Netanyahu Adviser Admitted in Interrogation He Worked for Qatar After October 7
Source Xinhua, Dawn, Arab News, Anadolu and Minute Mirror
According to a Channel 12 News report, Yonatan Urich said during his interrogation that he saw no moral issue with the influence campaign and estimated that he had received hundreds of thousands of shekels for his work on it
Yonatan Urich, an adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said in his interrogation in the Qatargate affair that he continued working on a campaign to improve Qatar’s image even after October 7, Channel 12 News reported on Monday.
According to the report, which Urich did not deny, he said he saw no moral problem with the work and estimated that he had received hundreds of thousands of shekels for the project.
The statements corroborate a May 2025 Haaretz report that the campaign continued operating after the outbreak of the war, despite Netanyahu’s vehement denial that Urich ever worked for Qatar.
During his interrogation, Urich struggled to specify when he stopped working on the campaign but said he believed it was in mid- or late 2024. He told investigators that he had not informed Netanyahu of the work.
“I don’t report to the prime minister about what I do,” he said. “There is a fundamental difference between what happens abroad and what happens in Israel.”
Urich said he was not required to disclose the work because he was an external adviser. “The World Cup project did not prevent me from attacking Qatar from Israel,” he told investigators. Asked whether either side knew about his work for the other, he replied, “No.”
According to Channel 12, Urich said he saw nothing morally wrong with working on the campaign. He said he would not have taken part if “I hadn’t been with Maj. Gen. (res.) Poli Mordechai, who is dear to me, number 2 at the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, and there are others there who are former Mossad agents. I said I see no moral problem if these respectable people are doing it.”
He later added, “I don’t think I did anything immoral or unprofessional.”
When an investigator suggested that Urich could have stopped working on the campaign after October 7 or informed Netanyahu that he was working for Qatar, he replied: “I didn’t see a conflict here. I don’t see a moral problem with it.”
Haaretz revealed in 2024 that Urich and Srulik Einhorn, two of Netanyahu’s closest and most senior advisers, had developed a campaign to improve Qatar’s international image ahead of the 2022 World Cup, which was held in the country.
Related Articles
- Israeli experts pushed anti-Qatar op. It was abruptly halted without explanation Bar Peleg
- Ex-Netanyahu campaigner’s revenue in Serbia flatlines after Qatari campaign ends Bar Peleg
- Netanyahu advisers met Qataris in 2022 while working on World Cup campaign Gidi Weitz
Haaretz later reported that Urich’s work on the campaign continued throughout the war, following the October 7 massacre.
A series of Haaretz reports, based on internal documents belonging to Urich and Einhorn and sources familiar with the campaign, detailed “Project Lighthouse.” Under the project, Urich and Einhorn, working through their company Perception, developed messaging and strategy, while a company called Koios implemented the campaign through a network of avatars – fictitious online personas – and fake websites.
Zamir Ahmed Awan is the founder and Chair of the Global Silk Route Research Alliance, a think tank in Islamabad. He studied engineering at Shanghai University in the 1980s, and years later he went back to China as Pakistan's science counsellor in Beijing, from 2010 until 2016, working on science and higher education cooperation between the two countries.…
