Gideon Levy
Encyclopedia
Gideon Levy is an Israeli journalist.
Levy writes opinion pieces and a weekly column for the newspaper Haaretz
that often focus on the Israeli occupation
of the Palestinian territories
. A notable journalist on the Israeli left, Levy has been characterized variously as a "propagandist for the Hamas
" to a "heroic journalist".
, the son of immigrants
from Germany
. Levy’s father was a German Jewish lawyer from the Sudetenland
. Fleeing from the Nazis in 1939, Levy senior parted from his parents at a railway station in Prague
and never saw them again. For six months he lived on a refugee boat that was turned away from many ports until finally reaching Mandate Palestine
. Levy attended Public School Alef. Levy and his younger brother Rafi would often sing together, notably songs composed by Haim Hefer
. During the Six-Day War
, the street adjacent to his home was hit by Arab artillery. Levy describes his political views as a teenager as typically mainstream. "I was a full member of the nationalistic religious orgy. We all were under the feeling that the whole project [of Israel] is in an existentialistic danger. We all felt that another holocaust is around the corner."
Levy resides in the Ramat Aviv
neighborhood of Tel Aviv
(on the lands of Sheikh Munis), and is a divorced father of two.
. From 1978 to 1982 he worked as an aide to Shimon Peres
, then leader of the Israeli Labor Party. In 1982, he began to write for the Israeli daily Haaretz. In 1983–1987, he was an assistant to the editor-in-chief. Despite his coverage of the Israeli-Arab conflict, he speaks no Arabic. He has written a column called "Twilight Zone" about the hardships of the Palestinians since 1988. In 2004, Levy published a compilation of articles entitled Twilight Zone – Life and Death under the Israeli Occupation. With Haim Yavin
, he co-edited Whispering Embers, a documentary series on Russian Jewry
after the fall of communism. He hosted A Personal meeting with Gideon Levy, a weekly talk show that was broadcast on Israeli cable TV on channel 3, and has appeared periodically on other television talk shows.
Levy has said that his views on Israel's policies toward the Palestinians developed only after joining Haaretz. "When I first started covering the West Bank for Haaretz, I was young and brainwashed," he said in an interview. "I would see settlers cutting down olive trees and soldiers mistreating Palestinian women at the checkpoints, and I would think, 'These are exceptions, not part of government policy.' It took me a long time to see that these were not exceptions — they were the substance of government policy."
In an interview, he said he doubts that any other newspaper in Israel apart from Haaretz would give him the journalistic freedom to publish the kind of pieces he writes.
on private Palestinian land as "the most criminal enterprise in [Israel's] history". He opposed the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict
, and the view that civilian casualties were inevitable. In 2007, he said that the plight of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, then under Israeli blockade, made him ashamed to be an Israeli. "My modest mission is to prevent a situation in which many Israelis will be able to say 'We didn't know'," said Levy in an interview.
Levy supports unilateral withdrawal from occupied Palestinian territories without concessions. "Israel is not being asked 'to give' anything to the Palestinians; it is only being asked to return - to return their stolen land and restore their trampled self-respect, along with their fundamental human rights and humanity."
Levy wrote that the Gaza War was a failed campaign and its objectives were not achieved. "The conclusion is that Israel is a violent and dangerous country, devoid of all restraints and blatantly ignoring the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, while not giving a hoot about international law," he wrote in an editorial.
