Hacked messages from an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are providing a glimpse of his aides’ close ties to the media.
The incumbent prime minister’s reelection campaign has been repeatedly rocked by hacked and leaked documents, part of broad attempts to destabilize a wildly divisive leader both inside and outside his country ahead of Oct. 27 elections.
The latest breach comes from the WhatsApp account of Netanyahu aide Jonatan Urich, who appears to have exposed sensitive information through a vibe-coded media-monitoring app. Haaretz reported Sunday that it had “verified” the leak.
The messages include conversations between Urich and Amit Segal, a central media figure who is chief political analyst for Channel 12 News, the country’s leading broadcaster, and host of the program Meet the Press, an analogue of the US show of that name.
In the exchanges, Segal offers advice about the campaign’s videos and its messaging: Netanyahu’s management of the aftermath of the October 7 attack is his core political advantage, he suggests. Segal mentions he offered the same advice to Netanyahu’s campaign spokeswoman. In another message, Urich shares a speech Netanyahu is planning to give.
Segal declined to discuss the messages on the record. Urich, who is also enmeshed in a scandal over payments from Qatar, didn’t respond to an inquiry, but in a lawyers’ statement posted to X confirmed that he had been hacked and threatened legal consequences against anyone who published the content of the leaks. Israel’s Privacy Protection Law prohibits republishing content obtained through illegal means.
Click Here For The Original Source.
