Sgt. A., the reserve officer who was charged with leaking classified documents, requested during a hearing held on Sunday regarding his case that the gag order on his name be lifted.

Sgt. A. said during the hearing: “I have acted throughout my life for the benefit of the state in military service. I served the state in several organizations. I have always contributed. I miss my family; I have a small child and a wife at home that I care for and they care for me. I constantly think about them and I don’t understand how I’m still in prison.”

“I made mistakes in the way I acted, I will never repeat it. I don’t understand at the end of the day why there’s a gag order on this matter. I initially thought it was a temporary order that would end soon but the gag order is still in effect.”

“Everything has come out in the media and I can’t fight for my innocence, clear my name, when I’m in darkness and obscurity. The public needs to know who I am, what I did – and what my intentions were.”

As is well-known, Sgt. A. and Feldstein are victims of the left-wing sector’s war against the right in Israel. Top IDF officials, who unfortunately are on the left-wing side of the spectrum, hid information from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, namely a Hamas document found in Gaza saying the left-wing protests calling for the release of the hostages are a boon for Hamas and harm efforts to reach a hostage deal. Sgt. A. felt that the information was of vital importance and could help bring back the hostages and couldn’t understand why the information wasn’t being publicized. With the failures of IDF leaders to prevent the Oct. 7 massacre looming in his mind, he took a photo of the document and forwarded it to Feldstein, Netanyahu’s former aide.

Feldstein also felt the information must be publicized for the sake of the hostages and he leaked it to the foreign press since Israeli media outlets were forbidden to publish it after the IDF imposed a gag order on the information.

Senior IDF officials were furious about the violation of regulations regarding classified information, and the left-wing State Attorney’s Office was delighted to cooperate with the “scandal” connected to Netanyahu’s office.

Feldstein and Sgt. A. were arrested and thrown into a top security prison where they suffered inhumane conditions, including being the only Jews in a ward full of violent Arabs, being subject to endless interrogations, including in the middle of the night, and being banned from any visits, even from close family members or lawyers. Feldstein was imprisoned for a month and Sgt. A. is still imprisoned after Supreme Court Justice Alex Stein ordered that he be detained until the end of the legal proceedings, which could take years.

The case and Stein’s decision regarding Sgt. A. has been condemned even by leftists, with Channel 13 host Raviv Drucker calling it “madness, a disgrace, and a scandal” and calling on the State Prosecutor to release him immediately.

The two suspects, who only wanted to help bring the hostages home, endured far harsher conditions than Israelis who were recently indicted for spying for Iran.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)