In 2010, Levy described Hamas as a fundamentalist organization and holds it responsible for the Qassam
rockets fired at Israeli cities: "Hamas is to be blamed for launching the Qassams. This is unbearable. No sovereign state would have tolerated it. Israel had the right to react." He is against boycotting Israel: "I am an Israeli who does not boycott Israel so I cannot call on others to do so."
of The Independent
as "the heroic Israeli journalist", and his columns are cited often in The New York Times and other newspapers. The French newspaper Le Monde
praised him as a 'thorn in Israel's flank' and Der Spiegel
characterized him as "[Israel's] most radical commentator".-[a]
His opponents criticize him for being anti-Israeli, and for supporting Palestinian radicalism. "Is it wrong to ask of reporters in a country that is in the midst of a difficult war to show a little more empathy for their people and their country?" asked Amnon Dankner
of the Maariv
newspaper. Ben Dror Yemini
, the editor of the opinion page of Maariv, called Levy one of the "propagandists for the Hamas". Itamar Marcus
, the director of Palestinian Media Watch
, writes in the website of Arutz Sheva
, a publication supporting the Israeli settlers in the West Bank, "[One of] the current Israeli heroes [of the Hamas], from whom the Palestinians garner support for their ways, [is] Gideon Levy ..." Arutz Sheva also lambasted Levy's article about the Jerusalem bulldozer attack
in Jerusalem in 2008, which was translated into Arabic on a Hamas website. In 2006, Gideon Ezra
, Israel's former deputy Minister of Internal Security, suggested that the General Security Services should monitor Levy as a borderline security risk.
Israeli novelist Irit Linur
set off a wave of subscription cancellations to Haaretz in 2002, when she wrote an open letter to the paper cancelling her own subscription. "It is a person's right to be a radical leftist, and publish a newspaper in accordance with his world view... However Haaretz has reached the point where its anti-Zionism has become stupid and evil," she wrote. She also accused Levy of amateurism because he does not speak Arabic.
Other public figures also cancelled their subscriptions, including Roni Daniel, the military and security correspondent for Israeli Channel 2
.
Haaretz's publisher, Amos Schocken, expressed puzzlement at Linur's letter, describing his newspaper as "exceedingly Zionist" and defending Levy's reports as "a description of the effects of the Israeli occupation in the territories". Levy himself joked that there is a thick file of anti-Levy cancellations in the Haaretz newsroom.
foundation, which describes its goal as "bring[ing] people together from across the Mediterranean to improve mutual respect between cultures," awarded Levy the Anna Lindh journalism prize for an article he wrote about Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel
awarded him the Emil Grunzweig Human Rights Award
in 1996 for promoting human rights, and he has won numerous other awards for his writing.
Levy writes opinion pieces and a weekly column for the newspaper Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz is Israel's oldest daily newspaper. It was founded in 1918 and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International Herald Tribune. Both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet...
that often focus on the Israeli occupation
Israeli-occupied territories
The Israeli-occupied territories are the territories which have been designated as occupied territory by the United Nations and other international organizations, governments and others to refer to the territory seized by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967 from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria...
of the Palestinian territories
Palestinian territories
The Palestinian territories comprise the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Since the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988, the region is today recognized by three-quarters of the world's countries as the State of Palestine or simply Palestine, although this status is not recognized by the...
. A notable journalist on the Israeli left, Levy has been characterized variously as a "propagandist for the Hamas
Hamas
Hamas is the Palestinian Sunni Islamic or Islamist political party that governs the Gaza Strip. Hamas also has a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades...
" to a "heroic journalist".
Biography
Levy was born in 1953 in Tel AvivTel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
, the son of immigrants
Aliyah
Aliyah is the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel . It is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology. The opposite action, emigration from Israel, is referred to as yerida . The return to the Holy Land has been a Jewish aspiration since the Babylonian exile...
from Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. Levy’s father was a German Jewish lawyer from the Sudetenland
Sudetenland
Sudetenland is the German name used in English in the first half of the 20th century for the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans, specifically the border areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Silesia being within Czechoslovakia.The...
. Fleeing from the Nazis in 1939, Levy senior parted from his parents at a railway station in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
and never saw them again. For six months he lived on a refugee boat that was turned away from many ports until finally reaching Mandate Palestine
Mandate Palestine
Mandate Palestine existed while the British Mandate for Palestine, which formally began in September 1923 and terminated in May 1948, was in effect...
