Controversial 'Feldstein Bill’ passes prelim. Knesset vote after leak affair

Following the vote, Eisenkot called the bill “a bill to destroy Israel’s intelligence superiority.”

By ELIAV BREUER DECEMBER 4, 2024 15:33 Updated: DECEMBER 4, 2024 15:39

A plenum session at the assembly hall of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem, December 4, 2024. (photo credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)

A bill proposal to relieve criminal responsibility from soldiers who pass on secret documents to the prime minister’s office or defense minister’s office passed a preliminary vote in the Knesset on Wednesday.

The bill is known as the “Feldstein Law,” as it came in response to the indictment of an aide to the prime minister, Eliezer Feldstein, and a reserve NCO whose name was not approved for publication, for stealing a top-secret document and leaking it to a foreign media outlet. According to the indictment, the leak could have caused harm to national security and endangered lives.

The NCO argued in his defense that he felt that it was imperative that the prime minister see the document, and that it was critical for the hostage negotiations that were going on at the time. The IDF said in the indictment that the document was not passed to the prime minister’s office since more relevant information was available.

The bill is highly controversial, and the IDF opposes it.

Critiques of the bill

MK Gadi Eisenkot, a former IDF Chief of Staff, explained in the Knesset plenum on Monday that the prime minister’s military secretariat had the “broadest access” to intelligence material and that the prime minister’s claim that material was withheld from him was “absurd and not serious.” Eisenkot wrote on Facebook on Sunday that the bill proposal was a “transparent personal law to defend, retroactively, those who stand today before severe indictments, the center of which is harming national security.”

MK Gadi Eisenkot attends a Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee meeting on the ultra-Orthodox draft law at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem on June 24, 2024. (credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)

Eisenkot also warned that the bill would “harm national security and destroy the interaction between the political echelon and the IDF, Shin Bet, and Mossad.”

MK Benny Gantz said in a speech during the debate that the bill would “flood” the prime minister with raw material that would not be analyzed and would harm the ability to create a coherent intelligence picture.

Gantz said that the circulation of top-secret information amongst unauthorized civilian officials would reveal sources and create “anarchy.”

Following the vote, Eisenkot called the bill “a bill to destroy Israel’s intelligence superiority.” The bill’s authors “have not even the faintest idea of the depth and size of the damage” that the bill would cause.