Gideon Levy

Gideon Levy is an Israeli journalist and left wing advocant.^[1] A former spokesman for Shimon Peres and a current editorial board member of Haaretz.

A recurring theme of his articles is what he calls the 'moral blindness' of Israeli society to the effects of its acts of war and occupation, an attitude which he attributes to the systematic dehumanization of Israel's neighbors. During the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, he joined a distinct minority of Israeli commentators in rejecting the view that it was a 'just war' in which civilian casualties were inevitable and acceptable.

Background

Levy was born in 1955 in Tel Aviv, the son of European immigrants. From 1978 to 1982 he served, together with Yossi Beilin as an aide to Shimon Peres. Since 1982 he has written for the Israeli daily Haaretz, in which, from 1986, he has written extensively on 'the occupation and Palestinian life under the occupation'. In 1996 he was awarded the Emil Grunzweig Human Rights Award by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

Criticism

Gideon Levi, never shying away from publicly stating his beliefs, has seen many criticisms for his views.

For example Professor Steven Plaut of the Haifa University has called Levy an "anti-Israel leftist fanatic" and in an interview with Daniel Ben Simon on the Knesset channel, Ben simon stated that even Levi's friends from Haaretz, known for it's left wing ideology, consider him an extremist. Gideon Ezra, when filling the position of Vice to the minister of Internal Security, suggested that he'd be watched by the General Security Services to supervise his reports and stated that Levi is treading on the borderline of someone having anti-Israeli interests.^[2]

Irit Linur public letter to Haaretz

Irit Linur, an acclaimed writer, radio broadcaster, and fellow Israeli journalist, wrote a letter, which gained wide circulation, explaining the reason for her decision to cancel her long time subscription to Haaretz. In the letter, she stated that there is nothing wrong with taking a radical left, anti-Zionist stance and publishing a newspaper in that spirit - but that the paper's anti-Zionism had reached the point where its journalism had become silly and mean.

In the same letter, Linur included a direct attack on Gideon Levy. She stated that when Levi accuses Israel of having turned Marwan Barghouti from an individual desiring peace into an organizer of suicide attacks, the charge was as illogical as a claim that the September 11, 2001 attacks were a Mosad conspiracy.

In addition, she noted that, in a personal conversation, he confessed to her he would not drive 100m to save a settler and that she suspected Levy's reporting have long been tainted by his ideological perspective; noting that pro-Palestinian tendencies are the most glaring and consistent part of it. Levi's entire career was, she asserted, tainted by 'shoddy work' (Hebrew: חלטוריזם), in that he was,

"one of the few reporters in the world dealing with issues regarding Arabs who doesn't know Arabic, doesn't understand Arabic and doesn't read Arabic. He gets simultaneous translations and that is enough (for him). In my opinion, that is amateurish journalism."

Linur attacked Levy's reports - which she asserts always hold Israel responsible - as narrow minded, shallow, and journalistically and morally impaired, suggesting that Levi, and his Haaretz colleague Amira Hass, intentionally refrain from reporting on fratricidal violence among the Palestinians. In addition she charged that the two "never seem to meet Palestinians who are Anti-semitic, Chauvinistic, corrupt or who clap at the news of suicide bombings".

Amos Schocken, Haaretz's publisher, responded publicly to Linur's letter, stating that Linur's description of himself and the two above-mentioned writers as 'radical leftist' and anti-Zionist confused him, as he had never thought of either himself as a radical leftist. He considered that Haaretz is and always had been a highly Zionist newspaper. Schocken noted that Amira Hass had reported on a Palestinian extrajudicial execution, and that she had also written both about Palestinian corruption and celebrations of suicide attacks.

He added that,

"In my opinion, Gideon Levy’s reports should be read principally as a description of the effect of the Israeli occupation on the lives of the Palestinians in the territories,"

and that he found nothing radical or anti-Zionist in Levi's writings.

External links

• Interview with Levy on PBS (2003)
• Selection of articles by Levy
• Article about Levy in the French daily Le Monde September 2006
• Gideon Levy's Official Lecturer Page