. Levy attended Public School Alef. Levy and his younger brother Rafi would often sing together, notably songs composed by Haim Hefer
Haim Hefer
-Biography:Hefer was born in Sosnowiec, Poland in 1925 to Issachar Feiner, a chocolate salesman, and Rivka Herzberg, a housewife. He had a private Hebrew tutor....
. During the Six-Day War
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War , also known as the June War, 1967 Arab-Israeli War, or Third Arab-Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt , Jordan, and Syria...
, the street adjacent to his home was hit by Arab artillery. Levy describes his political views as a teenager as typically mainstream. "I was a full member of the nationalistic religious orgy. We all were under the feeling that the whole project [of Israel] is in an existentialistic danger. We all felt that another holocaust is around the corner."
Levy resides in the Ramat Aviv
Ramat Aviv
Ramat Aviv is the name of several neighborhoods in the Northwest District of Tel Aviv, Israel:* Ramat Aviv Aleph * Ramat Aviv Bet * Ramat Aviv Gimmel...
neighborhood of Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
(on the lands of Sheikh Munis), and is a divorced father of two.
Journalism and media career
In 1974, Levy was drafted into the Israeli Defense Forces where he served as a reporter for Israel Army RadioIsrael Army Radio
Army Radio or Galei Tzahal known in Israel by its acronym Galatz , is a nationwide Israeli radio network operated by the Israel Defense Forces....
. From 1978 to 1982 he worked as an aide to Shimon Peres
Shimon Peres
GCMG is the ninth President of the State of Israel. Peres served twice as the eighth Prime Minister of Israel and once as Interim Prime Minister, and has been a member of 12 cabinets in a political career spanning over 66 years...
, then leader of the Israeli Labor Party. In 1982, he began to write for the Israeli daily Haaretz. In 1983–1987, he was an assistant to the editor-in-chief. Despite his coverage of the Israeli-Arab conflict, he speaks no Arabic. He has written a column called "Twilight Zone" about the hardships of the Palestinians since 1988. In 2004, Levy published a compilation of articles entitled Twilight Zone – Life and Death under the Israeli Occupation. With Haim Yavin
Haim Yavin
Haim Yavin , is an Israeli television anchor and documentary filmmaker. He was one of Israel's leading news presenters, associated with the job for so many decades that he was known as "Mr. Television."-Biography:...
, he co-edited Whispering Embers, a documentary series on Russian Jewry
History of the Jews in the Soviet Union
The history of the Jews in the Soviet Union is discussed in the following articles relating to specific regions of the former Soviet Union:*History of the Jews in Armenia*History of the Jews in Azerbaijan*History of the Jews in Belarus...
after the fall of communism. He hosted A Personal meeting with Gideon Levy, a weekly talk show that was broadcast on Israeli cable TV on channel 3, and has appeared periodically on other television talk shows.
Levy has said that his views on Israel's policies toward the Palestinians developed only after joining Haaretz. "When I first started covering the West Bank for Haaretz, I was young and brainwashed," he said in an interview. "I would see settlers cutting down olive trees and soldiers mistreating Palestinian women at the checkpoints, and I would think, 'These are exceptions, not part of government policy.' It took me a long time to see that these were not exceptions — they were the substance of government policy."
In an interview, he said he doubts that any other newspaper in Israel apart from Haaretz would give him the journalistic freedom to publish the kind of pieces he writes.
Views and opinions
Levy defines himself as a "patriotic Israeli." He criticizes what he sees as Israeli society's "moral blindness" to the effects of its acts of war and occupation. He has referred to the construction of settlementsIsraeli settlement
An Israeli settlement is a Jewish civilian community built on land that was captured by Israel from Jordan, Egypt, and Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War and is considered occupied territory by the international community. Such settlements currently exist in the West Bank...
on private Palestinian land as "the most criminal enterprise in [Israel's] history". He opposed the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict
2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict
The 2006 Lebanon War, also called the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War and known in Lebanon as the July War #Other uses|Tammūz]]) and in Israel as the Second Lebanon War , was a 34-day military conflict in Lebanon, northern Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories. The principal parties were Hezbollah...
