The News
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 , 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.
Ben’s view
Hacks and leaks are challenging to cover. The most important story in most hacks — including this one — is the hack itself; this is part of the broad internationalization of the Israeli political campaign, in which actors across the region and in the US line up for and, mostly against, the leader who led his country’s response to the October 7 attacks.
But Israeli commentators also professed shock, if not surprise, Sunday at how closely aligned the journalist and spin doctor appeared to be. Segal is a center-right figure broadly aligned with Netanyahu — but he’s also a top journalist who appears on international platforms, like the American political figure Dan Senor’s widely-followed podcast, as an independent analyst.
One Israeli journalist compared Segal’s role in Israel to that of Fox News host Bret Baier, who maintains a journalistic independence despite working for a right-wing platform. The messages put a dent in Segal’s image, and offer a glimpse at parts of an Israeli media that has grown very close to its prime minister.
Room for Disagreement
Segal addressed the controversy on News 12, describing the messages as part of a “very delicate tango between the journalist and the subject of their coverage.” He added that “any people I’ve covered over the years gave me drafts of speeches, saying, ‘This will be our campaign, what are your thoughts?’”
Notable
- The region’s politics have been buffeted — and illuminated — repeatedly by aggressive cyber campaigns for years. Semafor reported in 2023 on extensive, leaked Iranian government communications that revealed Iranian attempts to influence US politics.