “wrong and disconnected from the evidence.” Story continues below this ad(This article has been curated by Seekriti Saha, who is an intern at The Indian Express)