, and the view that civilian casualties were inevitable. In 2007, he said that the plight of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, then under Israeli blockade, made him ashamed to be an Israeli. "My modest mission is to prevent a situation in which many Israelis will be able to say 'We didn't know'," said Levy in an interview.
Levy supports unilateral withdrawal from occupied Palestinian territories without concessions. "Israel is not being asked 'to give' anything to the Palestinians; it is only being asked to return - to return their stolen land and restore their trampled self-respect, along with their fundamental human rights and humanity."
Levy wrote that the Gaza War was a failed campaign and its objectives were not achieved. "The conclusion is that Israel is a violent and dangerous country, devoid of all restraints and blatantly ignoring the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, while not giving a hoot about international law," he wrote in an editorial.
In 2010, Levy described Hamas as a fundamentalist organization and holds it responsible for the Qassam
Qassam
Qassam may refer to:*Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, an influential Islamist preacher*Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas*Qassam rocket, a type of rocket used by the military wing of Hamas against Israel...
rockets fired at Israeli cities: "Hamas is to be blamed for launching the Qassams. This is unbearable. No sovereign state would have tolerated it. Israel had the right to react." He is against boycotting Israel: "I am an Israeli who does not boycott Israel so I cannot call on others to do so."
Praise and criticism
Levy's writing has aroused controversy. He has been praised by Johann HariJohann Hari
Johann Hari is an award winning British journalist who has been a columnist at The Independent, the The Huffington Post, and contributed to several other publications. In 2011, Hari was accused of plagiarism; he subsequently was suspended from The Independent and surrendered his 2008 Orwell Prize...
of The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
as "the heroic Israeli journalist", and his columns are cited often in The New York Times and other newspapers. The French newspaper Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
praised him as a 'thorn in Israel's flank' and Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...
characterized him as "[Israel's] most radical commentator".-[a]
His opponents criticize him for being anti-Israeli, and for supporting Palestinian radicalism. "Is it wrong to ask of reporters in a country that is in the midst of a difficult war to show a little more empathy for their people and their country?" asked Amnon Dankner
Amnon Dankner
Amnon Dankner is an Israeli newspaper editor and author. He was the editor of the mass-circulation daily Maariv for six years.-Biography:Amnon Dankner was born in Jerusalem. His parents were the owners of Cafe Allenby. The family was secular but he attended a religious school, Ma'aleh, where he...
of the Maariv
Maariv
Maariv is a Hebrew language daily newspaper published in Israel. It is second in sales after Yedioth Ahronoth and third in readership after Yedioth Ahronoth and Israel HaYom. In a TGI survey comparing the last half of 2009 with the same period in 2008, Maariv saw its market share fall slightly...
newspaper. Ben Dror Yemini
Ben Dror Yemini
Ben-Dror Yemini is an Israeli journalist. He currently works for the daily newspaper Maariv.-Biography:Ben-Dror Yemini was born in Tel-Aviv to a Yemenite Jewish family. He studied Humanities and History at Tel Aviv University and then pursued a degree in law...
, the editor of the opinion page of Maariv, called Levy one of the "propagandists for the Hamas". Itamar Marcus
Itamar Marcus
Itamar Marcus is an Israeli political activist, founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch, which studies Palestinian society by monitoring and analyzing the Palestinian Authority through its media and schoolbooks....
, the director of Palestinian Media Watch
Palestinian Media Watch
Palestinian Media Watch is an Israel-based media watchdog organization. Established by Itamar Marcus in 1996, PMW monitors Palestinian Arabic media and schoolbooks....
, writes in the website of Arutz Sheva
Arutz Sheva
Arutz Sheva is an Israeli media network identifying with Religious Zionism. It offers online news in English, Hebrew, French, Spanish and Russian. Arutz Sheva offers free podcasts, live streaming radio, a daily email news update, streaming video and 24 hour updated text news...
