"Qatargate Can Sink Israel"

Explosive allegations from a Mossad veteran suggest the true scope of "Qatargate" may be far larger

It was an extraordinary 20-minutes of radio. A former top spy was turning whistleblower, live on midday public radio. The topic: “Qatargate”, a scandal exploding around Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s inner circle like a ricocheting grenade. Qatar, to those who don’t know, is the sovereign wealth fund and state institution of the Muslim Brotherhood, which begot Hamas. Hamas ravaged Israel on 7 October 2023, and is still holding 59 Israeli hostages in Gaza tunnels, many of which are dead.

As bombshell revelation followed bombshell revelation, even the news anchor, a known interjectionist, was left speechless, except for the frequent “wow”..”wow”..”that’s…wow”.

"We are simply making a strategic mistake in managing this investigation. It should be conducted like one against a crime family or terrorist organization," said Lieutenant Colonel (res.) Dr. Udi Levy, former head of the Mossad's Tzeltzal (Harpoon) unit, an elite intelligence operation that tracked terrorist financing until Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shuttered it in 2017.

Will the real Deep State please stand up?

Levy’s interview with Israel’s public broadcaster Kan comes as the so-called "Qatargate" scandal intensifies. Last week, a court ruled that Jonathan Urich, a top Netanyahu spin master and confidant, would remain in police custody until Monday, while senior aide Eli Feldstein, another spin master, was released to house arrest. The pair stand accused of working for a pro-Qatar lobbying firm while serving as government advisers—part of what investigators believe was a broader influence operation to whitewash Qatar’s image amongst Israeli and Jewish audiences.

But according to Mr. Levy, these arrests merely scratch the surface of a scandal with potentially devastating implications for Israel's security and governance. Netanyahu says the investigation, and others against him and his associates, are politically motivated attempts by the “Deep State'“ to depose him.

“I greatly appreciate my colleagues from both the Mossad and the Shin Bet who still have collegiality and loyalty to the system. But many people were exposed during their work to many improper things, and these people don't open their mouths.

“The Attorney General—which is always being accused of being the ‘deep state— once and for all needs to allow these people to spill everything they have in their bellies, and then we'll know whether we betrayed our Prime Minister or, heaven forbid, our Prime Minister betrayed us.”

Mr. Levy’s spent his career following the Middle East's darkest money trails, many of which led to Doha. He says Netanyahu’s recent declaration about “Qatar not being a terrorist state” and his accusation that the Shin Bet head received bribes from the Qataris, were “outrageous” and compelled him to speak publicly.

“This investigation needs to take a completely different dimension, and the pass given to the Prime Minister of Israel needs to end once and for all. It's impossible to conduct an investigation the way it's being conducted today. It's like walking into a movie 15 minutes before the end and trying to understand the entire film. You can't just investigate the Prime Minister's advisors without investigating the entire system around them, including the Prime Minister himself.”

Documents in the desert

What makes Mr. Levy's testimony so devastating is its specificity, and seemingly simple next steps. He alleges that materials from a 2019 hack of Qatari systems commissioned by the UAE contain evidence of Qatari payments to Mr. Netanyahu himself that Israeli authorities deliberately avoided investigating. "People around the world have been prosecuted for these documents, but here, someone—I don’t know who— decided not to examine this at all and immediately announced they were forged documents,” he asserted.

“There is truth to this because right after the original documents were published— I tell you this as a professional—someone made sure to flood the system with forged documents, a known method used by criminal organizations. When you want to contaminate an investigation, you start flooding it with forged documents, and then everything becomes a forgery. But the original documents, I'm not completely sure they're forgeries, but no one investigated them.”

Remarkably, Mr. Levy states that officials in the UAE stand ready to authenticate these documents: “There are entities in the Emirates, given the reality we're in, who are willing, I repeat, willing today to talk with Israeli entities and tell them what was in these documents. Remember, ultimately, they are the owners of the documents. And I'm telling you they want to talk. I know what I'm saying.”

Additionally, Mr. Levy said there were prominent members of the US Jewish community who claim they were involved in the “Qatari bribery issue.”

“No one approached them, no one talked to them, no one tried to get this information. Nothing, period.”

Follow The Family Money

Mr. Levy reserves particular criticism for what he sees as a deliberate failure to investigate the Netanyahu family's finances. “The entire economic empire built by the Netanyahu family needs to be checked once and for all. No one has ever investigated the sources of the Netanyahu family's money."

He raises specific questions about Sara Netanyahu's brother, Amatziah Ben-Artzi, "one of the world's greatest experts in building financial platforms and cryptocurrencies," and the prime minister's relationship with American cryptocurrency entrepreneur Brock Pierce.

The timing of the allegations is particularly potent given the ongoing detention of Netanyahu's closest aides. In the Qatargate affair, Urich and Feldstein are "suspected of multiple offenses tied to their alleged work for a pro-Qatar lobbying firm, including contact with a foreign agent and a series of corruption charges involving lobbyists and businessmen," according to court documents.

