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Revision as of 10:46, 21 November 2010 by Gilabrand (talk | contribs) (→Praise and criticism: the self-described goal of this organization)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)| Gideon Levy | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1953 Tel Aviv, Israel |
| Nationality | Israeli |
| Education | M.A. Political Science, Tel Aviv University |
| Occupation | Journalist |
Gideon Levy (Template:Lang-he; born 1953) is an Israeli journalist, author and television host. He writes opinion pieces and a weekly column for the newspaper Haaretz that are critical of Israeli policy in the Israeli-occupied territories. 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 Israel 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 been writing 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 criticizes what he describes as Israeli society's "moral blindness" to the effects of its acts of war and occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. 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 popular view that civilian casualties in that war were both inevitable and acceptable. He said in 2007 that the plight of Palestinians in the Gaza strip, which was under a strict blockade by Israel, 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 demanding 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 complete failure for Israel, and that none of the objectives of the war was 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.
Praise and criticism
Levy's writing has raised 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 have criticized 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 reported extensively on an article of Levy's that was translated into Arabic on a Hamas website, to justify two rampages by Palestinians driving bulldozers in Jerusalem in 2008. Gideon Ezra, a member of Parliament from the Kadima party, and former deputy Minister of Internal Security in Israel, even suggested in 2006 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 public 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
Levy won the Anna Lindh journalism prize in 2008 for an article he wrote about Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces. The foundation describes its goal as "bring people together from across the Mediterranean to improve mutual respect between cultures." 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
- ^ Yemini, Ben Dror (2009-01-17). "Conscience pimps - סרסורי מצפון" (in Hebrew). Ma'ariv. Retrieved 2009-04-09.
- ^ Johann Hari: Will Gaza, like Iraq, descend into civil war?
- Is Gideon Levy the most hated man in Israel or just the most heroic?
- לוי, גדעון (10/04/09). "בוא שיר עברי" (in Hebrew). Haaretz. Retrieved 30 January 2010.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help); Text "שני שיבר ושליש ירכתיים" ignored (help) - אזור הדמדומים | 100 בהיסטוריה, by Gideon Levy.
- ^ Six Day War prompts reflection in Middle East ABC, 11 June 2007
- ^ "לקסיקון אנציקלופדי לתקשורת ועיתונות - גדעון לוי" (in Hebrew). העין השביעית. 26/02/2008. Retrieved 30 January 2010.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - http://www.forward.com/articles/3129/
- Robert Hirschfield, "Israel’s Gadfly", In These Times, September 4, 2009
- What do you mean when you say 'no'? Haaretz, 18 November 2007
- Ha'aretz, Israel's Liberal Beacon The Nation, 6 September 2007
- Gideon Levy, ‘Demands of a thief,’ Haaretz 25/11/2007
- Gaza war ended in utter failure for Israel, Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 22/01/2009.
- 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
- Gideon Lévy : une épine dans le flanc d'Israël Le Monde, 4 September 2006 Template:Fr icon
- ^ Problems at Israel's Haaretz: A Newspaper Without a Country
- Amnon Dankner, Maariv, May 1, 2002, quoted in Gaby Weiman, "Ten Dilemmas of Journalism in Days of Terror"
- מרכוס, איתמר (6/5/2009). "גיבורי הפלסטינים: גדעון לוי, עמירה הס, ודני רובינשטיין" (in Hebrew). Arutz Sheva. Retrieved 2009-04-09.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - השראה לתעמולת חמאס: גדעון לוי
- אירועי תקשורת Israel Democracy Institute Template:He icon
- ^ 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). - 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. - Levy himself confirmed in an interview in 2002 that he does not speak Arabic. See Interview with Gideon Levy (in Hebrew)
- שכניק, רז (2009-01-16). "עד מתי אוקטובר 65'" (in Hebrew). מוסף "7 לילות" של "ידיעות אחרונות".
{{cite news}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help) - Gideon Levy wins Anna Lindh Journalistic Prize for his exceptional writings on the challanges of the region
- מקבלי אות זכויות האדם ע"ש אמיל גרינצוויג ז"ל
- "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)
- "Interview with Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy", Am Johal, Worldpress.org, September 19, 2010
- 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