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Gideon Levy (Template:Lang-he; born 1953) is an Israeli journalist, author and television panel member. Levy writes opinion pieces and a weekly column for the newspaper Haaretz that often focuses on the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. A notable journalist on the Israeli left, Levy has been called everything from a "propagandist for the Hamas" to a "heroic journalist".

Biography

Levy was born in 1953 in Tel Aviv, the son of immigrants from Germany. Levy’s father was a German Jewish lawyer from the Sudetenland. Fleeing from the Nazis in 1939, he 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 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.

Journalism and media career

In 1974, Levy was drafted into the Israeli Defense Forces where he served as a reporter for Israel Army Radio. 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.

Views and opinions

Levy defines himself as a "patriotic Israeli." At the same time 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 settlements on private Palestinian land as "the most criminal enterprise in 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."

Praise and criticism

Levy's writing has aroused controversy. He has been praised by Johann Hari 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 " most radical commentator".

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, " the current Israeli heroes , from whom the Palestinians garner support for their ways, Gideon Levy ..." Arutz Sheva also lambasted Levy's article justifying 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.

Awards

In 2008, the Anna Lindh foundation, which describes its goal as "bring 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.

Published works

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: Moustafa Bayoumi. "Ship of Fools". Midnight on the Mavi Marmara. OR Books. ISBN 9781935928010.
• "Due Process" in: "Due Process". Crimes of war: what the public should know. W. W. Norton & Company. 2007. ISBN 9780393328462. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |editors= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help)