, a publication supporting the Israeli settlers in the West Bank, "[One of] the current Israeli heroes [of the Hamas], from whom the Palestinians garner support for their ways, [is] Gideon Levy ..." Arutz Sheva also lambasted Levy's article about the Jerusalem bulldozer attack
Jerusalem bulldozer attack
The Jerusalem bulldozer attack occurred on July 2, 2008, when an Arab resident of east Jerusalem identified as Hussam Taysir Duwait , attacked several cars on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem, Israel using a front-end loader , killing three people and wounding at...
in Jerusalem in 2008, which was translated into Arabic on a Hamas website. In 2006, Gideon Ezra
Gideon Ezra
Gideon Ezra is an Israeli politician, member of the Knesset for Kadima and a former Minister of Environmental Protection.-Biography:Ezra was born in Jerusalem and served in the Israeli Defense Force between 1955 and 1958 in the Nahal...
, Israel's former deputy Minister of Internal Security, suggested that the General Security Services should monitor Levy as a borderline security risk.
Israeli novelist Irit Linur
Irit Linur
-Biography:Irit Linur was married to Alon Ben David, Senior Defense Correspondent for Israel Channel 10 and Middle East Correspondent for Jane's Defense Weekly.-Literary career:Linur started her writing career as a satirical columnist in local newspapers...
set off a wave of subscription cancellations to Haaretz in 2002, when she wrote an open letter to the paper cancelling her own subscription. "It is a person's right to be a radical leftist, and publish a newspaper in accordance with his world view... However Haaretz has reached the point where its anti-Zionism has become stupid and evil," she wrote. She also accused Levy of amateurism because he does not speak Arabic.
Other public figures also cancelled their subscriptions, including Roni Daniel, the military and security correspondent for Israeli Channel 2
Channel 2 (Israel)
Channel 2 is an Israeli commercial television channel.- History :In 1990, after 13 years of deliberations, the Knesset passed a law that paved the way for the establishment of commercial television in Israel. The goal was to enhance pluralism and create competition. Channel 2 began broadcasting on...
.
Haaretz's publisher, Amos Schocken, expressed puzzlement at Linur's letter, describing his newspaper as "exceedingly Zionist" and defending Levy's reports as "a description of the effects of the Israeli occupation in the territories". Levy himself joked that there is a thick file of anti-Levy cancellations in the Haaretz newsroom.
Awards
In 2008, the Anna LindhAnna Lindh
Ylva Anna Maria Lindh was a Swedish Social Democratic politician, Chairman of the Social Democratic Youth League 1984-1990, Member of Parliament 1982-1985 and 1998-2003...
foundation, which describes its goal as "bring[ing] people together from across the Mediterranean to improve mutual respect between cultures," awarded Levy the Anna Lindh journalism prize for an article he wrote about Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel
Association for Civil Rights in Israel
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel was created as an independent non-partisan organization to protect human rights and civil rights in Israel and the territories under its control....
awarded him the Emil Grunzweig Human Rights Award
Emil Grunzweig Human Rights Award
The Emil Grunzweig Human Rights Award is an award made annually by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel to "an individual or NGO that has made a unique contribution to the advancement of human rights in Israel"...
in 1996 for promoting human rights, and he has won numerous other awards for his writing.
Books
- Twilight Zone - Life and Death under the Israeli Occupation. 1988-2003. Tel Aviv: Babylon Printing, 2004
- The Punishment of Gaza, Verso Books, 2010, ISBN 9781844676019
Articles
- "Ship of Fools" in:
- "Due Process" in:
External links
- http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/israel.palestine/levy.htmlInterview with Levy on PBSPublic Broadcasting ServiceThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
] (2003) - Selection of articles by Levy
- Gideon Levy's Official Lecturer Page
- An open letter to Gideon Levy By A.B. Yehoshua, Haaretz 16/01/2009
- An open response to A.B. Yehoshua By Gideon Levy
- "Interview with Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy", Am Johal, Worldpress.org, September 19, 2010