Gideon Levy

In 2021, he won Israel's top award for journalism, the Sokolov Award.

Gideon Levy studied at Tel Aviv University. The recorded working language is Hebrew. Employment is recorded with Haaretz. Distinctions recorded are Emil Grunzweig Human Rights Award, Olof Palme Prize, Sokolov Award and Preis für die Freiheit und Zukunft der Medien.

• Name — Gideon Levy • Native Name — Hebrew • Born — 2 June 1953 • Birthplace — Tel Aviv, Israel • Occupation — * Journalist • author • Awards — * Olof Palme Prize (2015) • Sokolov Award (2021)

Levy was born in 1953 in Tel Aviv. • Illustration — beached at Tel Aviv on 1 September 1939 His father, Heinz (Zvi) Loewy, was born in the town of Saaz in the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, and earned a law degree from the University of Prague. He fled the Nazis in 1939, together with 800 other refugees, on a journey organized by two Slovak Jews. He spent six weeks as an illegal immigrant on the Panamanian-registered ship Frossoula, which was denied entry into Turkey and Palestine, and was permitted only temporary anchorage at Tripoli. He was then imprisoned in a detention camp at Beirut for six weeks, after which the group was allowed to leave aboard another Panamanian-registered ship, which reached Palestine on 1 September. Royal Air Force aircraft strafed the ship, killing two refugees, but its crew ran it aground on Frishman Beach in Tel Aviv, where the remaining refugees got ashore. Levy's mother, Thea, from Ostrava, Czechoslovakia, was brought to Palestine in 1939 in a rescue operation for children and placed in a kibbutz. His grandparents were murdered in the Holocaust. His father opened a bakery in Herzliya with his sister and worked as a newspaper deliveryman and then an office clerk. The family at first lived in poverty, but their lives became relatively comfortable when the German Holocaust reparations arrived. Levy attended Tel Aviv's Ironi Alef High School. He and his younger brother Rafi often sang together, notably songs by Haim Hefer. During the Six-Day War in 1967, Arab artillery hit the street adjacent to his home. In 2007, Levy said his political views as a teenager were 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."

• Illustration — Levy in 2011 Levy was drafted into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in 1974 and served as a reporter for Army Radio. From 1978 to 1982, he worked as an aide and spokesman for Shimon Peres, then the leader of the Israeli Labor Party. In 1982, he began to write for the Israeli daily Haaretz. In 1983–87, he was a deputy editor. Despite his coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, he speaks no Arabic. Since 1988, he has written the column "Twilight Zone" about the hardships of the Palestinians. In 2004, Levy published Twilight Zone – Life and Death under the Israeli Occupation, a compilation of these columns. 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 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. In a 2009 interview, he said, "When I first started covering the West Bank for Haaretz, I was young and brainwashed.... 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, Levy said he doubted that any Israeli newspaper other than Haaretz would give him the journalistic freedom to publish the kind of pieces he writes. In 2011, Levy voiced support for Johann Hari, then writing for The Independent of London, who was accused of plagiarism, while confirming that Hari had lifted quotes from Levy's newspaper column. In August 2013, Levy travelled to Malaysia, which has no diplomatic ties with Israel. He was accompanied by Palestinian minister Hind Khoury, and was granted entry by Malaysian authorities; Levy had been invited to Malaysia by former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad.

Levy calls himself 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 called the construction of settlements on private Palestinian land "the most criminal enterprise in [Israel's] history". He opposed the 2006 Lebanon War. In 2007, he said that the plight of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, then under Israeli blockade, made him ashamed to be Israeli. "My modest mission is to prevent a situation in which many Israelis will be able to say 'We didn't know, he has said. Levy supports unilateral withdrawal from the 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 used to support a two-state solution, but now feels it has become untenable, and supports a one-state solution. Levy wrote that the 2008–2009 Gaza War did not achieve its objectives. "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 2010, Levy called Hamas a fundamentalist organization and held 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. But the first question you have to ask yourselves is why Hamas launched the missiles. Before criticising Hamas I would rather criticise my own government which carries a much bigger responsibility for the occupation and conditions in Gaza [...] And our behaviour was unacceptable." Levy supports boycotting Israel, calling it "the Israeli patriot's final refuge". He has said that an economic boycott is more important but that he also supports academic and cultural boycotts. During the Gaza war, Levy called for "lifting the criminal siege on the Gaza Strip".

Levy's writing has won numerous awards, including the Emil Grunzweig Human Rights Award in 1996 from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the Anna Lindh Foundation Journalism Award in 2008 for an article he wrote about Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces, and the Peace Through Media Award in 2012. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has called him "a powerful liberal voice". In his review of Levy's book The Punishment of Gaza, journalist and literary critic Nicholas Lezard called Levy "an Israeli dedicated to saving his country's honour", but said "there is much of the story he leaves out". Le Monde and Der Spiegel have profiled Levy. Israeli journalist Ben-Dror Yemini wrote: "He has a global name. He may be [one of] the most famous and the most invited journalists in Israel". In 2021, Levy was awarded Israel's top journalism award, the Sokolow Prize. In its citation, the prize committee wrote that Levy "presents original and independent positions that do not surrender to convention or social codes, and in doing so enriches the public discourse fearlessly."

Levy resides in Tel Aviv's Ramat Aviv neighborhood on a site that was, before 1948, part of the Palestinian Arab village of Sheikh Munis. He is a divorced father of two. He says his sons do not share his politics and do not read anything he writes. He has received death threats.