References

1. לוי, גדעון. "העיתונאי מחפש משמעות". העין השביעית. Retrieved 2010-11-22.Translation: That is the only way to explain relentless attack on left journalists, the undersigned included (7th-eye, issue no. 29). Barnea probably finds it hard to write without inserting a world view and is twice as hard for him to accept the existence of fellow colleagues who consider their world view to be a candle at their feet. Original:
   רק כך אפשר להסביר את השתלחותו חסרת הרסן בעיתונאי השמאל, הח"מ ביניהם ("העין השביעית", גיליון מס' 29). לברנע קשה כנראה לכתוב בלי השקפת עולם וקשה לו שבעתיים להכיר בקיומם של עמיתים למקצוע שהשקפת עולמם היא נר לעבודתם.
2. ^ Yemini, Ben Dror (2009-01-17). "Conscience pimps - סרסורי מצפון" (in Hebrew). Ma'ariv. Retrieved 2009-04-09.
3. ^ Johann Hari: Will Gaza, like Iraq, descend into civil war?
4. Is Gideon Levy the most hated man in Israel or just the most heroic?
5. לוי, גדעון (2009-04-10). "בוא שיר עברי" (in Hebrew). Haaretz. Retrieved 30 January 2010. {{cite web}}: Text "שני שיבר ושליש ירכתיים" ignored (help)
6. אזור הדמדומים | 100 בהיסטוריה, by Gideon Levy.
7. ^ Six Day War prompts reflection in Middle East ABC, 11 June 2007
8. ^ "לקסיקון אנציקלופדי לתקשורת ועיתונות - גדעון לוי" (in Hebrew). העין השביעית. 2008-02-26. Retrieved 30 January 2010.
9. http://www.forward.com/articles/3129/
10. Robert Hirschfield, "Israel’s Gadfly", In These Times, September 4, 2009
11. Jewish Chronicle interview: Gideon Levy
12. What do you mean when you say 'no'? Haaretz, 18 November 2007
13. Ha'aretz, Israel's Liberal Beacon The Nation, 6 September 2007
14. Gideon Levy, ‘Demands of a thief,’ Haaretz 25/11/2007
15. Gaza war ended in utter failure for Israel, Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 22/01/2009.
16. Jewish Chronicle interview: Gideon Levy
17. Jewish Chronicle interview: Gideon Levy
18. see, for example, Eric Etheridge, "Morning Skim: Kinsley on Debt, Testing Obama, Israel’s Direction", February 20, 2009, or Thomas Friedman, "Wanted: An Arab Sharon", January 11, 2006
19. Gideon Lévy : une épine dans le flanc d'Israël Le Monde, 4 September 2006 Template:Fr icon
20. ^ Problems at Israel's Haaretz: A Newspaper Without a Country
21. Amnon Dankner, Maariv, May 1, 2002, quoted in Gaby Weiman, "Ten Dilemmas of Journalism in Days of Terror"
22. מרכוס, איתמר (2009-05-06). "גיבורי הפלסטינים: גדעון לוי, עמירה הס, ודני רובינשטיין" (in Hebrew). Arutz Sheva. Retrieved 2009-04-09.
23. השראה לתעמולת חמאס: גדעון לוי
24. אירועי תקשורת Israel Democracy Institute Template:He icon
25. ^ Irit Linur's letter (quotation) News First Class Template:He icon
    Translation: it is a person's right to be a radical leftist, and publish a newspaper in accordance with this world view... However Haaretz reached a stage where its anti-Zionism turns too frequently to silly and mean journalism. Original:
    זכותו של אדם להיות שמאלני-רדיקלי, ולהוציא עיתון בהתאם להשקפת עולמו... אבל "הארץ" הגיע לשלב בו האנטי-ציונות שלו הופכת לעתים קרובות מדי לעיתונות מטופשת ומרושעת.Translation: When Gideon Levy accuses Israel of turning Marwan Barghouti from a peace seeker to an impresario of suicide bombings, it is as logical an interpretation, just as the claim that the wave of attacks on the September 11 were a plot by the Mossad. In a private conversation with him, he told me one time that he would not travel a hundred meters to save the life of a settler, and it seems to me that his loves and hates have been long tainting his heart-rending reports from the occupied Palestinian territories. Original:
    כשגדעון לוי מאשים את ישראל בהפיכתו של מרואן ברגותי משוחר שלום לאמרגן פיגועי התאבדות, זו פרשנות הגיונית, ממש כמו הטענה שגל הפיגועים ב-11 בספטמבר הוא מזימה של המוסד. בשיחה פרטית איתו, אמר לי פעם שהוא לא היה נוסע מאה מטר כדי להציל את חייו של מתנחל, ונראה לי שאהבותיו ושנאותיו מכתימות כבר מזמן את דיווחיו הנוגעים ללב מהשטחים הפלשתינים הכבושים. Cite error: The named reference "IritLetter" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
26. Translation:
    Furthermore, and maybe this also does not have to be noted, his whole career is touched with unseriousness, since he is one of the few journalists for Arab matters in the world who does not speak Arabic, does not understand Arabic and does not read Arabic. He gets a simultaneous translation, and that's enough. For me, that is amateur journalism.
    Original:
    כמו כן, ואולי גם את זה לא צריך לציין, כל הקריירה שלו נגועה בחלטוריזם, מכיוון שהוא אחד הכתבים היחידים בעולם לעניינים ערביים, שלא יודע ערבית, לא מבין ערבית ולא קורא ערבית. מתרגמים לו סימולטנית, וזה מספיק. לטעמי, זו עיתונות חובבנית.
27. Levy himself confirmed in an interview in 2002 that he does not speak Arabic. See Interview with Gideon Levy (in Hebrew)
28. שכניק, רז (2009-01-16). "עד מתי אוקטובר 65'" (in Hebrew). מוסף "7 לילות" של "ידיעות אחרונות". {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
29. Gideon Levy wins Anna Lindh Journalistic Prize for his exceptional writings on the challanges of the region
30. "List of recipients of the Emil Grunzweig Human Rights Award on the Association of Human Rights in Israel website" (in Hebrew). Retrieved 2010-06-20.

External links

• Interview with Levy on PBS (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

Template:Persondata

• Israeli Jews
• Israeli journalists
• 1955 births
• Living people
• Anti-Zionism
• People of Haaretz