Investigators believe they passed pro-Qatari messages to reporters in the name of "a senior diplomatic official"—a code often used when Netanyahu's advisers do not want comments directly attributed to him. One businessman has already acknowledged transferring money to Feldstein on behalf of an American lobbyist "for tax reasons."

Mr. Levy tied Netanyahu spinmasters Urich, Feldstein, Topaz Luk, and others in the affair to Yair Netanyahu, the Prime Minister’s son, who has spent much of the past year in Miami, and is widely considered to be the puppet master operating Urich and Co.

“They don't move a millimeter without Yair Netanyahu, without Sara Netanyahu, and without the Prime Minister. Not a millimeter. The whole campaign, the whole machine is directed from above. For heaven's sake, it's clear to everyone.

“If you check this whole picture you will quickly find Netanyahu's son because he's actually the man pulling all the strings. And this picture once and for all needs to be clarified because this picture is destroying the State of Israel. Once and for all this needs to end.”

Mr. Levy wasn’t quite done yet with the Prime Minister’s errant son, whose Miami financial setup remains unclear.

“Your son, who doesn't work and doesn't earn, and no one knows where he pays income tax, which is also a point I can't understand: how do you live this lifestyle? Where do you pay income tax, for heaven's sake? Where?”

Addressing the radio news anchor, Mr. Levy said: “If it were you and I, we would have been called to tax investigation long ago. But here, not. Why? Because the "deep state" gives passes. But maybe it's time the "deep state" stops giving passes.”

Interviewer: Udi, from what you know, does the Prime Minister have a lot to fear from this “Qatargate” investigation?

Levy: “I am more than one hundred percent convinced that the Prime Minister is very afraid of this investigation. If this investigation is conducted as I've now laid it out you, it's not just the Qatar affair, it brings us back to the submarines, it brings us back to the gas, it brings us back to many other events,” he said, referring to previous allegations of conflict of interest against Netanyahu, all of which he has denied.

“This is an affair that can not only end the Prime Minister's career and legacy, but also put his son and wife in serious trouble. And the Prime Minister is fighting for his life right now. But we are also fighting for our lives. We as a people are fighting for our lives. And if in the framework of you [Netanyahu] fighting for your life, you bury the entire system around you, the system that needs to continue to protect you, to protect us, to fight…”.

Mr. Levy described widespread demoralization across Israel's security services due to Netanyahu’s attacks. "Dozens of employees don't want to continue working in the security services anymore," he claimed. "People are going home because what motivation do they have when afterward they are destroyed along with their families? For what? For heaven's sake.

“These people—I was there— these people have no day, no night. They pay extraordinary prices. And then to accuse them?”

The shuttered spy unit

Beyond the Qatargate revelations, what I personally found most troubling is Mr. Levy's account of Netanyahu's decision to disband the Tzeltzal unit in 2017—a specialist intelligence team focused on tracking terrorist financing and money laundering. Mr. Levy led this unit until early 2017, just before its dissolution.

"To this day, I'm trying to find a logical reason why to close something that works well, which is also rare in the State of Israel—something complex that works well," he said, hinting at darker motives. The unit worked "in full cooperation with all systems worldwide" to track financial flows to terrorist organizations.

Mr. Levy claims he had "warned the Prime Minister in 2015 about the intelligence files being gathered against him in economic cases"—suggesting Netanyahu may have had knowledge of investigations years before they became public.

The former intelligence chief frames the issue as existential for Israel: "Either we're not right and we betray our Prime Minister, or, heaven forbid, maybe the worst of all, maybe he betrayed us."

And this can be proven in a widespread investigation. “Money leaves fingerprints. Money you can't hide alone in the world. You can't. People talk, and people know, and countries know. Crypto companies know, the crypto exchanges know, the exchanges talk, exchange managers know. And this makes our Prime Minister compromised. And that's a terrible thing because there's information in the hands of entities.We need to understand this. It's a matter of life and death.”

He connected the non-investigations directly to Israel's security failures leading to the October 7th, 2023 attacks: "I connect the failure of October to this too, that there was no attention to the money issue."

Qatar has denied accusations that it funded a disinformation campaign aimed at "discrediting Egypt's role in negotiations to free Israelis held hostage in Gaza."

Third Temple Tremor

What makes these allegations uniquely potent is their source—a former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matters discussed. Mr. Levy's credentials lend credibility to claims that might otherwise be dismissed as partisan attacks. Which, of course, hasn’t stopped Netanyahu’s supporters from dismissing them as partisan attacks.

As the investigation proceeds, Israel stands at what Mr. Levy calls "a state of losing our Third Temple"—a reference to the biblical temple whose destruction symbolizes national catastrophe, thousands of years of dispersal, persecution, and pain.

The midday interview concluded, the radio host fell silent for a moment.

The traffic report was next, and it was time for lunch.